Dominators, dominator styles, dominator complexes: Pale Green Vortex is littered with references to these phenomena. But who and what are they?
I first came across talk of dominator culture in Terence McKenna's classic 'Food of the Gods'. He in turn had borrowed the expression from Riane Eisler's 'The Chalice and the Blade'. I finally got round to reading it....
The story goes something like this: Once upon a time, quite a long time ago, in the Mediterranean and Near East regions normally considered the cradle of western civilisation, people lived quite differently. Settled agricultural societies, at peace with one another, lived side by side. These Neolithic peoples worshipped the Great Goddess, and developed steadily their social organisations and technological prowess. Furthermore, to quote Eisler, 'Equality between the sexes - and among all people - was the general norm in the Neolithic.' This was not matriarchal society, but partnership society.
All began to change around 4200 BCE. Waves of invaders from the north and east came in on horseback. Warrior types, and with warlike male gods, slowly they subjugated the Old European groups. 'Now everywhere the men with the greatest power to destroy - the physically strongest, most insensitive, most brutal - rise to the top, as everywhere the social structure becomes more hierarchic and authoritarian' (chapter four - Dark Order out of Chaos). The day of the dominator is upon us. And the shape of western 'civilisation' has been largely determined by dominator mentality ever since.
A most important lesson from 'The Chalice and the Blade' is that there is no inevitability about the ways human societies go about things. Viciousness and dominator-style competitiveness, manifesting in power-based hierarchical forms of social organisation, is not hard-wired into our make-up, as the dominators and their one-eyed scientific apologists would have us believe. 'Warfare and patriarchy arrived with the appearance of dominator values' (Food of the Gods, intro). There is indeed a choice, but most humans are not even aware of it.
'The most important book since Darwin's "Origin of Species"', Ashley Montagu proclaims on the front cover of my copy of 'The Chalice and the Blade'. Well, it depends on who gets to read it. This is not the kind of book that official dominator channels are going to promote. Education in general, and history in particular, are most effective forms of social control. Imagine it: history lesson for the ten-year olds. 'OK kids, today we're looking at some of our ancestors. Well, unlike us, they lived happily side by side. They co-operated on many issues, didn't need armies or nuclear weapons, could go out on the streets at night, and bullying probably was unheard of. Now things are different, and you've got me.' How do you explain the supposed superiority of modern dominator-style 'progress' from that basis? You can't. Give that to the kids and the revolution will soon be upon us.
So the modern dominators had better keep quiet about the Neolithic partnership societies; they represent the death-knell of much of our modern way of life. Also best to keep under wraps what happened in the various outbursts of goddess-partnership vitality that have occasionally punched a hole in the skin of dominator culture: the witch burnings, the counter culture of the late 1960s and 1970s come readily to mind. As Terence Mckenna says: 'Dominator culture has shown a remarkable ability to redesign itself....'(Food of the Gods, chapter five). It has also cunningly developed the means to eliminate other possibilities from the arena of popular human consciousness. Brainwashing through selection and censoring of what is proferred as 'the truth'.
As it is, should we dare to look outside the dominators' box, 'The Chalice and the Blade', with its story of partnership societies, provides a myth from which to live. Not a utopia, nor a lost Garden of Eden that provokes mere nostalgia, but a vision of real possibilities, a myth to lead us on - and back to Gaia.
I first came across talk of dominator culture in Terence McKenna's classic 'Food of the Gods'. He in turn had borrowed the expression from Riane Eisler's 'The Chalice and the Blade'. I finally got round to reading it....
The story goes something like this: Once upon a time, quite a long time ago, in the Mediterranean and Near East regions normally considered the cradle of western civilisation, people lived quite differently. Settled agricultural societies, at peace with one another, lived side by side. These Neolithic peoples worshipped the Great Goddess, and developed steadily their social organisations and technological prowess. Furthermore, to quote Eisler, 'Equality between the sexes - and among all people - was the general norm in the Neolithic.' This was not matriarchal society, but partnership society.
All began to change around 4200 BCE. Waves of invaders from the north and east came in on horseback. Warrior types, and with warlike male gods, slowly they subjugated the Old European groups. 'Now everywhere the men with the greatest power to destroy - the physically strongest, most insensitive, most brutal - rise to the top, as everywhere the social structure becomes more hierarchic and authoritarian' (chapter four - Dark Order out of Chaos). The day of the dominator is upon us. And the shape of western 'civilisation' has been largely determined by dominator mentality ever since.
A most important lesson from 'The Chalice and the Blade' is that there is no inevitability about the ways human societies go about things. Viciousness and dominator-style competitiveness, manifesting in power-based hierarchical forms of social organisation, is not hard-wired into our make-up, as the dominators and their one-eyed scientific apologists would have us believe. 'Warfare and patriarchy arrived with the appearance of dominator values' (Food of the Gods, intro). There is indeed a choice, but most humans are not even aware of it.
'The most important book since Darwin's "Origin of Species"', Ashley Montagu proclaims on the front cover of my copy of 'The Chalice and the Blade'. Well, it depends on who gets to read it. This is not the kind of book that official dominator channels are going to promote. Education in general, and history in particular, are most effective forms of social control. Imagine it: history lesson for the ten-year olds. 'OK kids, today we're looking at some of our ancestors. Well, unlike us, they lived happily side by side. They co-operated on many issues, didn't need armies or nuclear weapons, could go out on the streets at night, and bullying probably was unheard of. Now things are different, and you've got me.' How do you explain the supposed superiority of modern dominator-style 'progress' from that basis? You can't. Give that to the kids and the revolution will soon be upon us.
So the modern dominators had better keep quiet about the Neolithic partnership societies; they represent the death-knell of much of our modern way of life. Also best to keep under wraps what happened in the various outbursts of goddess-partnership vitality that have occasionally punched a hole in the skin of dominator culture: the witch burnings, the counter culture of the late 1960s and 1970s come readily to mind. As Terence Mckenna says: 'Dominator culture has shown a remarkable ability to redesign itself....'(Food of the Gods, chapter five). It has also cunningly developed the means to eliminate other possibilities from the arena of popular human consciousness. Brainwashing through selection and censoring of what is proferred as 'the truth'.
As it is, should we dare to look outside the dominators' box, 'The Chalice and the Blade', with its story of partnership societies, provides a myth from which to live. Not a utopia, nor a lost Garden of Eden that provokes mere nostalgia, but a vision of real possibilities, a myth to lead us on - and back to Gaia.
