White flag, white flag. Truce.
It was never my intent to become the focal point of this list.
Plenty of blame to go around - ego on my part, defensiveness on the
part of several others. I just thought that with my knowledge of
environmental matters and my disdain for the patriarchal system,
even though I'm weak on feminist knowledge, that I'd be able to
contribute constructively to this list. And that I could get some
insight from ecofeminists on how to better do my job here in the
bowels of government.
Maybe this is a utopian dream, but I further hoped that lists like
this could eventually help connect with the public at large.
Surely more and more people are reading list proceedings as time
goes on. As one person said, instead of remaining a small group
"singing to the choir," so to speak, maybe ECOFEM could expand and
spread the message. It is important to stay on topic, and I'm
guilty of digressing here and there. And as Monte' and others have
so eloquently explained, it IS helpful to accept blame for
society's problems and change individually to help change the
culture. I'll be out of town for a couple days, and will think
deeply about that.
On the whole subject of conflict itself, I offer the excerpt below
from Eisler's book.
Al
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
P.S. My "bite the hand that feeds you" remark was a clumsy attempt to
get people to think about a revolutionary way to turn the system on
its head. Imagine if we all at once bit the patriarchal hand that
feeds us (disconnect the lines of control) and started commiting
senseless acts of KINDNESS.
from "The Chalice & The Blade" by Riane Eisler, 1987, p. 191-193
"---the way we view conflict itself needs to be reexamined."
"...the question is not how to eliminate conflict, which is
impossible. As individuals with different needs and desires and
interests come into contact, conflict is inevitable. The question
directly bearing on whether we can transform our world from strife
to peaceful coexistence is how to make conflict productive rather
than destructive."
"...'conflict is made to look as if it always appears in the image
of extremity, whereas, in fact, it is actually the lack of
recognition of the need for conflict and provision of appropriate
forms for it that leads to danger. [The] ultimate destructive form
is frightening, but it is also NOT conflict. It is almost the
reverse; it is the end result of the attempt to avoid and suppress
conflict.'
Although [the] suppressive dominator approach to conflict still
overwhelmingly prevails, the success of less violent and more
'feminine' or 'passive' approaches to conflict resolution offers
concrete hope for change. These approaches have ancient roots. In
recorded history Socrates and later Jesus both used them. In
modern times they are best known as embodied by men like Ghandi and
Martin Luther King, Jr.--whom androcracy handled by killing and
canonizing. But by far their more extensive use has been by women.
A notable example is how in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
women nonviolently fought against unjust laws. For access to
family planning information, birth control technologies, and the
right to vote, they permitted themselves to be arrested and chose
to go on hunger strikes, rather than using force or the threat of
force to gain their ends.
This use of nonviolent conflict as a means of attaining social
change is not merely passive or nonviolent resistance. By refusing
to cooperate with violence and injustice through the use of violent
and unjust means, it is the creation of the positive transformation
energy Ghandi called satyagraha or 'truth force.' As Ghandi said,
the aim is to transform conflict rather than suppress it or explode
it into violence.
Just as critical in recharting the course of cultural evolution
is the current reexamination of the way we define power."... "the
so-called need to control and dominate others is psychologically a
function not of a feeling of power but rather a feeling of
powerlessness. Distinguishing between 'power for oneself and power
over others,'"... "'The power of another person or group of people
[is] generally seen as dangerous. You [have] to control them or
they [will] control you. But in the realm of human development,
this is not a valid formulation. Quite the reverse. In a basic
sense, the greater the development of each individual the more
able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting
others she or he will be.'"
"...a 'win-win' rather than 'win-lose' view of power, in
psychological terms, a means of advancing one's own development
WITHOUT at the same time having to limit the development of others.
In visual or symbolic terms, this is a representation of power as
linking."
