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 Page A
Authors: David Jay Brown, Rebecca McClen Novick
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violation of the nature of one's relation to the universe that one would explore all kinds of alternatives short of war. There's no check, no limits, we'll go to war. We'll have this wonderful war because there just aren't the moral constraints.
RIANE: Just think of the term "nobleman." A very short time ago, the "nobleman" was the warrior. Talk about an immoral norm. We've been gradually rejecting that. But organized killing or being a warrior was once the only "honorable" career for an upper-class male.
Back to the consciousness for the twenty-first century, if there's to be a twenty-first century, the whole issue now is leaving behind the dominator overlay. The partnership consciousness has always remained, but it's remained in the underground, if you will, either buried in mystical traditions, in religious rhetoric, or in the so-called women's world. It's been there because otherwise society couldn't have gone on. But now it's a question of breaking through, bringing it into social governance.
RMN: If males tend to demonstrate violence externally, do you think it's true that females are often more internally violent, and what do you feel that women can learn from men's tendency to intellectualize and thus objectify emotional states?
RIANE: People say that men aren't emotional, and that only women are emotional. But if you think about that, it's not true. Men are socialized so that they're allowed one type of emotion: anger, contempt, rage. They're actually encouraged to be angry, and to express anger. It's a "masculine" thing to do-as it serves to maintain their dominance.
Women get all the rest of the emotions. Except anger. So naturally, if you can't ever express anger, what are you going to do? You internalize it. So here we have this insane system again, crippling both women and men. Men certainly need other emotions, other feelings, "soft" feelings such as compassion and empathy. And women need to be able to assert themselves and to learn to express anger. And men need to learn to listen to women's anger.
I don't think it's an issue of women learning from men how to objectify. Education for women, which is what gives us the ability to better use our minds, is so recent that it's absolutely mind-boggling. Did you know that until the mid-nineteenth century there were no American universities that accepted women. Not one. The few women who had higher education got it through a tutorial system, where a father said, I want my daughter to also be educated. I think women have just as much of a capacity to be intellectual as men, or to be objective.
But I don't think that being objective is the answer. Because we now know that nobody can truly be objective, that we're all products of our cultures--and that often so-called objectivity is a way for men to detach themselves, to not feel anything when they are examining, for example, war. As in counting how many bombs were dropped, rather than dealing with the human suffering.
DJB: Richard Dawkins' theory of cultural evolution assumes the existence of what he calls memes- units of cultural information-- that seek to replicate themselves by hopping from brain to brain, and like genes, are subject to the laws of natural selection. In this context, dominator and partnership models of society can be viewed as being composed of memes that are competing with one another for the occupation of human brains. Does this view add any further insight into your theory of cultural evolution?
RIANE: I prefer Vilmos Csanyi's and Humberto Maturana's views. Csanyi speaks of the replication of ideas, not only the replication of cells. And that's a very important component in cultural evolution, whether or not it happens, as Rupert Sheldrake proposes, through morphogenetic fields.
DAVID L: One reason for the popularity of gene theories is because it's hard for some people to visualize how all cultural transmission can be through reading books, and
RIANE: Just think of the term "nobleman." A very short time ago, the "nobleman" was the warrior. Talk about an immoral norm. We've been gradually rejecting that. But organized killing or being a warrior was once the only "honorable" career for an upper-class male.
Back to the consciousness for the twenty-first century, if there's to be a twenty-first century, the whole issue now is leaving behind the dominator overlay. The partnership consciousness has always remained, but it's remained in the underground, if you will, either buried in mystical traditions, in religious rhetoric, or in the so-called women's world. It's been there because otherwise society couldn't have gone on. But now it's a question of breaking through, bringing it into social governance.
RMN: If males tend to demonstrate violence externally, do you think it's true that females are often more internally violent, and what do you feel that women can learn from men's tendency to intellectualize and thus objectify emotional states?
RIANE: People say that men aren't emotional, and that only women are emotional. But if you think about that, it's not true. Men are socialized so that they're allowed one type of emotion: anger, contempt, rage. They're actually encouraged to be angry, and to express anger. It's a "masculine" thing to do-as it serves to maintain their dominance.
Women get all the rest of the emotions. Except anger. So naturally, if you can't ever express anger, what are you going to do? You internalize it. So here we have this insane system again, crippling both women and men. Men certainly need other emotions, other feelings, "soft" feelings such as compassion and empathy. And women need to be able to assert themselves and to learn to express anger. And men need to learn to listen to women's anger.
I don't think it's an issue of women learning from men how to objectify. Education for women, which is what gives us the ability to better use our minds, is so recent that it's absolutely mind-boggling. Did you know that until the mid-nineteenth century there were no American universities that accepted women. Not one. The few women who had higher education got it through a tutorial system, where a father said, I want my daughter to also be educated. I think women have just as much of a capacity to be intellectual as men, or to be objective.
But I don't think that being objective is the answer. Because we now know that nobody can truly be objective, that we're all products of our cultures--and that often so-called objectivity is a way for men to detach themselves, to not feel anything when they are examining, for example, war. As in counting how many bombs were dropped, rather than dealing with the human suffering.
DJB: Richard Dawkins' theory of cultural evolution assumes the existence of what he calls memes- units of cultural information-- that seek to replicate themselves by hopping from brain to brain, and like genes, are subject to the laws of natural selection. In this context, dominator and partnership models of society can be viewed as being composed of memes that are competing with one another for the occupation of human brains. Does this view add any further insight into your theory of cultural evolution?
RIANE: I prefer Vilmos Csanyi's and Humberto Maturana's views. Csanyi speaks of the replication of ideas, not only the replication of cells. And that's a very important component in cultural evolution, whether or not it happens, as Rupert Sheldrake proposes, through morphogenetic fields.
DAVID L: One reason for the popularity of gene theories is because it's hard for some people to visualize how all cultural transmission can be through reading books, and
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