A Natural World Order: Part X
A new/old World Order: 1, 2 , 3, 3a, 3b, 4, 5, 6 , 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 17a, 18, 19 & 20
New dialogue between men and women
Concluding Part X of a series — Part IX here — on how pretending that men are equal to women leads us to all sorts of problems. See the rest of the subtitled series — 4, 7, 8, 12,15 -18 above — see all series’ recap here and wrap-up here.
The previous posts re-framed a benign patriarchy suggesting that the biblical submission of women only became subjugation through an overarching male dominance in geo-history, stemming from our inability to address the roots of societal oppression.
So let me finish here by returning to the theme at the beginning of the series here, the surrender to a higher entity — God the Father in Christianity — is the only way to keep our thinking straight in the face of all that is happening nowadays. When politics and home get so confusing, our distresses get in the way, our opinions become self-referential, we seek social and social-media bubbles (groups of the like-minded reinforcing each other’s prejudices), and we basically lose our way.
I know I lost my way over 50 years of religion with no faith. I didn’t grasp that distinction until I spent over a year in Kuwait, where I saw how Islam held society together. I don’t know but I heard that Judaism holds Isreal society together. And I experienced in the US that evangelical Christians attempt to make religion hold the their part of our society together.
This all flies in the face of democracy that basically eschews patriarchal leadership found in religion, and replaces it with elected officials. Likewise common law and contract law replaces tribal merit-based systems with codification based on facts and principles, not individuals and hierarchy.
But that isn’t working either, as for example nowadays oligarchies are replacing or worst still, mascarading as democracies. Libertarianism is rolling back all the progress made through parliamenrary democracies and civil rights, by turning democratic institutions against themselves.
Why is that? Because society is looking for strong leaders! Society has no way to handle never mind heal distresses caused by political conflict and economic competition — aspects of which all my series attempt to address, see listing here — and capitalism is marching unfettered making people serve it, rather than serve the people as it should. Add to that the climate emergency and we’re in a right royal mess: so if we cannot handle it, then let’s grasp at straws and eventually look to a leader to sort it out for us.
Simple, right? Wrong! Because human leaders only emerged from, and thereore reflect the masses. They have nothing special to offer, really, because they only rise to power by reflecting what everyone else wants. Thatcher, Reagan and Gorbachev started it, and it’s culminating now with Trump, Berlusconi and Johnson in the West, with Modi, Putin and Xin in the East under slightly different circumstances but similar results.
There are exceptions however like Ghandi, who stepped out of the system to challenge it. But without diminishing his merit, it only worked due to the sheer egregiousness of an empire that spent centuries ruining colonies to support itself. The industrial revolution would never have occured without obscene wealth, what’s now called the Global North accumulated at the expense of what’s now called the Global South. So going back to first principles and weaving cotton, or leading civil disobedience contradicting the political and adminsitrative machinery based on production and efficiency, only worked in that context.
Did you know that “Islam” means “submission” in Arabic, as in submission to God? I was told that in Kuwait, but look up Wikipedia if you must! Talk about a religion encapsulated in a word… Contrast that with French Revolution’s “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”, a hallmark of democracy…
The only problem is that it’s self-contradictory. If you are free then you cannot be equal, as natural selection and personal inititiave will lead to inequality. And if you try and impose equality as in socialist régimes, then you curtail freedom. And brotherhood or solidarity only exists if society has mechanisms to heal wounds and promote empathy… which no society beyond villages or small tribes has ever achieved — email me for a theory of why that may be the case— no wonder we’re looking to oligarchs and demagogues to sort us out!
What I’m getting as is that having lost our way, we seek leadership… but that must be spiritual not human leadership! Marx was correct in saying “religion is the opium of the people”… but he missed how faith guides us all in ways neither religion nor capitalism can!
This series started with stating religion and science are not mutually exclusive. Then it argues for restoring benign patriarchy according to the Scriptures (speeking for my Christian world) by avoiding the male subjugation trap throughout history. And the recent feminist backlash — over scant decades after millennia of male dominace — doesn’t argue for equality as much as for reversal. Its chances of success without a faith backbone — the elements of which exist within religious texts even written by men — look to me rather dire as a result…
Let me conclude by saying that the only way out, is by restoring a faith where female elements buried in all religious texts are teased out and restored to rectify male authorship. Only then can we restore a hierarchy of God > wo/man > children > nature. The current polarity exists like paired magnets — man is either above woman (historic fact) or below (recent aim) — and can only be neutralised if the metaphorical current of male/female tension is cut.
Let me propose that “equality in value” does not lie in “equality of capabilities” — a fundamental tenet here is that women are neither physically nor psychologically equal to men — but in “equality of value respecting the inequality of our capabilities”.
My Re-valuation counselling community focusses on healing male-female rifts by first healing our selves, and then setting it in a framework of care for the environment and sustaining all life. And my Quaker and Catholic communities offer, for me, a social and spiritual framework respectively.
As mentioned a few times before — say, in all series’ recap here and wrap-up here — I will be quitting social media and activism as I re-focus my life in retirement, ruined as it is by a scam, yet rescued through my renewed faith via my Mum and cousins and my US sponsor from the church picture atop.
