Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations with Terence McKenna, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Laura Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, and others… by David Jay Brown, Rebecca McClen Novick
Authors: David Jay Brown, Rebecca McClen Novick
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androcratic, male-dominant version of this system are not supposed to have any say in social policy. This system negates the essentials. Caring, compassion, nonviolence, the things that make it possible for us to survive, and thrive, are relegated to women who have no say in decision-making, And male identity is equated with conquest.
So we start with this premise. But even if it were true-and the evidence isn't all in--that men are more predisposed to learn violent behaviors because of hormonal or whatever factors, because they don't give birth or some other factor, this would be all the more reason that we need to very rapidly leave behind a society which constantly and systematically teaches men these behaviors.
We hand the little boy a toy sword or a toy missile, and say go get them. We hand the little girl a doll and say be nice. But then we tell the girl, you have nothing to say in social policy. And we wonder why do we have a system where we don't honor caring, compassion, and nonviolence!
It's a crazy system. I think that yes, at this point, because we have for so long been in a dominator system, men have a great deal to learn from women. There's no question about it. But this is difficult, and it's not only difficult for men to learn from women, but it's difficult for women to learn from women, because of the whole idea that authority figures should be male. We've all been conditioned to think of God as a man. We have been conditioned to think of the person, the entity, that you learn from as masculine.
But this is not an issue of women against men, or men against women. We're dealing with a system, a dominator system, in which even the few women who make it to the top, like a Margaret Thatcher, have to keep proving every inch of the way when they're at the top of the male dominator system, that they're not too soft or "feminine." So, what's necessary is a mass entry of women into the public sphere. (Look at Norway for example, where they have a parliament that's about forty or more percent women and public policy reflects more of the "feminine" values.)
And it's also a question of the redefinition of what it means to be a man. The good news is that many men are now questioning the old models of masculinity, asking what does it really mean to be masculine or feminine?
And they're beginning to recognize that this whole conquest thing is not masculine. It's just plain brutal.
DAVID L: I see another aspect, from my current explorations into moral sensitivity. Without going into the reason for it, a fundamental contrast between the two models is that in that earlier state, toward which we may be moving if we're lucky now, moral sensitivity was the norm. In other words, spirituality was not a matter of an hour on Sunday. Spirituality was a twenty-four hour-a-day business, seven days a week, round the year, round the lifetime, and moral insensitivity was abnormal. Now if you look at what has prevailed during the period of the rise of the world's so-called great religions-Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mohammedism--you see that under the dominator system, for a span of five thousand years we've endured a situation in which moral insensitivity is the norm.
In other words, the average person is viewed as immoral, amoral, and the truly morally sensitive person is seen as abnormal, as the exception or as a freak. The people in leadership will say, Oh, I would love to abide by the golden rule and so on, but the world isn't set up that way. If I were to go act, they'd kill me. So, consequently, I am the president of the United States, but Z must of course lie. Let's say I am Harry Truman, but I must drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--that's just the way the rotten world is. This relates to the fundamental question of why we have wars. In that earlier partnership-oriented system the question of war was almost unthinkable. In other words, it would be viewed as such a fundamental
So we start with this premise. But even if it were true-and the evidence isn't all in--that men are more predisposed to learn violent behaviors because of hormonal or whatever factors, because they don't give birth or some other factor, this would be all the more reason that we need to very rapidly leave behind a society which constantly and systematically teaches men these behaviors.
We hand the little boy a toy sword or a toy missile, and say go get them. We hand the little girl a doll and say be nice. But then we tell the girl, you have nothing to say in social policy. And we wonder why do we have a system where we don't honor caring, compassion, and nonviolence!
It's a crazy system. I think that yes, at this point, because we have for so long been in a dominator system, men have a great deal to learn from women. There's no question about it. But this is difficult, and it's not only difficult for men to learn from women, but it's difficult for women to learn from women, because of the whole idea that authority figures should be male. We've all been conditioned to think of God as a man. We have been conditioned to think of the person, the entity, that you learn from as masculine.
But this is not an issue of women against men, or men against women. We're dealing with a system, a dominator system, in which even the few women who make it to the top, like a Margaret Thatcher, have to keep proving every inch of the way when they're at the top of the male dominator system, that they're not too soft or "feminine." So, what's necessary is a mass entry of women into the public sphere. (Look at Norway for example, where they have a parliament that's about forty or more percent women and public policy reflects more of the "feminine" values.)
And it's also a question of the redefinition of what it means to be a man. The good news is that many men are now questioning the old models of masculinity, asking what does it really mean to be masculine or feminine?
And they're beginning to recognize that this whole conquest thing is not masculine. It's just plain brutal.
DAVID L: I see another aspect, from my current explorations into moral sensitivity. Without going into the reason for it, a fundamental contrast between the two models is that in that earlier state, toward which we may be moving if we're lucky now, moral sensitivity was the norm. In other words, spirituality was not a matter of an hour on Sunday. Spirituality was a twenty-four hour-a-day business, seven days a week, round the year, round the lifetime, and moral insensitivity was abnormal. Now if you look at what has prevailed during the period of the rise of the world's so-called great religions-Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mohammedism--you see that under the dominator system, for a span of five thousand years we've endured a situation in which moral insensitivity is the norm.
In other words, the average person is viewed as immoral, amoral, and the truly morally sensitive person is seen as abnormal, as the exception or as a freak. The people in leadership will say, Oh, I would love to abide by the golden rule and so on, but the world isn't set up that way. If I were to go act, they'd kill me. So, consequently, I am the president of the United States, but Z must of course lie. Let's say I am Harry Truman, but I must drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--that's just the way the rotten world is. This relates to the fundamental question of why we have wars. In that earlier partnership-oriented system the question of war was almost unthinkable. In other words, it would be viewed as such a fundamental
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