Riane Eisler: The False Story of Who We Are
Our guest today is Dr. Riane Eisler, social systems scientist, cultural historian, futurist, attorney and internationally bestselling author of many notable classics, including Sacred Pleasure and The Chalice and the Blade, which I read recently and LOVED—while it came out in the ‘80s, it is incredibly prescient—prophetic really—and more relevant than ever. In it, and all of her books, Riane explores the ways in which hierarchies of dominance—which are NOT our natural state—inform how we live now. “What we’ve been told is simply a false story of our past, of our present, and most importantly today, the possibilities for our future,” she explains. Dr. Eisler joins me today to discuss her newest work, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future. In the book, Eisler implores us to awaken to the notion that injustice, inequality, violence, and domination do not tell the full story of human possibility. “We humans were really wired more for partnership than for domination,” she says. Guided by the ethos of partnership, Dr. Eisler’s work challenges each of us to play a role in the construction of a more equitable, more sustainable, and less violent world through investment in human infrastructure and a dedication to raising future generations by different scripts and constructs than those given to us. People’s minds can be changed, she reminds us, but a change in consciousness starts with the knowledge that there are different, better, possibilities. In this episode, we talk about all of this.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
Exploring caring economics, human infrastructure, and the alienation of caring labor (Approx. 5:09)
The partnership model and the fight against sticky myths of domination (Approx. 11:00)
Replumbing our dysfunctional operating system (Approx. 29:35)
MORE FROM RIANE EISLER:
Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future
The Chalice & The Blade: Our History, Our Future
The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics
The Power of Partnership: Sevens Relationships That Will Change Your Life
Breaking Out of the Domination Trance: Building Foundations for a Safe, Equitable, Caring World
RIANE’S PICKS:
My Octopus Teacher - Netflix, 2020
Grandfather's Garden: Some Bedtime Stories for Little and Big Folk - David Loye
DIG DEEPER:
More on Partnership Systems and the Partnerism Movement
Courses in Partnership - Changing Our Story, Changing Our Lives
A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science - David Noble, 2013
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE LOEHNEN:
So I remember, I think it was over my head, but I remember when The Chalice & the Blade first came out and what a sort of hit it was. I grew up with parents who listened to a lot of NPR. And so I was familiar with you and then I started digging in, I'm working on a book about the patriarchy, and I just went into a deep hole with your work of just being sort of alternately amazed and excited by how prescient and even The Chalice & the Blade, which is almost 30 years old, is that accurate?
RIANE EISLER:
Yeah, it was 30 years old. I did an epilogue. And I want to ask people to please because people buy online, they buy old copies, but at least it's now in its 56th or 57th U.S. printing. And that epilogue came out, I think with the 56th one. And it brings it up to date up to the Trump years. But go ahead. I'm sorry.
ELISE:
But it was just amazing. Because I feel like there was a moment, a time in the ‘90s, and you would obviously know much better when there was this sort of incredible amount of people like you really thinking and talking about some of these big questions around systemic oppression, particularly in the context of women and the way that we tell our stories about history. And then it feels like it went out of fashion. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention and now it feels like we're back. Or, I want us to be back.
RIANE:
I predicted in my book, which I wrote a long time ago, it was about the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. And then that if it was defeated, we would see a time of regression. And social and political and family regression. And oh my gosh. Did that not happen? I mean, so when you save prescient. Yeah, I have predicted, I think the title futurist, in a sense, is something I should claim because so many of my predictions have come true. And as you said, Chalice eally is, is just as relevant now. If not more so, because the times have started to catch up a bit, again as, as it was when it was first published.
ELISE:
Yeah. And it's interesting because I know that you wrote a preface or a new forward that brings it, I think up to was that 2016. I can't remember exactly what that age of that.
RIANE:
I was in, in 2017. It brings it up to the Trump years.
ELISE:
Yeah. And what's so amazing. Is that in that you talk about, you talk about sort of the Marxist analysis, like the alienation of caring labor, and you talk about how, if the caring labor, the life-sustaining labor of the nurturing, helping, and loving others and how essential it is that we learn how to integrate that into the economic model. And we need that desperately in order for political and transformation and sustainable way of living, you write it much more beautifully, but you write about, and I'll quote you and said, “We can expect that the non-monetized “informal economy” of household production and maintenance, parenting, volunteer, community service and all the cooperative activities that permit the new “over-rewarded” competitive activities to appear successful will be appropriately valued and rewarded. This will provide the now missing basis for an economic system in which caring for others is not just given lip service, but is the most highly rewarded and therefore most highly valued human activity.” And obviously now we're talking in the midst of the second year of COVID where everyone seems to be finally having a revelation about what actually makes the world go around. So, I know that was relatively recent, but still well before.
RIANE:
Well, this is so interesting because of course it's been hidden in plain sight that caring is important. But, the conventional discourse, including the academic discourse has really paid no attention. And what, what you're referencing is what's really fully developed in my book, the Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economy, which again came out in 2007. I mean, it isn't quite as old as Chalice, but again was prescient. And now I'm none less than President Biden is using the term “caring economics” and a term also that I introduced, “human infrastructure.” And it's really interesting that we haven't paid attention to human infrastructure, but that's all part of really the suppression of consciousness, of awareness that I've called the domination trance. And I think more and more of us today are waking up from this domination trance, as happened to me during, well, wait, going way back. That's what led really to my research, my writing, my activism, my speaking ,my keynoting. And it's, it's an exciting time because the times are catching up, aren't they at least for some people.
ELISE:
For some people. But what I think is so amazing and maybe we'll start with, with Chalice and the Blade is, and I would love for you to explain the difference between, I mean, people can probably guess the dominator model versus the partnership model, but what's so amazing about that book is that for me, it hits deep chords of resonance that are antithetical to the sticky myths about who we are and who we've always been. Which is this idea that percolates throughout culture, despite anthropologists being, raising their hands and saying, no, hold on, like that's actually inaccurate. But we have this idea of men as dominant, power hungry warrior hunters, and women as staying back and being nurturing and caring. And I'm not saying that those aren't in some, there's some extreme version of that that probably existed, but that, that wasn't the reality of who we are. And so we're carrying out this cultural programming in ways that are deeply unhelpful and not actually accurate. Is that fair? Can you take us through sort of your world as, and how you perceive it between those two models?
RIANE:
Well, what's your, what you were really pointing to Elise is what we've been told is simply a false story of our past, of our present. And most importantly, today of the possibilities for our future. And in a way you've put your finger on it, by what I always talk about the caveman cartoon, right? Because it's such a familiar image. In one hand, he's got a weapon, a club, right. In the other arm, that other hand, he's dragging a woman by the hair. So what does it really communicate to us and to children before their brains, much less their critical faculties are formed is just what you said, that injustice, violence, male dominance inequality… that's how it's always been. And by definition, that's how it always will be. And that is simply a lie. And we have evidence now from archeology, from linguistics, even from DNA studies, from the study of myth in incredibly powerful evidence, that this is simply not true. That in reality, as I developed for the first time, really in my books, The Chalice and the Blade. It's lovely to be a prophet, but unfortunately we need to really spread this information.
I can't be the only voice and I am not the only voice basically providing the data, the information. So that's started with, as you said, The Chalice and the Blade and my most recent book. Well, I had been working on it for about seven years, takes me a long time to do all the research for a book. And I invited the anthropologist Douglas Fry to be my co-author for one reason, because Doug is probably the world's, if not one of the world's foremost authorities on how we humans lived from millions of years, both as pre-humans and as humans in foraging societies, which he calls the original partnerships societies. They were more egalitarian, they were more gender-balanced. So this egalitarianism really did not, as in domination systems all classify difference, you know, beginning with the difference informed between male and female in our species as superior or inferior, as equated with domination or being dominated, with being served or serving. And they were far, far more peaceful. The evidence is clear today from archeology, that war, which we are told is just human nature. Actually it's at most five to 10,000 years old.
ELISE:
That is wild. And I think you write about a fair amount too, about like Ashley Montague, right. And his sort of how it should really be gathere- hunter. And that we were, as you mentioned, foragers looking for, you know, maybe snails and frogs, but mostly nuts and berries. And that hunting was an occasional pursuit, a very energy intensive, occasional pursuit in which women probably participated as well. And yet it's so interesting how it's been warped over the years. And then you think about it, you know, it's like, all you have to do is really think about it, right. And put yourself almost in those shoes to be like, oh yeah, of course, like duh. And, and we raised our children in a more community based model. There weren't sort of nuclear families in the same way I would imagine. Maybe I don't know. It's just, it's the way that we've done it is in such a fifties model. It's funny. It's like the way that we've conceived our past is certainly out of the view of what feels convenient now, or as an excuse for how it's always been. But we didn't have property. We weren't hoarding. We weren't passing down lines of property and treasure at that point. And that's how we lived until when, like, I know you talked about sort of like the Kurgans right maybe coming through and creating an enslaving. I don't know if that's evolved or changed in the last, I guess almost 40 years, but what do you think happened?
RIANE:
Well, I, it's very interesting that you bring up the Kurgans, because the DNA evidence, which is very recent, actually supports and it's caused a whole uproar in the archeological community, which clung very much to the old paradigm saying, oh my gosh, because the DNA evidence is at about the same time, as the Kurgans first started to encroach and invade the Mediterranean areas of Europe, you see a complete shift in DNA. In other words, their DNA replaces the DNA of the earlier inhabitants as the majority now. I mean, they're still a little bit left. So yes, at least in the areas around the Mediterranean where we have the DNA and the archeological evidence, this theory of these invaders, these incursions from the less arid, from the more arid areas of the globe, the, the theory that the invasion of these invaders from the more arid areas of our globe brought in with it, the domination or dominator model, including these hierarchies of domination, including male dominance and violence, violence is being more and more supported, including even from DNA evidence.
So it's very interesting, but the academy changes very, very slowly. And this is something that every one of us has to change. Every one of us can be really very play, a very important part in what, where so many of us are working on today and which is essential, not only for humans thriving, but at this point with climate change, you know, the conquest and domination of nature, which is part of the domination system, wipe out our species. We can all play a major role in telling the real story of human nature and with it, of human possibilities.
ELISE
And as you say, our survival, clearly the planet will continue to survive without us, but we will not survive if we continue in this way. And I think that just knowing and understanding that we're ascribing, we're adhering to this idea of who we're supposed to be,that's false, in of itself is incredibly liberating for women and for men, right? Like actually I don't need to be sort of a hawkish dominant stock trading machismo man. I mean, I know those are old and tired stereotypes, but they still obviously keep us entrapped and a way of if you're anything but that, if you're anything but inherently deeply in your feminine and only sort of caring and nurturing and feeding and serving, that you are living in a way that's diametrically opposed to how you're supposed to be in the world. So like the more we can sort of throw that off.
And then similarly on the meta scale, when we think about the dominance of the toxic masculinity, of conquering, and taking ,and hoarding, and we can all move more towards our feminine principle, which is universal force, right? We all have it, men too, to nurturing and caring and taking care of what we've already pillaged and mined and excavated. We have to get there. We all have to get there. We all have to find our way back towards this middle and it's not a matriarchy. That's just an extreme on the other side, it's somewhere balanced in between, I guess the partnership model,
RIANE:
The partnership model. Well, you know, even our language, I mean, the fact that the only gender specific social categories we've been taught are patriarchy and matriarchy says it all because what does it say? It's some, you know, either fathers rule, or mother's rules, there is no partnership alternative. And the reality is that these societies, these societies were not matriarchies. They were partnership societies. The configuration was that instead of hierarchies of domination, you know, these top down hierarchies where you either obey or else there'll be a lot of pain, even death, that are rigidly male dominated, that are violent. That actually, this is not how we humans lived. And one of the most fascinating things to me in doing the research for Nurturing our Humanity, are the findings from neuroscience, from so-called hard science that if anything, in the course of evolution, we humans were really wired, if you will, to use the popular expression, more for partnerships than for domination, for example.
And there are many studies in Nurturing our Humanity. For example, studies show that the so-called pleasure centers of our brain light up more when we share and care, then when we win or dominate. If that is the case, we will have to ask, but why has there been so much domination, so much injustice, so much violence. And really what we know also from neuroscience today is that we are not born with fully developed brains, our brains develop in interaction with our environments, especially during the first five years of life, when the structure of the brain is put in place. And that this is very, very different in cultural environments that orient more to the domination or the partnership side of the partnership domination social scale. So the first thing we have to do is to get rid of these old ways of thinking, you know, Einstein said you can't solve problems with the same thinking that created them.
And the partnership and domination models, systems really go beyond right, left, religious, secular, Eastern, Western, Northern Southern. Think about it. There have been oppressive, violent regimes in every one of these conventional categories. So none of us, none of them really tell us what we need to construct for a more equitable, sustainable, less violent world. And, but there's still another thing. And I really want to really say this because we've been so brainwashed by our education, by a humanities that leaves out nothing less than the majority of humanity, women, and children. That we don't even notice that our conventional categories like conventional studies of society, either marginalize or simply ignore nothing less than the majority of humanity: women and children. Now, this is crazy. It's pathological, it's not logical, and we have to change it. And this is where the new configurations, the new social categories of the domination system and the partnership system, or more accurately, the domination/partnership by a cultural scale come in.
And I want to invite all of your listeners to really,it's so empowering, as you have said yourself, that is waking up from what seems like a trance, but we've been all taught to be in that trance. And in order to really have better lives in our families…family is not even considered important enough to be included except as a sort of a side bar in most studies of human society. I mean, think how crazy that is, especially in light of what we know from neuroscience of how it is actually our childhood years, which take place in families generally, or family substitutes, but this is how our brains and with it, how we feel, how we think, how we act, including how we vote, are shaped.
ELISE:
I think it's discussed in both Sacret Pleasure and Chalice and the Blade. You know, when you talk, you think in the forward about Dean Snow and looking at paleolithic art and how we assumed, of course, that everything was painted by men, but many of these things were painted by women. That what we assumed of course, were spears and weapons are actually plants, and the reverence for the feminine that's evident in our early history, whether it's sort of the way that temples were constructed, et cetera, like you do an incredible job of bringing us back to that moment when we recognized the creative capacity of all people, but most, most notably women and that our survival. That women were sacred and that pleasure was sacred. And that we were supposed to be, you know, these sensorial experiencing creatures and that our forebears had a much deeper and better understanding of that and reverence really for the body and in our creative ability than we do now in the way that we denigrate it. And as you say, have essentially turned women and children into vessels and servants and, and been erased, you know, our voices have been erased. It's, it's wild, how we just don't figure, right? And when you look back at even the more modern cnon it's, we're not there.
RIANE:
Well, this was part of my awakening. I suddenly woke up one day and realized that in all my years of so-called higher education in what I had been taught as important knowledge and truth, there had been hardly anything by, about, or for people like me, women. And that was like, Whoa. And we all need to wake up to that. You know, if you look at modern Western science, as the historian of science, David Noble writes in a wonderful book that I cite called A World Without Women. Western science came six, 700 years ago, came out of an all-male, celibate, really a world without women. And I would add a world without children. And this has shaped it, and it has shaped what we're taught. And so this is such an exciting time when so many people are waking up from this domination trance and real life.
And COVID 19 really helped with that. I have to say, uh, because it showed how lack of resilience, how lack of justice, lack of equality, lack of sustainability, are social and economic stories. What they have led to. So, but this is our work and this is your work, Elise, too, is to weave into, as an agent for cultural transformation, from domination to partnership. And I, I, I want to tell people about the fact that, well, two very exciting developments that I write, everyone who is interested in this to participate in one is we will, in October through the center for partnership systems, be launching an on demand course called Changing Our Story, Changing Our Lives. And it will be self-paced because we used to teach it at special times, and this is not a model that works for people now.
So it's very reasonably priced. It's $99 and there are some scholarships and we are really looking forward to it being a tool that people can then use. There are four videos with it. And then the other thing for people who want an advanced degree, who are really a little bit disillusioned with the siloed nature of the academy of Meridian university, which is an accredited university that does partly online and partly in personal work, we'll be launching a concentration for a PhD or a master's degree for partnership practitioners. And that was start in December of this year of 2020.
ELISE:
Wow. That's amazing. And I kind of, maybe I will come and do my Masters with you. You know, it's interesting thinking about putting this into practice, right? Because I think obviously just awareness and, and that awakening, which can happen I think in an instant for people where they start to get sort of curious about wait, like, what am I, what am I subscribed to here? But then, you know, particularly at this moment in time, people are like tear at all that, you know, burn it all down and that, you know, we have to innovate and iterate within the system. And obviously we need, and I've heard you sort of speak to this, like, we need a market, we need…these are all valuable social structures that help us organize ourselves and coordinate our efforts. It's really, it's like a research, uh, uh, re-plumbing of energy, I think, or I dunno, I'm curious, like I know that this is something that people can take a PhD in, but what would you, what do you think are those initial steps? Like, how do we begin?
RIANE:
Well, well, I love your re-plumbing because we've been, we've had a very dysfunctional operating system. And so your idea of re-plumbing is just great. That's exactly what we're talking about. We're not talking about destroying everything. I mean like economics, you know, my book on economics were Real Wealth of Nations. I introduce a new economic system called a caring economics of partnerism, which does not, as I take pains to explain mean destroying markets, we don't happen to have free markets. It will be good to have them and also government policies, but they have to be enlightened government policies. I mean, fortunately right now in the United States, President Biden is moving towards policies that will put in place structures and resources for this re-plumbing. I mean, investment in our human infrastructure. And you have people who are really stuck in old thinking, saying, oh, that's just not, that's not important. Actually for the post-industrial knowledge service era, it is the most important investment a nation can make is in its human infrastructure. It’s s so-called economists like to call it human capital.
They tell us that that's the most important capital that we, the thing that we need the most are these flexible, creative, resilient people who can work in teams, rather than just giving her taking orders. Well, we know from neuroscience that whether or not we have this human infrastructure depends entirely almost, but it's certainly to a huge degree on the kind of care and education children receive early on. Because built into the domination oriented mind is denial. You know, you may wonder why are people voting for Mr. Trump? And they seem to be in denial about not only climate change, but election results, COVID 19, but denial is a mechanism that is built into the development, the structure of the domination brain. We're not stupid. We have just been told false stories and people live by stories and die by stories.
ELISE:
Speaking of the neuroscience and this idea of raising future generations with a different template, a different script, and different contracts for how they can and should be in the world, which will be hard to do as you know, like every, and I'm not a perfect parent by any means. So I say this without judgment, and it's also impossible to avoid, but like, we, we are obsessed with, with violence and like, I'm sure my kids, my little boys have watched thousands of people die on screens at this point, but we still don't show people being born, right? Like that's too gross. So that's a bigger conversation, but we have a big, we have a big cultural problem in terms of what we glorify and adore and spend our energy watching. But we also know that people's minds can be changed, that our, you know, that neuroplasticity potentially one of our most interesting or compelling strengths.
So for the people who are scared, because I think so much of this, the change and the change that's happening, you know, there's no choice in what's happening in our world today. Like it is happening. We can deny it or we can accept the reality of what's what's happening all around us. But how, for people who are really scared, you know, you talk about, and in so many ways, the conversation about White Supremacy is very helpful, because I think now people are actually like that made it something very real, how a system can be oppressive without requiring your individual participation and racist acts, right? That this is bigger than any one of our actions. And so similarly, I think people are becoming aware and wise to the idea of these, of these forces that work on us that of which were not conscious and not necessarily in control. But how do we start to calm people down or reassure them that this transition, that we could all be more, feel more safe and secure. That the thing to fear is actually continuing with the status quo. So how do we, do you have any thoughts?
RIANE:
I have a lot of thoughts. First of all, I think you're quite correct that it all starts with the individual with a change in consciousness. With an awakening we've lived with a contracted and completely distorted consciousness. So that's the first step. But, and from changed consciousness comes the knowledge that there are different possibilities. And so we, humans are very creative. We create alternatives, you know, whether it's a better chair, or a better fountain pen, or a better policy, or a better way of relating in our individual relations. There are a lot of technologies available today, to all of us, for partnership relations. This is all really not happening in isolation, that how we relate nationally, internationally, our spiritual relations, how we relate to nature, but it's all of one class. So the second step then is systems thinking, systems thinking, connecting the dots.
I mean, so many women and men have said to me that what has happened is that they felt empowered, empowered by understanding that things that seemed random and disconnected really make sense once you start using the partnership domination social scale. And that social scale is based on systems thinking, Now actions. Every one of us can start by changing the conversation. Tell what you know of what is happening of the evidence that we have today for a different story of what being human means and can mean. Talk not only to your family members and your colleagues at work, write letters to the editor, write Op-Eds, and yes, get in touch with not only your policy makers, but with your religious leaders. We know that about 80-some percent of the world's population identify with some religious faith. It is up to the religious leaders because think about it for a moment.
The domination mind is taught through fear of pain to really obey and follow the authoritarian strong man or woman as a delegate, parent, leader, religious leader in particular. It is up to religious leaders to raise their voices. I wrote an article in Kosmos magazine on what we need to do, and what religious leaders need to do, which is to sort out the partnership teachings, which are the core of our religious teachings. I mean, think of it. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. Nonviolence. I mean, so-called feminine teachings. And then the nomination overlay that was added in the course of domination history all before the last five or so thousand years. I mean, think about it. We can separate the two. I mean, these are just…and educate yourself, educate yourself and get those in your circle, too, because, you know, in order for minds to change, they have to have the exposure to new ideas and to new evidence.
ELISE:
Yeah. And I'm so glad you brought up religion because it's such a significant sort of parse, sort of spirituality or understanding of, our relationship within the cosmos. I don't call myself religious, I'm really, I guess, probably spiritual. I'm very interested in the creation of religion and what came to be in the Bible and what was excluded, and how these stories again, came together to inform who we are and then sort of the overlays, the cultural overlays. There are so many times when someone will sort of quote, you know, wholesale like “The Bible.” And it's like where, where, where, where in the Bible? And there's no passage. But just in the way that it's been interpreted, you know, as you said, Jesus was full of the feminine principle, that seemed to be his primary teaching.
RIANE:
Absolutely. But look, it is more than interpretation. Although some of it is certainly interpretation. For example, in Genesis, there are two creation stories and they're very different. One is Elohim and it's plural, and it comes from the older religion, really created humans in its image.
All right. That is a partnership story. The other story, however, is the one that has been trumpeted from the rooftops and it certainly has been at the core of much of what we're taught in both Judaism and Christianity and Muslim religion. And that of course is the story that blames woman for nothing else than humanity’s fall from paradise. I mean, think about it. What better story is there for subordinating women? And it's not the only story. Pandora in Greek mythology releases all of humanity's ills in, in The Chalice and the Blade, you know, I have two chapters called “Reality Stood on its Head.”, which is deals with what I call a re-mything and Sacred Pleasure, which I really am so glad that you mentioned because I, that I wasn't planning to write that book of focusing on the application of these two different ways of, of, of, of, of living, of being, thinking of feeling, of acting the dominator model and the partnership model to focus on both sexuality and spirituality.
And it was quite a relevant revelation to realize something so very simple that you alluded to in passing that domination systems are really based on fear of pain, whereas partnership systems, whether it is in us or in our very closest primate, relative the Bonobos and the sharing of pleasure, whether it's food, whether it's sex, you know, on just that bodily level. And as I said, we are more primed for sharing and caring as an evolutionary adaptation. We better realize that because if we really, and we're not talking about Kumbaya, we're not talking about something impossible, and we're not talking about returning to any so-called good old days. We want to use modern technology, but we want to use it guided by an ethos of partnership, of caring, of sharing, and of sustainability and of creativity. Not just innovation. I make a distinction, but I've introduced a lot of new vocabulary in my work, as you know, because we need new words. Psychologists tell us that, that the language, the category is provided by our language channel our thinking. So it's impossible almost to think of something else, except those alternatives like matriarchy and patriarchy.
ELISE:
You are such a prophet and you've actually, you fill me with optimism and hope because I do think that we can reorient ourselves and figure this out. I have a lot of faith in humanity. I also, as you mentioned, I have faith in our innate creativity and adaptability, and it's hard. You know, it's a hard, it's a stressful time to be alive. I know we all chose this. I believe that we all chose this and my sort of view of, uh, existence. But I do think it's sort of this, it can happen in sort of a snap of a finger, a breaking of a spell, or in some ways, like, I think at the beginning I was talking about how much resonance your books filled me with. Not, not because I knew the evidence that you were presenting, but because it felt to me, so eternally true and, and I'm vibrating, you know, just talking to you, there's like a vibe, a vibration, which sounds so woo wowo. But like there is an extreme amount of depth of truth in this that I think we can all recognize. It's like, oh my God, that makes so much more sense. It's makes so much more sense.
RIANE:
And it does make so much more sense. And as I said, so many men, and women, and kids, too. I once got a letter that I'll never forget. It was from a fresh person, freshwoman in high school. And she said, I go to this progressive school, private school, and we're always protesting against this, against that, against this other thing. And then I suddenly realized we're all protesting against the same thing, the domination system. That is empowering. Now, it's not, when you talked about times of stress of disequilibrium. And what we know from chaos theory from nonlinear dynamics, you know, from all of these new disciplines, from systems thinking ,from systems self-organization theory, is that it is precisely in times of disequilibrium that we can have fundamental, fundamental change. But it is also in these times that people who are brought up in domination early environments, in domination families, really go drastically into denial. And follow the leader mode. Because why? Because it's familiar. So that's why I mentioned religion. And I like you think of religion and spiritual terms, but it's also very practical because it provides guiding principles. So it's up to every one of us to get an and, and I think, again, the Kosmos article that I mentioned. And you can find all kinds of information on that and another zillion, other things,
ELISE:
We will link to everything in the show notes as well. So it's easy for people, and obviously you have an incredible canon of books, and I need to read through the rest of them. What, is there anything else sort of, besides, besides what you've already mentioned, are there books out there? They could be old, they could be ancient, they could be new or movies or documentaries. Is there anything that you just, if you're like, if you could just, besides your work, like, I wish everyone would just look at this one thing or two things or three things.
RIANE:
Oh my goodness. I hadn't thought of that. Well, I'll tell you what I've lately. Uh, there's a film called My Octopus Teacher. I just loved, and it really talks about our relationship with nature in a very moving personal way. Of course, in terms of old wisdom, it's very difficult because this domination overlay, I mean, in Sacred Pleasure, if you remember, I write that, I think mysticism was an attempt to preserve some of the older ways of thinking the more partnership oriented ones. So I would really suggest like we reading some of the scriptures and my husband and I wrote a book called The Partnership Way, which is a wonderful self, sort of a, a practical way of reading both Chalice and Sacred Pleasure. So I highly recommend that. I also, um, recommend his children's stories, which are just wonderful. Oh, I've, I've got lists and I'm in partnership aside from anything else, it's simply much better in terms of, of, of just love and companionship and mutual support. But he wrote every wonderful set of children's stories called Grandfather’s Garden. So these are just the things that quickly come into my mind. But I think that it's up to us to look for the partnership elements and the domination elements in everything we read. And this is why I'm recommending the partnership way as well.
ELISE:
Well, I, I can't thank you enough. I can't thank you for your work throughout your life. It is amazing what you have accomplished and put into the world, and we are all so much better off for it. And I hope this time, like with what's happening with your book and Spain, that, that we start to reprise some of this thinking and the scholarship that people like you have done over these decades, because it is it's incredible. So I can't thank you enough, have such a pleasure to talk to you.
Well, that was a bit of a fan girl moment for me. I was, I think, explaining to Riane before we started, or maybe it's on the tape, but when I prep for interviews, my process is I read, I mark passages, then I go back through, I type up all of the passages that hit me in the heart. And those are my notes for interviews and between her, the two books of hers that I've read. And obviously she's read, she's written so many books and I need to read my way through the rest of them. I have 25 pages of notes, which is, I'd say unprecedented. So we got through a tiny portion. If you're going to start with one book, I cannot recommend The Chalice and the Blade enough, as she mentioned, it came out in 1987. It's been updated twice, but it's just amazingly prophetic and prescient about this moment in time that we find ourselves in, and how we might do things differently and better, and or to go back.
One of the things that we didn't get to talk about was, you know, she does a pretty thorough examination of ancient civilizations that came and went, but that had, you know, actually had far more technical prowess then than other civilizations. Like I think it's Crete, Ancient Crete, maybe that's mistaken for Atlantis in myth-making. But I think they had plumbing, et cetera, many hundreds of years before it emerged elsewhere. But it's important because I think that we also are fed this mythology, that all progress is positive, and that we're always moving forward, and that we always do things better than we did in the past. And that's, I think can be dangerous. Yes, we've made incredible progress, but without the evolution ourselves to keep up, it's not always positive. And we need to learn how to be more responsible for what we create in the world.