INTERDEPENDENCE?

and how so many men-- as well as women -- have been used abused by patriarchal masculinity 

Why, even though we know better do we keep repeating outdated patterns in spite of today's record fires and floods? This Independence Day was a prod for me, a boomer Brit, to look more deeply at my privilege in the context of what's behind today's status-quo. Unequivocally, as one who benefits from white skin, our continuing shamefully racist short-sightedness inevitably harks back to 1776 and before, and to our Founding Fathers. Those men, 56 in all, for all their courage and laborious considerations who decreed “all men are created equal”…..which then, as now --- excluded very, very many men — to say nothing of all women, and children.

 

Their priorities ostensibly remain in Washington today where White Supremacy still dominates. And, where the pivotal quotient is today's 80% men-in-charge who are increasingly threatened here by the prospect of losing their power and control to the ever-growing feminizing and browning of this country.  That ongoing need of the still dominant men-on-top to is as unyielding as ever in today's Senate -- even in the face of their being willing to destroy American democracy.

Then, as now, that grip is upon this Western World where what's measurable is all that counts. The inherently less quantifiable, but universally human, more innately feminine feeling-functions of relatedness and interdependence — that exist strongly within all of us -- have no place in our profit-driven calculus. One which calculates our impacts upon the elements -- earth, air, fire and water —  as peripheral ‘externalities’. Computations that seem to forget those irreplaceable life-giving elements are not only around us, but, oh... yes...vitally, internally, within us too! 

Considered in this context, some of the most linear and left-hemisphere driven extremes of authoritarian masculinity are what refuels so much of the unethical lobbying and the many now outdated laws which govern the US. Laws that are increasingly inappropriate to the regenerative, eco-logical and existential needs of today and for the future. 

With we women’s role no longer just about childbearing and the men in power who are currently failing “to provide and protect" us from the existential threat of climate change......now what? What about us all caring enough to actually evolve and actually survive here on this Mothership?! To say nothing of for the rest of life of this planet -- are we really willing to leave this for our grandchildren to inherit? Certainly I'm one of those loathe to let go of all our comforts and ease but, like it or not, it is for we privileged ones, more than any other, to reduce our demand upon the Earth's resources. Even more humbling -- and the real roots of this story here in the Hudson Valley right under my feet are the Lenape homelands where our European ancestors brutally commandeered so much from native New Yorkers? (see Evan Pritchard's book of the same name).

Surely it is ours to move beyond the systematizing, reductionistic prioritizing of the more rigidly ‘rational mind’. Isn't it tiime for our more personal -- thus collective -- relational qualities, which are so utterly interdependent upon each other, to be seriously taken into account? Time for those qualities of empathy and love and caring — or more relevant, our lack of them — to be acknowledged in the ways they can so easily multiply for the better, as they must. 

All you men, as well we woman and children have been short-changed by our externalized reliance on what computes at the cost of our inner connections with ourselves and each other and the natural world. There is so much good in humanity if only our human-nature would be humbled enough to learn and no longer keep forsaking the source of our individual and collective existence. For sure here on Earth we are indebted to those diverse masculine and feminine energies within and around us which together create life....and to our old Mother Nature who should be forsaken no more.