Thank you Michel. Actually I was just questioning whether aggression and violence are a natural tendency in males, which has to be supressed. As Rajani says:
"They managed to restrain male destructive drives – which are the scourge of all living things - within the prison of affective, kin relations to the extent humanly possible:" And unlike you I do not see aggression and nurturing as polarities in each of us. The evidence of prehistory as I have been reading would seem to suggest that for many hundreds of thousands of years groups of small band hunter gatherers lived harmoniously without need for interfighting. See my article : http://sublimemagazine.com/healthy-birth-healthy-earth Anna > On 24 Jul 2017, at 10:10, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote: > > Thanks for this reaction Anna, > > I agree about agression and nurturing to be polarities in each of us, which > may then be culturally re-inforced and fixated in all kinds of ways by > cultures and societies, > > But patriarchy predates EM by thousands of years, and gendering predates > patriarchy by tens of thousands if not more. It is easy to forget that even > in tribal societies, with very strong nurturing, and this could be true even > for matriarchal societies (who engaged in hunt and had to defend themselves), > that male initiation was especially geared towards de-sensitizing males and > habituating them to violence. A meta-study last year was pretty unequivocal: > the amount of human to human violence has dramatically decreased over time. > Civilizational and nation-state based wars can have a terrible cost, but > overall, the percentages are dramatically lower than in most tribal societies > (anthropologists and others have counted skeletons and how they died, i.e. > percentage of signs of violence vs illnesses etc..) > > Ironically, though the balance and positions between males and females have > varied over time, I think only EM derivatives have allowed the flexibility > you describe. > > The question is: can this be married with a return to nurturing ? To the > degree that we can enter post-civilisational processes (see A. Chandler for a > definition of civilization that is specifically linked to class based > societies, the need for internal repression, and thus , the need to > de-sensitize and make nurturing more difficult), we can develop renewed > nurturing practices. I see a lot of evidence of this around me, and more > specifically, in EM derived cultures, while where I live hear in East Asia, > maybe because of earlier forms of EM influences, the evolution may go in the > other direction (a lot of east-asian women in the middle classes do not want > to nourish their children directly because of aesthetic reasons for example, > and the men have to work harder and are less at home). The movement for > labor, gender, race and civic rights, to the degree they are protests against > hierarchical and class divisions, are post-civilisational and create the > basis for renewed emphasis on nurturing. (see how maternal and paternal leave > allows parents to spend more time with their children) > > Michel > > > > <<Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2017 08:41:24 +0100 > From: Anna Harris <[email protected]> > To: P2P Foundation mailing list <[email protected]>, > [email protected] > Subject: Re: [P2P-F] Fwd: What do I Know? > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Dear Rajani, > > In this long rant there are nuggets of truth which shine, but I have a > quibble with one particular statement which is fundamental to your approach, > - that men are naturally aggressive and violent. > > "I also know that men and women are profoundly, and naturally, dissimilar. > By instinct, men are aggressive and violent, and women are nurturing". > > Our definition of what is masculine and what is feminine has been defined for > us by our culture which, as you have demonstrated, has been contaminated with > EM values. These definitions are being questioned now by people who don't fit > in to these gender categories, who are demanding at an increasingly younger > age, to be seen as non binary. Those of us who grew up with these definitions > may be becoming more fully aware of our own discomfort at being thrust into > one or other of these gender categories. > > Progressives have got so far as to allow that masculine and feminine energies > exist in both men and women. But it seems a bridge too far to question the > very definition of masculine and feminine as culturally dictated. > > While this may seem peripheral to your whole thesis, I view it as a radical > challenge to the foundations of patriarchal culture which rests on the > primary division between male and female. (Unfortunately this has currently > been taken over by big pharma, since it paves the way for drug dependency > from an early age, and has actually created more confusion about having to > decide to be one or the other.) > > Nevertheless the basic categories are being questioned and fatally blurred, > so that being yourself is what really matters. This is a really positive step > towards your kin based affective society, where kin is seen as including all > beings. > > Anna > > -- > Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org > > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net > > Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens > > #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
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