The chalice and the blade

That was a rare read that has me coming back to its central points over and over. And it's rather serendipitous that it's happening right along #metoo.

Where do I start?

The book is effectively comprised of three somewhat interwoven parts. One part is a summary of re-interpretation of archaeological evidence. The second is a description and exploration of various ways of organizing human societies. And the last part is an unadulterated feminist manifesto.

In the first part, I would have sometimes wished for a little more detail. It seems Eisler kept all the archaeological evidence to citations, and mostly covers the interpretation. But that's enough to form a complete picture, so why should I complain? I should just look up all the references!

Either way, the evidence appears to point to the fact that up until the Neolithic (more or less), European humans were organized around Goddess worship, without the strictly pyramidal hierarchy in society. Women and men were on equal footing, there was no such concept as slavery, food production was co-operatively owned and generally society seemed more life-affirming than death-worshipping than today. Eisler takes pains to point out we should not imagine a utopia, but rather less systematically unfair conditions.

When you dig a bit deeper, it seems that this view of pre-history is becoming more and more confirmed by further evidence unearthed after this book was wrwitten.

The second part examines the fundamental differences between today's society and this pre-historic version in more depth, and comes up with the two different abstract models of dominator and partnership societies. A dominator society is one where a pyramidal hierarchy is given; a partnership society is one where linking individuals organically provides what little status there is.

Eisler goes on to argue that dominator societies are inherently unsustainable, not in that they can't exist - clearly they do, if you look out the window - but in that they cannot provide for happiness. Unless you're at the top of the food chain, you'll always have someone more powerful than you dictating your life. And unless you're at the bottom of the food chain, you'll always have someone less powerful than you who doesn't like this ordering and fights to climb. So you're constantly required to exert pressure upwards and downwards just to maintain the status quo, let alone gain a little space for yourself.

The historical evidence is that our partnership society of the Neolithic ended when dominator-oriented tribes conquered Europe - though not as a single event, but rather as waves which slowly brought changes to society. And since those dominator tribes had a clear hierarchy that ordered strength over weakness and men over women, they brought with them the subjugation of the female half of humanity, as well as all conquered tribes.

Eisler argues, the better way to understand our history, then, is not to speak so much of a dominator society, but specifically of an androcracy - that is, the rule of men, a patriarchy. As an alternative description for the Neolithic society she offers the term "gylany", a female principle oriented partnership. Note that she takes pains to point out that a matriarchy as an alternative makes little sense. It does not change the dominator nature of organization at all, just exchanges who is in power.

The last part of the book is devoted to exploring how the tides of history can be explained as a struggle between androcratic and gylanic principles, with destruction and cultural regression following androcratic peaks, and liberty and creativity following gylanic peaks.

One can clearly interpret #metoo as a push for gylanic principles, and the strengthening of far-right groups as the opposite.

The book kind of progresses from the first to the third part, but as all are interconnected, the distinction isn't particularly clear.

I'm very glad I finally read this book.

I was very skeptical at first, because I was introduced to it's core points in a fairly distorted fashion, so felt dismissive about it.

First, the idea of the Neolithic gylany came to me from an esoteric source that did not bother to try and provide archaeological evidence. As such I counted it as a pretty idea, but no more. This also explains why I expected more evidence in the first part of the book - but that expectation is not entirely fair, given all the links to original sources the book provides.

Second, the idea of a gylany came to me described as the term "matriarchy". The words were, I believe, something along the lines of "if you put women into power you'll see that everything will be better and men won't be oppressed". Which, quite frankly, if you know anything at all about human nature, is bullshit.

However, take the dominator part out of the equation and replace it with a partnership, well, then things start to look quite differently. So just for introducing me to the concepts of dominator and partnership societies, and the androcracy and gylany forms they can respectively take, I am very grateful I finally read this book.

I'm going to have to find some of the follow-on writings of Eisler's now.