Dear Ecofem,
Enclosed is a notification for SAKINA 2000: A conference for world peace
and biodiversity through empowerment of feminine Wisdom.
We are calling for support and sponsorship to begin mounting this event
which could be a watershed for ecofeminist consciousness.
You are warmly invited to forward any comments, support, grant funding
suggestions advice and/or discussion about this.
Chris King - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
University of Auckland
*************************************
Proposal for grant funding of $100,000 US to establish "SAKINA 2000
Jerusalem", an international conference, empowerment, and celebration of:
1. World peace and reconciliation.
2. Biodiversity restoration.
3. Gender reunion through respect of feminine wisdom.
This application is for an area which is both devoted to world peace and to
the preservation of world biodiversity. It thus falls squarely into both
of the above categories in a way which also attests to the pertinence of
the proposal in terms of innovative world benefit.
The proposal deals with three related areas essential to world survival:
1. The establishment of a just and lasting world peace, free of nuclear,
chemical or biological threats to survival.
2. The preservation of the majority of the world's evolutionary endowment of
genetic and bio-diversity from mass extinction during the next century.
3. The restoration of harmony between the genders, and of respect, initiative,
individual freedom and educational opportunity to the women of the world.
THE THESIS JUSTIFYING THE PROPOSAL:
A WORLD PEACE:
While political history in the 20th century has tended to dwell on the
conflict between communism and capitalism, over the last decade a different
dilemma has arisen with the rise of religious fundamentalism and the
potentiality for terrorism. Although the prospect of a nuclear winter has
somewhat diminished, there is a growing problem of dissemination of nuclear
weapons and an increasing risk of major calamity through a terrorist
nuclear attack as long as small humanly-transportable nuclear weapons
remain. Biological weapons are also becoming a potentially very serious
threat.
Given this climate it is essential to try to make substantive resolution of
the Arab-Israeli conflict, which stands as a key continuing irritant
towards global military conflict. There are four reasons for this:
1. Israel has nuclear capability and as long as the conflict continues to
involve the Islamic world, a considerable risk of a major incident of war
and/or mass terrorism remains.
2. A very large proportion of the oil reserves of the planet are located in
this area and the conflict continues to have the potential to destabilize
wider areas of the region.
3. One in four people on the planet are followers of Islam, including many in
areas of China and the ex-Soviet Union, so the issue affects the attitudes
of a major and potentially growing sector of world opinion, for whom jihad
is a holy word.
4. The issue involves the three core religious belief systems which have been
central in driving the patriarchal development of civilization from the
West
to South-East Asia. A political resolution of this conflict is unlikely
until there is a spiritual reconciliation between these patriarchal
religions which have a very long-standing history of difficulties and which
are also central to the development of Western society.
Once again in this area, because of vested interests in the region and a
large Jewish and a growing Islamic electorate, the US is limited in its
capacity to realize a disinterested and effective root solution. Although
another round of talks may get the peace process on the rails, the
contradiction of terrorism against both the peace process and the more
recent confrontation remains a core difficulty. This difficulty again
arises from the docetic beliefs of Islam concerning religious martyrdom.
B BIODIVERSITY:
The future well-being of human civilization in the coming genetic age and
it's frank survival depends ever more increasingly on our evolutionary
genetic heritage. This has proved its value again and again both in unique
assets such as anti-cancer drugs, and also in the quality of life that
arises from improved weather, precipitation and inherent productivity of
terrain with abundant biodiversity.
While loss of biodiversity is an irreversible process which will take
millions of years to correct in evolutionary terms, human action, because
of immediate economic motives, and lack of global care and insight about
the value of nature, is participating in a mass extinction on a scale
unprecedented since the Cretacious-Tertiary extinction 65 million years ago
which could conceivably be comparable with that of the Permian, our most
severe single extinction in history in wiping out the majority of our
genetic biodiversity resource for the future - an extinction which is both
unnecessary and man-made.
Despite the Rio convention, the interests of national governments have
continued to bedevil the preservation of biodiversity because of arguments
over intellectual property rights, yet another example of financial
competitiveness taking precedence over the global good. Tropical forest
from the Amazon to Sumatra continues to burn unabated.
One can thus assume a measured degree of pessimism that, despite the
efforts of dedicated ecologists and environmentalists, national
governments remain incapable of cooperating sufficiently to avoid a major
extinction, simply because the big economic players all have immediate
vested interests which they do not have the foresight to relinquish until
the damage has become irreversible.
C GENDER:
We now consider the possibility of addressing these core issues of world
peace and biodiversity restoration simultaneously in a common resolution of
the root problem through empowering gender resolution. The
socio-biological basis is as follows:
1. Ecocrisis and biodiversity genocide has at its root the male evolutionary
strategy of venture exploitation, which in contrast with the female
reproductive strategy of a sustainable family environment and world seeks to
exploit quick gains through risk-taking strategies. These transients can be
seen as an aspect of world population crisis, resource exploitation,
biodiversity erosion and world militarizaion and nuclear armament and extend
into terrorism, martyrdom and the quest for world peace and disarmament.
2. The root of such beliefs arise through the patriarchal tradition of the
three
religious paths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their common attitude
of dominion of man over woman and nature alike and the consequent revulsion
for nature in the idea that God will remove us from the evil earthly realm.
Because science is merely a description of how things happen, it has no
definitive ethics to offer humanity in our search for direction. Genetic
ethics are becoming an ever more urgent issue.
3. A resolution of the expectations of these traditions is intimately
related to
the gender issue, because all three traditions are sourced in a mythology of
the repression of feminine natural Wisdom in the Eden genesis. Because the
resolution of all three paths depends effectively on the return of the
paradisiacal Tree of Life they have an expectation of environmental renewal
which is also implicitly a gender restoration, because correcting the Fall
breaks the gender deadlock of original sin.
THE PROPOSAL FOR A CONFERENCE.
The following description outlines the proposal as it stands. It has
already received preliminary interest from the Israeli Tourist Board and
women's groups in Israel, but so far no grant funding.
SAKINA 2000 Jerusalem: A Conference on feminine Wisdom and the Tree of Life
Sakina is the Quranic 'Spirit of Tranquillity' which also reverberates with
the Judaic Shekhinah and with Christian Sophia. It thus provides a common
nucleus for renewal of feminine Wisdom.
The proposal for this grant is to facilitate a global reassessment of
environmental sustainability by directly addressing the power of women in
the patriarchal societies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by holding a
watershed conference between the feminine voices in the spiritual capital
of the three patriarchal religious paths - Jerusalem as part of the world's
2000 celebrations. This is intended both to come to terms of common respect
and acceptance between the feminine and masculine views of reality and also
to address the frank gender inequalities these three paths have perpetrated
- a matter of continuing social concern.
In doing so it may provide our only opportunity for transformative peace
and dialogue between the three patriarchal paths because each is wedded
inextricably to a competitive vision of their own patriarchal destiny and
ascendancy. This is reflected again in the Irish conflict, where two
branches of Christianity give rise to a fundamental and potentially
irresolvable political conflict of long duration for similar reasons of
patriarchal religious determination.
The title of the conference is specifically the Tree of Life. In addressing
this root issue, biodiversity restoration is an immediate result, because
the same sense of feminine resolution which can bridge the cultural
boundaries in peace can also bring about the social consciousness required
to engender a strong ethical climate for sustainability. This climate
could bring about a watershed of political change world-wide by inducing a
climate of responsible sustainable economic policies towards biodiversity.
This is the final aspect of the keynote direction of this conference. All
three paths seek an eventual renewal in which the Tree of Life becomes
remanifest. The Fall from Eden is far from an archaic tale. It is a
central theme of the human existential dilemma whose truth reaches directly
towards the impending human-generated great extinction as a direct
consequence of our failure of foresight. Consummating the Eden myth in
biodiversity restoration is a natural culmination of these religious
descriptions.
Moreover it is a theme which is woven into our very industrial revolution.
In "Earthcare", Carolyn Merchant of Berkeley makes clear that the
restoration of Eden was a central vision of the utopian economic thinkers
who were central in motivating the industrial revolution, particularly in
the US. In a recent review of genetic technology, the Tree of Life is
likewise linked with the power to clone life immortally. This poses acute
ethical issues for humanity, which can only be resolved by a responsible
debate, which must include religious views as well as scientific expertise
for cultural reasons. It is of great urgency that the feminine aspect of
spirituality, particularly in respect of the theme of natural
sustainability be publicly acknowledged and 'sanctified' so that these
ethical questions do not continue to be subject to male reproductive
prerogatives.
Finally I would point out that the myth of Armageddon remains an acute risk
to our future which was nearly realized in the events of the cold war.
Steve Jones comments in "In the Blood: God, Genes and Destiny" that
virtually every operator of a nuclear missile "red button" in the US
nuclear military establishment believed their purpose was the biblical
Armageddon. This vision of a final religious war also links in a
disquieting manner to the Islamic concept of jihad through the Judaic
endowment to Islam.
Only by addressing these root issues is there any real prospect of a
natural healing of the human psyche. Without such a healing the prospects
for biodiversity genocide between the fast economic track and the religious
vision of dominion over nature remain bleak.
Please reply to:
Chris King Senior Lecturer, Mathematics, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
E-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
In cooperation with:
Dr. Yitzhak (Isaac) Hayutman, Director, the Academy of Jerusalem
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
