MODIFY OR PERISH

Even if we stop economic growth, which is unlikely, there will be a continuation of global warming, depletion of ocean fish, depletion of groundwater stock, depletion of forests and problems related to meat production. Some of these processes are beyond the point-of-no-return or will soon reach that point.  

Don't wait for companies, politicians, economists and the media. The answers may be to modify our patterns of consumption, reorganize society in bottom-up ways and generate more green technology.

FEMALE FIGURINES DO NOT PROVE MATRIARCHY

While we can support the feminist movement, the argument that female figurines prove the existence of matriarchy may not be seen as holding ground.

Certainly, tribal societies, onwards from about 25,000 years ago, made small, voluptuous female figurines. These figurines are thought to represent motherhood, nature, fertility, creation, destruction or the bounty of the earth.

Some believe the female figurines represented goddesses and as such prove the existence of matriarchal or female-dominated societies. The lithuanian archeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994) did pioneering work on this thesis. She identified a large number of female figurines, mostly in Europe.

But how do we interpret their existence? Were these figurines really meant to represent goddesses? Perhaps they were made by men who in a very earthly way adored or longed for the female body. Perhaps females themselves adored the figurines and were the ones who made them. Therefore, there is no proof that the female figurines represent goddesses.

Neither can we say that these female figurines prove the existence of matriarchal societies. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that in tribal societies women and men tended to just have a simple division of labor, with women mostly collecting plant food and men mostly collecting animal food, which remains unrelated to domination by either sex.

Furthermore, agrarian societies, from over the last 10,000 years, also made female figurines although these societies are clearly patriarchal or male dominated. Male dominance arose with agriculture with men leaving the domain of hunting and pushing women out of control in the domain of plant food, although women kept working a lot in agriculture. But such patriarchal societies did not rule out the existence of female figurines, representing goddesses or not.

http://www.reclaimingquarterly.org/web/gimbutas/gimbutas1.html

Courtesy: Tom Parsons, Louk Vreeswijk and Sandra Hamilton

Tribal figurine Venus of Willendorf, about 25,000 years old

Figurine 'Bird Lady' in patriarchal Egypt, about 5,500 years old

HOW FARMING MADE MEN AFRAID OF FEMALE SEXUALITY

Why do many men fear the sexual power of women? The Indian psychologist Sudhir Kakar provides an explanation in his book The Inner World.

His theory has eight steps, cyclically connected:

1. When farming got developed, men took over the domain of plant food. This made the male group of the family (agnates) keep their land together and arrange inheritance rules accordingly.

2. When a son marries he is more or less kept away from his in-married wife because she is seen as a threat for the solidarity in the agnate group.

3.Therefore, the wife has a unsatisfactory relationship with her husband and his family.

4. When she bears a son, she gets more respect from his family, so a son is very important for her.

5. Subconsciously, she projects not only her love but also her unmet sexual desire on the son.

6. The son enjoys her love as a paradise, but her adult sexuality he feels as way too much and even as dangerous, poisonous.

7. In his adulthood the son expects the same unconditional love from women, but also deeply fears their female sexuality.

8. When he marries he will keep her sexuality away from him as it still feels as dangerous, which is functional for the agnate group solidarity.

Some versions of the Indian goddess Kali represent the deep ambivalence of men about women.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/232036.The_Inner_World

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Many societies have a more or similar type of kinship pattern. In catholic Mediterranean cultures the deep ambivalence of men about women is symbolized by the ‘Madonna-whore’ complex.

All along millions of years men have been going out and leaving their women behind, with perhaps the fear of female sexuality as a push factor contributing to the men’s adventurous travels, as hunters, explorers, conquerors, cowboys, sailors or warriors, and in modern society as commuters to their work.

See also: http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/unveiling-madonna-whore-complex

 

ANIMALS HAVE NO TRAUMA

Animals don’t suffer from trauma. In all mammals under threat, massive amounts of energy are mobilized in readiness for self-defense via the fight, flight, and freeze responses, but once safe, animals spontaneously "discharge" this excess energy through involuntary movements including shaking, trembling, and deep spontaneous breaths.

But humans may disrupt this process of discharging through rationalizations, judgments, shame, enculturation, and fear of our bodily sensations. As a consequence, sleep, cardiac, digestion, respiration, and the immune system can be seriously disturbed, and an array of other physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral symptoms may occur.

The Somatic Experience approach facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms. Clients are gently guided to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions.

The traumatized person is offered the opportunity to engage, complete and resolve in slow and supported ways the body's instinctual fight, flight, freeze, and collapse responses. Individuals locked in anxiety or rage then relax into a growing sense of peace and safety. Those stuck in depression gradually find their feelings of hopelessness and numbness transformed into empowerment, triumph, and mastery.

After: www.traumahealing.com/somatic-experiencing/

THREE Bs IN THE VILLAGE: MODERNITY IS COMING

We drove on the motor cycle along cattle tracks and across barren fields. From the back seat I had a view at distant rock formations. Large blocks of stone wobbled on other rocks as if they could fall off any minute. Flocks of goats were herded by boys holding their long sticks up in the air.

We passed a Hindu caste village with its rectangular pattern of alleys, the clay houses built close together to keep the sun away. The whole village was covered with dust, just like the few people that slowly walked around in their old clothes. We seemed to drive right into the eighteenth century.

It was on my request. A Dutch donor agency had sent me to evaluate a development organization that worked in hundreds of villages. I had been toured around in the city and some prosperous villages nearby. Then I had insisted to also see a remote village for comparative reasons. Now we were on our way to the selected place.

We reached there by eight in the evening. It was pitch-dark. The organization had informed their local representative. He would wait for us in their small building at the edge of the village that was used for group meetings. Normally, when a foreigner is announced, the village prepares a reception ceremony while expecting to get a prolonged impression of the visitor on the spot and perhaps some benefits in the future. So, both my Indian counterpart and I were surprised to find nobody at all in or near that building.

After a while we started to walk into the village. We took one dark alley after the other but nowhere anyone was seen. Finally we spied a blue light above the roofs that wavered on and off from time to time. Aiming at the light we arrived at the central square. Hundreds of people were squatting on the ground, male and female, young and old, while looking up at a television screen placed high on a wall. They had completely forgotten the visitor and the possible benefits that might be derived from a foreign donor.

Instead they watched an American TV program, one of the Three Bs, their favourite foreign programs: The Bold and the Beautiful, Baywatch and Beverly Hills 90210. I needed a prolonged impression of the scene to digest the situation in full.

THE NEED OF SOCIAL DIAGNOSIS

What does the doctor do before starting medical treatments? Right, performing diagnoses. And what does the doctor do before performing diagnoses? Right, doing a full length medical study. And what does the doctor do after a full length medical study? Right, keeping track of the new medical literature.

Now, what does the politician, or the manager, or the development worker do? Right, start interfering in a social system, big or small, without a diagnosis of that a social system, big or small, without having done a full length study to understand social systems, and without keeping track of new literature on social systems.

ECONOMIC ALTERNATIVES: SUFFICIENT OR MORE

Is there a workable alternative to economic growth and technological growth that benefits the West most and leads to ecological disaster? In the past there was, yes, but past is past. In the present, alternatives are hard to imagine, or it would have to be that humanity slows down the pace within the given ideology of economic and technological growth.

To give an example of real or perceived alternatives and the conflicts involved a century ago ~ it was in the period of 1900-1910 that agronomist Alexander Chayanov, supported by a large number of other agronomists, extensively showed how peasants stopped working in a certain year when they had reached a certain subsistence level. Not only did they live in villages that had a lot of equality, ‘mirs’ in Russian, and would not break away from such a tradition, they just felt no urgent need to work any harder or longer when a certain subsistence level was realized. It was the society of ‘the sufficient.’

Politician Wladimir Lenin, on the other hand, said that more and more Russian peasants went on improving their situation, certainly now that markets provided them with more opportunities. Such ambitious peasants were called 'kulaks'.

Lenin and his followers were convinced that the kulak motivation of ‘more’ would be a disaster for the Russian countryside. He may have been right or wrong, but he translated his ideas into action. He grew impatient and started his violent revolution against kulaks and extending markets in 1917 and founded the USSR. In Lenin’s words it was a revolution against capitalism or, in present-day terms, against economic growth and technological growth. Well, we know the final result of the Soviet experiment.

The original alternative of capitalism and Soviet communism was the peasant society of ‘the sufficient.’ It had been workable for a long time. Actually, it seems than between the years 0 AD and 1800 AD hardly any economic growth took place. But after that, economic growth and technological growth took off and, so far, mostly to the benefit of the West.

Traditional Russian village