Monday, March 14, 2011

The History of Human Life on the Planet – in the beginning


“Evidence suggests that humans lived in relatively egalitarian social units, worshipped the regenerative powers of the Goddess, and depended on women for leadership in many aspects of family and community life, in the pre-Empire days.

Most humans were organized into bands of five to eighty male and female adults and their dependent children. They were food gatherers, rather than produces, and lived on wild berries and roots, hunting wild animals and fishing the streams. Members of the band shared the available food and the benefits of community life.”

The Ice Age ended about 11,000 BCE and human patterns of life changed to settled agriculture in regions of Eurasia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Americas. These cultures were relatively undifferentiated by occupation, status, or power. Generative power was at the center of community life. Symbols and rituals that acknowledged and honoured the power of Creation in its feminine form were among the earliest expressions of a distinctively human consciousness.

These cultures “were peaceful and relatively egalitarian. There was little sign of damage through warfare. There were symbols of nature associated with the worship of the Goddess, mainly a woman giving birth. For a period of about six thousands years, prior to the emergence of Empire, the emphasis in the Goddess societies was on the development and application of technologies that nurture life. Humans were expected to enter into partnership with the productive processes of nature.

These societies were matrilineal which means that they traced descent through the female. However, this is not the same as matriarchal, which means women dominate and rule and may treat men as subservient. ” 

The Change from Partnership to Domination as the Organizing Principle of Social Structures.

“The settled agricultural societies organized around the generative partnership power we think of as feminine, worshipped female goddesses of life, honoured female as well as male leaders, and directed their creative energies to the discovery and development of technologies that sustain and enhance life.

Ultimately, the early Goddess-worshipping agricultural civilizations fell to invasions by the God-worshipping nomadic pastoralist tribes that began in earnest around 4,300 BCE and continued in a succession of waves through 2,800 BCE. As the invaders penetrated the first great agricultural civilizations that inhabited the lakeshores and riverbanks of the fertile heartlands, they killed the men, enslaved the women, and replaced their relatively equitable, life-centered, and partnership-oriented religions, cultures, and institutions with wrathful male gods, warrior cultures, institutions of domination, and technologies of destruction. Earth Goddess gave way to the day God. As the pre-Empire societies honoured the power to give life, so later societies honoured the power to take life. Kings and emperors bolstered their demands for obedience with claims of personal divinity or divine appointment. Angry male gods representing dominator power displaced the female and male gods representing generative power. Priestesses were gradually stripped of power and replaced by priests. Wives became the chattel of their husbands. The poor became the servants of the rich. The regenerative power of the Spirit gave way to the dominator power of the sword. Humans came to mistake dominance for potency, domination displaced partnership as the organizing principle of society, and the era of Empire was born.  

With time, the conquered societies entered into a new period of material production and accumulation, but with a striking change in the pattern of distribution. Previously priority had gone to public works and an improved standard of living for all. Now the men at the top appropriated the bulk of the wealth and power. Their subjects had little choice but to make do with the leftovers. Those who achieved their positions of power by destroying and appropriating the wealth of conquered peoples continued their established pattern of appropriation, distributing the spoils among those who faithfully serve them – a pattern that remains familiar to this day.

The society that honours only the masculine principle traps itself in a destructive cycle of predatory competition and violence. The society that honours only the feminine principle invites predation by societies organized exclusively on the masculine principle. A viable society must have the capacity to define its integrity against predators of both domestic and foreign origin.

Societies that successfully balance the feminine and masculine principles to the end of nurturing life will be more prosperous and more productive of technological advances suited to improving human well-being than societies that suppress the feminine principle and give priority to the destruction and domination of life. To bring the feminine and masculine principles into balance is a defining challenge of the cultural turning” that is needed now.

“Matriarchy and patriarchy are both within the range of human possibility neither one is the natural condition of human society. The challenge for thee future is to move ahead to a society of gender equality beyond matriarchy, patriarchy, monarchy, and their other dominator equivalents. This understanding is foundational to our effort to become whole human beings and to create whole and balanced human societies reflective of the possibilities of an integral Spiritual Consciousness.

When did the Current Era of Domination Start?

The transition of rule by imperial monarchs to rule by imperial corporations began in about 1,500 BCE. Over time, the ruling monarchs turned from swashbuckling adventurer and chartered pirates to chartered corporations as their favoured instruments of colonial expansion, administration, and pillage. In English, this was motivated in part by its incipient stop to democracy.

(Modern Empire p. 126-7)


Partnership to domination

The corporation – another structure of domination

The structure of a corporation (a large business) makes it possible to amass financial power, in perpetuity and without limit, under a central authority on behalf of the financial interests of owners who bear no liability for the consequences of its activities….”

Similar to a crime syndicate with private armies and navies backed by a mandate from their home governments to extort tribute

Publicly traded limited liability corporations of gigantic scale now operate with substantial immunity form legal liability and accountability even in countries that issue their charter to the disregard of public interests or their own values. “There is no effective mechanism for the owners to express their values through their ownership participation even if they wish to do so”. A corporation is prohibited from exercising the ethical sensibility and moral responsibility normally expected of a natural-born, emotionally mature human adult. If it were a real person rather than an artificial legal construction, we would diagnose it as a sociopath.  

Corporate plutocrats

“a class war of the owners and managers of big capital against democracy and those who actually produce wealth which continues today”

“Imperial rule by the power of money”

Empire, in the guise of democracy, remains alive and well. Contemporary imperial societies organize for money making traditional societies organize for living.”

We need new stories. “When the stories a society shares are out of tune with its circumstance, they can become self-limiting, even a threat to survival. This is our current situation.

Co-operative Self-organization (Do we need a boss to tell us what to do and how to live?)



“Hobbes concluded that, given the natural right and inclination of each person to pursue immediate impulsive pleasures, order requires a strong state headed by an absolute ruler and law giver who has a free hand to determine what constitutes the public good and to impose order unhindered by any covenant with the people. In a stroke, Hobbes thus turned the scientific denial of that which makes us human into a rationale for an economics of greed and materialism and a politics of totalitarian rule.   
  p. 256

“As we humans come to embraces the truth that we are all creatures of the one living, immanent Spirit, competition for dominator power of one over another becomes an anachronism. Gratuitous violence becomes sacrilege. The pursuit of many beyond reasonable need becomes idolatry. Chauvinistic exceptionalism becomes a mark of emotional immaturity. A turning from an imperial economics of individual greed and excess to a mature economics of sharing and balance becomes nearly inevitable, as does a turning from an imperial politics focussed on competing interests to a mature politics of mutual interests. p. 265

Life if a series of “patterns of relationships that involve loops of reciprocity that may cycle through thousands of species. Life involves the ability to organize for mutual self-empowerment without evident central control or direction.”

Humans have a “drive to connect in a mutually affirming relationship with life (that) is hardwired to our nature” …”Whether we express that drive in ways that bring sorrow or joy is up to us” “…relationships of trust and caring are essential to our emotional health and to the healthful function of society.”

Summarized and quoted from David Korten, The Great Turning, from empire to earth community

 
Early Beginnings

Like most ancient cultures, Sumer was a society at the mercy of the elements. Windstorms, sandstorms, floods, and droughts were recurring disasters. This stirred the religious impulse. The gods needed appeasing, especially the spirits believed to control the forces of nature. Enlil, the storm god; Inanna, the goddess of fertility; and Enki, the god of prosperity, were responsible for good crops and had to be placated. Enlil was worshipped as “King of heaven and earth”, the one who summoned forth plants and animals from the earth. Without his favour, sang the bards,

No cities would be built, no settlements founded…
In filed and meadow, the rich grain would not flower.
The trees planted in the mountain forest would not yield their fruit.

This religious dynamic is a crucial force in the rise of ancient business. A powerful temple priesthood emerged as a natural development, because they were pivotal in the handling of the all-important sacrificial offerings. Herds had to be cared for and grain stored. Property values were highest in these sacred zones, where leather crafts and the skills of the butcher and the baker soon throve. Temples had to be maintained and their priests supported from the labour of others. The temples soon became the centre of the first two cities Unug (Uruk) and Eridu, the names perhaps recalling those of the Biblical patriarchs Enoch and Irad.

Summarized and quoted from Karl Moore and David Lewis, The Origins of Globalization p. 23


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