PS Pirro wrote:
> Hi, Lee. I, too, am a newcomer to this board. Thanks for getting
> things started.
>
Not at all.
> With respect to "overthrowing the patriarchy before they ruin
> everything", I think it's important that we appreciate just how
> insidious "the patriarchy" is. As a system of domination -- humans
> over
> the natural world, males over females, adults over children, owners
> over
> workers, etc. -- patriarchy is much more than something "they" do to
> "us". As near as I can tell, we are all accomplices.
You may have a point there. It's difficult to imagine successful
parenting in this society without the adult having authority over the
child, but I dare say a "successful" society would probably be wildly
different to this one in many respects.
> How many of us, for instance, believe that humans, especially males,
> are
> naturally aggressive?
Well, having observed a number of young children, male and female, from
various families - both gentle and violent - I must say that I am
inclined to believe that males have a natural tendency towards
aggression. I dare say it would not be difficult to socialise girls to
be more aggressive than they are, but one rarely has to work at
discouraging girls from torturing defenseless creatures, although one
might often have to discourage them from smothering their pets with
affection. With boys it is quite the opposite, and I am disinclined to
believe that this is all, or even mostly, social conditioning.
> That competition brings out the best in a person,
> or a society?
Many people, apparently, believe that competition brings out the best in
everything. I watched my sister and her husband encourage sibling
rivalry to get their toddler to eat his breakfast: "Look, Audrey ate all
hers, so you should eat yours..." Nationalism, interhouse school
sports... It's everywhere. Many people clearly believe it's a good
thing. Our education system is built on it as are industry, the economy,
the government - what isn't?
> That, like it or not, might really does make right?
Huh?
> How
> many women in our society are willing to ignore cultural imperatives
> to
> be slender? How many men would be happy to be labelled "feminine"?
Few, it is true.
> The patriarchy reaches into our lives and shapes our thinking in ways
> we've only begun to acknowledge. I applaud Chris King's ambitious
> plan
> to end it all in three years. Maybe he's onto something.
>
> Then again, maybe the only way to win is to not play the game.
I think the way to win is to start a new game - a win/win one, recruit
the many, many players who don't enjoy the dominant one and demonstrate
it to be more fun. This means bypassing the multi-media propaganda
machines (television, cinema, videos, magazines, newspapers) and the
internet looks very promising as a tool for doing just that. I don't own
a television, or vcr, rarely go to the cinema, only buy a paper for the
classifieds, and spend most of my "spare" time on the internet.
I think fixing things so that people can buy almost anything they want
from the internet with a credit card might be a rather nasty fly in the
ointment, and will certainly mean an overbearing bombardment by
advertisers... But perhaps there are ways of avoiding such advertising
that are not possible IRL (ie when you walk down the street, look up at
the sky, wait for a bus, turn on the radio, etc.) Lord help me, I've
even got advertising down the bottom of a couple of my pages in the form
of a pagecounter banner... But they offer the such a good analysis of
visitors, and perhaps their products are not bad things...
Thanks for the responses. More are certainly welcome.
Lee.
--
Conflict between separated parents
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