Understanding Human Ignorance >>>>> Chapter Two >>>>> The Failure of Patriarchy

For most of the 200,000 years of human existence, human beings were hunter-gatherers, apparently living in rather egalitarian arrangements that featured a considerable amount of gender equity.  Conventionally, scholars of and speculators about prehistory have maintained that men did the hunting and women the gathering, but there very well have been much hunting and gathering performed by members of both genders.  Competition for sources of food and water logically would have induced violent encounters, although calm consideration may have led some clear thinkers to work out mutually agreeable sharing of resources.  In any case, the capacity for destruction was less than would be the case at historical stages of more advanced technology, given rudimentary weapons and the lack of empires or nations for which to exalt and assert prerogatives.

 

Matters changed considerably with the appearance of civilizations, with all of their incivility.  First militarists and governmental leaders in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China;  then those from among the Hittites, Chaldeans, and Assyrians established armies and coveted territorial expanses.

 

Then, too, did the Greek city-states fight with each other and with the Persians;  and the Roman legions aggressively seek and largely obtain land rimming and ranging far inland from the Mediterranean and as far northward as the British Isles.  Thereafter came all manner of violent competition for territorial control engendered by the ambitions of Goths, Franks, Lombards, and Huns;  Pepin and Charlemagne;  allies of and agitators for the papacy, including those who claimed to rule a Holy Roman Empire;  and aristocratic holders of fiefs, including those with ambitions to be monarchs and those who would in France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain, Scandinavia, and Russia realize that ambition.  As the impulse toward nationhood proceeded in Europe, governmental leaders of the Chinese dynasties;  the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman caliphs and sultans;  the leaders of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai in Africa;  the rulers of Mesoamerica and of Peru;  and Mauryan, Gupta, Mughal leaders in India asserted right to territory obtained through violence.  And through the passes of Central Asia stormed some of history’s most fearsome practitioners of violence:  Scythians, Mongols, Turks.

 

Violent territorial conquest and authoritarian rule were largely the endeavors of males.  Those queens and empresses who gained power managed to find a place in the patriarchal systems apparent throughout the globe.  When male physical prowess, by no means superior in many an individual circumstance but on average greater among the male of the species, was put to work in behalf of bureaucratic states, empires, and kingdoms, violence became a norm of life for humankind.  With a premium on physical strength and aggressive behavior, males asserted themselves and patriarchy became a defining feature of human existence.  The primacy of male military and political leadership abided throughout the short lifetime of humankind on the globe (remembering the billions of years that passed after the Big Bang and earth’s formation before the appearance of homo sapiens, civilization, empire, and nation) until women finally asserted their right to prerogatives formerly claimed by men in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries.

 

The crudeness of humanity throughout 60 centuries of putative civilization was the work of males:

 

Patriarchy pervaded life among the Sumerians, Egyptians, Indians, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, and throughout the continents of Africa, North America, South America, Asia, and Europe.  Males in the main promulgated the tenets, told the tales, and conceived the ideas undergirding Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxies, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism;  among the major belief and ideational systems, only Daoism gave evidence of sensitivity toward women and conveyed antipathy toward qualities of violence and domination that had come to define patriarchy.  And in the Protestant Reformation, much went unreformed, including the patriarchal propensity toward violence and domination.

 

Not until 1968, to assert a date of focus for a remarkable transition, did the undermining of patriarchy begin.  Not until the juncture of history represented by this very year of 2019 going on 2020 are women gaining momentum as a social, cultural, and political force.

 

Understanding human ignorance saliently includes grasp of the harmful nature of patriarchal systems, so that even the promising cultural developments and religious quests that began in the context of patriarchy must be reinterpreted from a feminist perspective.

 

Men have led humankind poorly during the period of human infancy.

 

As humanity matures, women will lead the way.

Understanding Human Ignorance >>>>> Chapter One >>>>> Introductory Comments

Given that the Big Bang propelled the primordial soup into a nascent cosmos 13.8 billion years ago, humankind is a temporal newborn.  As the universe expanded and the cosmos gained greater definition, earth took shape 4.5 billion years ago.  Single cell life forms evolved approximately one billion years into the earth’s existence, but not until 500 million years ago did evolutionary processes gain momentum that produced botanical organisms and marine, amphibian, and terrestrial creatures.  And not until the extremely recent juncture at 200,000 years ago did homo sapiens follow hominid predecessors into existence.  

Humanity has only existed for 0.0014 percent of the time that has ensued since the Big Bang and 0.0044 percent of the time since the earth’s formation.  The ratio comparing the temporal existence of homo sapiens to the temporal existence of the universe when applied to a human life span of 75 years would find a human newborn just 1.5 minutes into her or his earthly sojourn;  if the applied ratio were that of the formation of earth compared to the temporal appearance of homo sapiens, that newborn would still be just 4.7 minutes old.

                     

Understanding the infancy of humanity is vital in comprehending the extraordinary ignorance of humankind.

 

After two hundred thousand years of hunting and gathering, people first began to farm intentionally just 10,000 years ago.  Civilizations featuring writing systems, social stratification, occupational specialization, and urban centers appeared between 4,000 and 1,500 BCE in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China.  The great civilization of Greek city-states evolved from 1200 BCE, reaching apogee during the 5th century BCE.  Roman expansion, Republic, and Empire spanned the years 500 BCE to 500 CE;  and as largely independent developments were taking place in North Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and the insular regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, just four major time periods in Europe succeeded the collapse of the Roman Empire:  the Middle Ages (500-1500 CE), Renaissance (1300-1600 CE), Enlightenment (1600-1800 CE) and the late modern and contemporary world of 1800-2019.

 

With the Renaissance, Graeco-Roman humanism animated European intellectual life. When that humanistic spirit was applied to great experiments and produced the scientific epiphanies of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, modernity was born.  The Age of Reason and the Age of Science became appropriate alternative appellations describing the intellectual character of the Enlightenment.

 

Note how recently in the temporal expanses of prehistory and history the Enlightenment occurred.  With the Enlightenment came great faith in the capacity of objective data and human reason to solve the problems of and improve the life humankind.  But science produced insights at a high level of objective truth that opposed long-held positions of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches;   and while creating the intellectual questioning that impelled the Protestant Reformation of the 15^th and 16^th centuries, those same applications of science and reason produced objective results that were also at odds with the myriad of Protestant creeds that formed in the context of Reformation.

 

At late 18^th century, revolutions in the British colonies of North America and in France seemed to augur societies built on the political reasoning of Montesquieu, John Locke, and their acolytes, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.  Science and reason were in ascent, but three successive periods of conservative religious reassertion provided antithesis to the scientific thesis.  The tension between scientific humanists and religious conservatives intensified as Charles Darwin published his works on natural selection and evolution; Freud conducted his interviews in Vienna that suggested unconscious and subconscious determinants of human behavior;  Einstein mathematically challenged assumptions about the reality and relationship of matter, time, and space in the cosmos;  and B. F. Skinner powerfully asserted on the basis of scientific experimentation that human behavior is shaped exclusively by biological and experiential determinants, so that human beings only perceive that they have free will.    

 

In the aftermath of these great insights of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the forces of religious conservatism countered with views engendered by dogma and belief, rather than science and reason.  Failure to resolve the tension between science and reason, and thus to realize the promise of the Enlightenment, has stalled the already sluggish trajectory of humankind:

 

Temporally an infant, humanity remains intellectually and spiritually infant, as well.

 

Only when astute thinkers from each of the world’s great religious traditions congregate to agree on ethical principles consistent with scientifically observed conditions of nature and humanity will the ascendant trajectory of humankind ensue.

 

The thesis and antithesis of science and religion must gain synthesis, so that people live lives on this one earthly sojourn that are both rigorously rational and spiritually nourishing.

 

Failure to gain this synthesis undergirds all of humankind’s current dilemmas;  attainment of the synthesis for unity of science and religion would impel humanity toward conditions of life described by abundance, equity, and spiritual satisfaction.  

 

In the succeeding pages I detail the foundations and consequences of human ignorance and the better life to come via the astute conciliation of science and religion.

Testament One: The Search for Divinity >>>>> Book One: Genesis II

She looked out upon the Unfathomable Depth and Eternal Expanse and discerned that she was an infant in Time stretching back before the 13.8 billion-year Bang; the 4.5 billion-year production of Earth, her Mother;  and beheld her own Birth less than a quarter of a million years prior to the times of the Great Tribulation.  She looked at him and discerned that he would cause much trouble, for which he would make her bear the blame in the Great Struggle that would ensue before the Great Victory and the Divine Epiphany.

                                                             

She had no option but to endure him, he who in his abundance of ego and crude physicality strove to diminish her for his fear of her Potential Magnificence.  She did endure throughout all time until the Great Tribulation induced the Lucid Evaluation.  She had felt so degraded that she devised unhealthy ways of coping, accepting humiliations devised by him and evolving her own.  Thus did she paint her face, force her body into uncomfortable raiment, and totter forth variously on bound feet and those little stilts, those spike-heeled abominations, thus accepting the crippling of Soul and Body that he had thrust upon her, in which she was duped for two hundred thousand years.

 

But Eternity bestows Time that never ends and provides that temporal space for observation, reflection, and the drama of Existence that led to the Great Tribulation.  She awoke one day and discerned what life could be.  For the first time she imagined the Value of Life beyond marital incarceration and familial formulations that abetted and prolonged her agony, promoted and exalted that degradation of life that humanity perceived at 2020.

 

She took control.

 

She washed her face.

 

She cast aside those little stilts.

 

She tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Move over little brother, until some of your number attain my age:  I will lead.”

 

Thus did she abet the aversion of Impending Disaster that threatened humanity at 2020.  Her Divine Epiphany rescued humanity from extinction and made possible full enjoyment of Eternity, the Cosmos and Earth that would remain whether humanity endured or not.

 

But humanity endured.

 

The victory was her accomplishment, which when he was ready she generously shared with him.

 

Thus did Female and Male unite and did the wheeled engine of their interaction produce Life that had always been possible.  Birds, flowers, rivers, lakes, oceans, skies, clouds, stars, planets, all the world in its botanical and zoological splendor of a sudden became apparent;  with all the world wondering what had taken so long.

 

What, indeed, had taken so long for the Divine Epiphany, the Grand Realization of the Divine Gift of Life?

 

In Time the question would matter a great deal and yet matter not at all, because the Supreme Internalization engendered

 

Life As It Could Always Have Been

 

and

 

All That Life Would Thenceforth Be.

 

She looked fully into the Divine and saw that It was Very Good.

Book Two: Exodus II

On the day of the Divine Epiphany, She saw everything anew.

 

In her Gaze of Enlightenment, interstate highways disappeared, the edifices of commerce receded, fast food conveyors conveyed no more, smokestack factories were factored out, and the multiple tawdry halls of self-medication vanished.

 

She drilled a hole into the multiple chimeras of that which had seemed, and some still thought, real, scarcely believing that She had once however scornfully deemed these to have reality.  These things now appeared as illusion, maya, distraction from Existence, and yet they were there, reminding her of how crude the society with Him at the helm had been:  children abused by priests;  women raped by spouses;  laborers herded into soul-dulling factories, mines, fields where they picked but got no fruit;  destitute folk begging pittances on street corners;  the materially rich but vagabond souls pouring into gala hallways, gawdy stores, gated residential prisons desperately hiding from what they had created and from answers to questions they were afraid to ask.  

 

Her vision became more acute the longer she peered into the degradation before her.  She saw mothers drowning daughters in rivers;  fathers leaving vehicles with sons sealed in solar death;  wives killing husbands, husbands murdering wives, mutual eliminations on pathways to suicide;  humanity killing humanity while spouting all names Holy, acting with hate when the Directors had commanded, “Love!”

 

Then the chimeras vanished.  The illusions were no more.  She saw Humanity as It Could Be.  She made a Covenant with the Good and envisioned a journey Home through a Sea of Hope.

 

She felt unprecedented Power well up within Her.  She was without fear.  She beheld Life in fullness of beauty, clarity of air, purity of stream, fragrance of flower, magnificence of beast, majesty of mountain.  Once drained, the detritus of centuries gave way to what Female and Male had created that was worthy as Nature’s siblings:  visual art, music, poetry, drama, dance.

 

She briefly beheld a counter-vision in which babies would sail the River to Destruction unless she acted immediately.

 

Fully bolstered by Divine Epiphany, having seen with clarity Life as it Could Be, She confronted Life as It Had Been and forcefully declared:

 

“You must let my people go.”

 

Book Three: LND II >>>>> The Divine Law of Human Values

Divested of His Toxic Psychic Control and having led Her people in an Exodus from the Bonds of Human Degradation, She felt great waves of tension escape her body and her soul.

 

Free now to create Life as It Should Be, She summoned the Divine Clarity that She felt within Her, suffused as She was with Unmasked Truth, and spoke thusly to Her people:

 

1     >>>>>     Understand that Love is the essence of the Divine.

 

2     >>>>>     Think Lovingly.

 

3     >>>>>      Speak Lovingly.

 

4     >>>>>      Act Lovingly.

 

5     >>>>>      Work Lovingly.

 

6     >>>>>      Strive Lovingly.

 

7     >>>>>      Concentrate on Love.

 

8     >>>>>      Meditate and pray with Love.

 

9     >>>>>      Unite all faiths in Love.               

 

10   >>>>>      Heal all carnal and spiritual wounds with Love.

 

She then spoke thusly to her people:

 

“You must examine all that you once thought was true.  You must oppose all that has been Toxic.  Manifest anger when you must.  Recoil not from confrontation.  Be forceful in battle with the Guardians of Toxicity.  Convert these when you can, defeat them when you must, let them know unequivocally that they must unite with the Good or be gone.

 

Walk

 

with Courage.

 

with Love,

 

toward the Land of Promise,

 

the Realm of the Good.”

Book Four: J-E History II

Clear now as to Her Values, She searched for Divinity in history, poetry, and prophesy.

 

Peering through the Tunnel of History, Female saw the story told by Male, that tale in which domination guided action, thought, and the contents of the story as told by him.  She endured the litany of judges, kings, and rivals;  she noted that even queens collapsed in the mire of corruption and amidst the snares set by him.  Life as seen by Male consisted of incessant warfare, territorial acquisition and loss, the constant striving to separate one people from another, the quest for power for the sake of power, the desire to subdue the Other, whether on the battlefield on in the harem.  Female knew that much of history had been grim and that most of the events conveyed by Male were either factually or thematically true.  But he had dominated the recording:  So much had gone untold.

 

She spilled out of the Tunnel of History onto the broader Plain of the Past.  There she gained the perspective of a wider field of vision.  She came to understand that the nature of the search and the quality of deeds exhibited by Male were grounded in something very important.  Male wanted meaning:  why he was Here and where he was heading in Eternity.  He wanted security:  perceived opponents loomed, presumed enemies abounded, others in the land seemed to be competing for what he wanted and seeking to take what he had.  And he ached to know the course of Creation, the nature of the Source, the path to deep connectedness with the Divine.

 

Moving farther from the Tunnel of History, roaming farther and wider on the Plain of the Past, Female discerned that Male’s search had been profound but that his pathways had been errant, his conclusions mundane, his actions destructive.  Female felt the poignancy of Male’s boastfulness, his pride, his quest for power, his desire to dominate.  She knew that all of these had arisen from Fear, the Enemy that he projected onto his fellows, life, her.          

 

Her sojourn led next to the Path of Eternity:

Nature, Music, and Art motioned her ahead to a  Land that promised meaning, security, connectedness.  Poets and Prophets led her forward through Echoes of the Past and Promise of the Future.  She discerned the Echoes, comprehended the Promise, and took abundant joy in what this meant for Male and Female in connection with the Divine.  

Book Five: P-S Poetry II

Clear now as to Her Values and with Deep Insight into History, she felt the Passion of Poetry pressing forth as she called out to the Divine  >>>>>

 

I Discern now that

You are

as

You are,

and

Life is

as

It is.

 

I shall never need to

doubt

again,

though I remain

full of

Wonder.

Life:

full of

Misery,

full of

Joy,

Evanescent

and yet

Eternal,

I

and each one of

Us

Inextricably Connected

to

Each Other,

to

You,

to events

Sorrowful

and

Felicitous,

One

and the

Same.

 

No longer need I

Question

where

You

are in my times of

Tribulation.

No longer shall I feel

Your Presence

only in my

victories,

successes,

and the

triumphs

of those

who have been

dearest

to me.

For

You

Abide,

and

I

Live:

That is all I need to

Know.

 

I

Comprehend

now that

I,

by which I mean

We,

Live Fully

When we pursue

Knowledge

and spend our

Time

with maximal

Sincerity,

Efficiency,

applying then what we

Know

to our

Best Lived Lives

of

Wisdom,

Compassion,

guided always,

above all,

by

Love.

 

Thus,

in the

Depths of My Sorrow,

in the

Ebullience of My Joy,

I henceforward shall

Know

that for everything

there is a

Propitious,

Divinely Bestowed,

Season.

 

How blessed

am

I,

Female

of your

Creation,

to receive from you

this impetus to gain

Knowledge,

this

Opportunity

to

Live

with

Wisdom,

and to impart this to

Male,

My

Brother,

Friend,

Lover,

for in our

Perfected Union,

Divine Love,

we are

Microcosm,

Macrocosm,

You,

the

Divine.

Book Six: Prophecy II

Clear now as to Her Values, with Deep Insight into History, and with the Passion of Poetry having hastened Her on the Road to Divinity, She sought Divinity in Prophecy and became Prophet:

 

She peered into the Core of Past Life, finding the pervasiveness of Immorality, Grief, Tribulation, Destruction.  Though personally incorrupt, She felt sullied by association.  All around Her She saw people worshiping idle idols, putative power, glamorized gluttony.  She observed the oppressiveness of the material, the insubstantial moorings on the Ship of Things, the elevation of the self over the good of the fellow. 

 

Her anger welled. 

 

Her frustration bellowed. 

 

And in that raging ire, She envisioned most momentous scenes: 

 

Beasts raged,  Goats bleated, Rams butted, locusts swarmed, crops failed, forests blazed.  Humanity---painted, tainted, infested, tested---  fell from the plains into the Lion’s Lair and beneath the sea into the Fish’s Bloated Belly.

 

She arrived at the Core of the Present and saw the same: 

 

Mentally deranged beggars gestured on street corners, people deformed by history found no solace in the present, babies lay untended, cocaine killed souls, opioids obliterated bodies, alcohol deluded spirits, priests molested boys, families abused girls, men oppressed women, religion attacked religion, humanity murdered humanity, ignorance abounded, and everywhere the absence of Meaning took toll. 

 

Then of a sudden She turned and directed the Radiance of Redemption toward Souls in Exile, indicating the way to Life as Life Should and Will Be.

 

She spoke forcefully, reminding them:

 

Recall The Divine Law of Human Values for Life as It Should Be:

 

1     >>>>>     Understand that Love is the essence of the Divine.

 

2     >>>>>     Think Lovingly.

 

3     >>>>>      Speak Lovingly.

 

4     >>>>>      Act Lovingly.

 

5     >>>>>      Work Lovingly.

 

6     >>>>>      Strive Lovingly.

 

7     >>>>>      Concentrate on Love.

 

8     >>>>>      Meditate and pray with Love.

 

9     >>>>>      Unite all faiths in Love.               

 

10   >>>>>      Heal all carnal and spiritual wounds with Love.

 

She then spoke thusly to her people:

 

“You must examine all that you once thought was true.  You must oppose all that has been Toxic.  Manifest anger when you must.  Recoil not from confrontation.  Be forceful in battle with the Guardians of Toxicity.  Convert these when you can, defeat them when you must, let them know unequivocally that they must unite with the Good or be gone.”

 

Life as It Should Be will henceforth be Life as It Will Be.

 

You are delivered from Exile of the Soul and according to this Divine Law of Human Values shall your Spirit be redeemed.

 

Thus shall you walk

 

with Courage,

 

with Love,

 

toward the Land of Promise,

 

the Realm of the Good,”

 

the Land Led by Woman,

 

with Love

for all

Humankind.

 

We are

 

Microcosm,

 

Macrocosm,

 

You,

the

 

Divine.