Rejecting Cultures of Domination

W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 W W W. T I K K U N . O R G T I K K U N 37 H ere is what I’ve learned from my research and my life: healing and transforming our world requires particular attention to gender and parent-childrelations.Thisisbecausepeoplefirst learntorespecttherightsanddignityofothers,or toacceptviolence,cruelty,oppression,anddiscriminationas“just the way things are,” through what they experience and observe in thesefoundationalrelations. Despotic and violent cultures recognize this—although many people who think of themselves as progressives still fail to do so. For example, for the despotic and violent Nazis, a priority was pushing women back to their “traditional place” in a “traditional family”—code words for a rigidly male-dominated family where children learn it’s very painful not to obey orders, no matter how unjust. We see this same priority in violent and despotic religious “fundamentalist” cultures or subcultures—be they Eastern or Western,MuslimorChristian—where“deserved”violenceagainst womenandchildrenisacceptedas“traditional”and“moral.” These traditions of domination and violence are our heritage from earlier times when authoritarian rule was the norm in both thefamilyandthestateortribe.SoinpartsofSoutheastAsia,little girlsaregivenlesshealthcareandfoodthanboys.Genitalmutilationsofgirlsandwomenarestillcondonedbycustomandreligion inpartsofAsia,Africa,andtheMiddleEast,asareso-calledhonor killings. The World Health Organization reports that a huge proportion of women worldwide have been physically abused by anintimatepartnerandthatrapeisstillendemic.Yetallthisviolence is ignored by most progressives, who relegate it to the ghetto of “genderissues.” It should be enough to say that this violence must be stopped for the sake of its many millions of victims. But it has not been RejectingCultures ofDomination byRianeEisler Riane Eisler is a systems scientist and cultural historian, president of the Center for Partnership Studies, and author of the international bestsellers The Chalice and the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations. See www.partnershipway.org. enough. So we also need to look at the larger picture and educate otherstodothesame. We then see that in cultures and subcultures where people are taught that men should dominate women and highly punitive families are the norm, discrimination based on race, religion, and other differences is also accepted. And it should not surprise us that when the most fundamental difference in our species— betweenfemaleandmale—isequatedwithsuperiorityorinferiority , dominating or being dominated, being served or serving, people have a model for viewing other out-groups, such as different races or religions, the same way. Nor should it surprise us that when children observe or experience violence, they’re taught that it’s acceptable, even moral, to use violence to impose one’s will on others. It’s time to move past the tired debates about Right vs. Left, Eastern vs. Western, socialist vs. capitalist, and so on. It’s time to thinkoftikkunolaminwaysthatincludebothhalvesofhumanity and both our intimate and our national and international relations .Onlythencanweseriouslytalkabouthumanrights,human dignity,andtruespirituality.■ 25 YEARS OF TIKKUN "MANY AS ONE" BY RAFAEL LOPEZ (WWW.RAFAELLOPEZ.COM) ...