Regarding new ideas, it is said that at first, they are ridiculed, then vociferously attacked and finally - accepted, often with the statement, "I always knew it was that way!"
A Primary Obstacle to Our Maturation: The Dominator Worldview
We need to realize that the dominator way of organizing society has been in existence for 7,000 years and still holds sway. Let's be clear: authoritarianism is based on the ego illusion: "Do it my way or else; I win, you lose."
Referring to life in organizations Meg Wheatley has written that: "It is possible to look at the negative and troubling behaviors in organizations today as the clash between the forces of life and the forces of domination, between the new story and the old."
Eisler has offered a profound and beneficent distillation of some of our species' core issues in her revolutionary book, The Chalice and the Blade. In it Eisler argues that human society, throughout time, has been organized according to two basic, and divergent sets of assumptions:
"The first, which I call the dominator model, is what is popularly called patriarchy or matriarchy, - the ranking of one half of humanity over the other. The second, in which social relations are primarily based on the principle of linking rather than ranking, may best be described as the partnership model."
It is important to grasp that the premises underlying a "dominator-based society" extend to all levels of interrelationship - from those involving two individuals (such as marriage) to ever-larger groups: the nuclear family, schools, businesses, religions, governments, and nations. Similar ideas have been elaborated in the pioneering work being done at the Stone Center at Wellesley College. The writings of Judith Jordan, Jean Baker Miller and other feminist scholars clarify the salient differences between these two modes of being:
"In the 'power-over' or 'power-for-oneself only' model there is an assumption of an active agent exerting control that [arises from] an actual or threatened use of power, strengths or expertise.
"The alternative model of interaction that we are proposing might be termed 'power-with' or 'power-together'... It suggests that all participants in the relationship interact in ways that are based on connecting and enhancing everyone's personal power."
Redfield called dominator-types "intimidators." The irony is that dominators are themselves dominated by these deeply entrenched traits.
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