Dante Wrote:Is this the the extreme pendulum swinging reality that you’re hoping for? Okay, maybe not you. But somehow I get the feeling that some in the feminist movement do want this.
Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever. Dante, you said above "There has always been balance in one form or another." This is a lie as far as gender equality goes, and you know it, women have been subjugated for millennia now, which completely validates Jade's response "but I feel a duty to not allow complete falsehoods to perpetuate". You seem to be quite upset by this societal change that has been gradually happening for a very long time, these things don't happen overnight. It happens step by step, with every generation inching us closer to an equal playing field for both genders (and all races mind you).
I am very relieved at the progress that has been achieved. What is a free society? A society where everyone, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation is allowed to achieve their highest potential. We still have a long way to go, so you might experience a lot more discomfort in future, because this wave is just starting to gain momentum. Look where patriarchy got us... a world in shambles... a world at war... a world destroyed...
As Alan Watts put it:
Quote:Isn't it curious then, that, especially in the nineteenth century, when the prevailing philosophy of science was called scientific naturalism (involving repudiation of the notion that the world was governed by external and supernatural intelligence) that people calling themselves naturalists began to wage an unprecedented war on nature. The naturalists were those who thought nature is stupid, and therefore if the values and the intelligence of mankind are to persist, we must beat nature into submission to our wills. We thus initiated a form of technology whose basic premise was that man must dominate rather than cooperate with nature. Our technology has been motivated by a hostile spirit whose two great mythological symbols are the space rocket and the bulldozer.
The space rocket is, quite obviously, a phallic symbol, and a hostile phallus. This has something to do, I suppose, with our sexual inadequacies. A phallus in the biological sense is not a weapon at all; it is a caressing instrument. The whole idea of the phallus is to give a woman ecstasy, and perhaps a baby. It's not to pierce her as if it were a sword. Thus the proper conception of a rocket should not be to conquer space... but could you possibly imagine the idea of giving pleasure to space, or our going out into space to confer love and delight upon any other beings that may be out there, and to fertilise naked planets. In the same way the symbol of the bulldozer is to make a horrible fulfilment of the biblical prophecy that "every valley shall be exalted and every mountain laid low and the rough places plane", an attitude of pushing the world around.
It is therefor absolutely urgent for our survival that we put behind technology a completely new spirit and attitude. This is not an anti technological attitude. It is not saying that science is a ghastly mistake, but what we need is not less science but more. We need more and more study and understanding of our complex relationships to and dependence on plants, insects, bacteria, gases, astronomical processes - and the more we understand how our existence is one process with the existence of all these other creatures and things, the more we can use technology in an intelligent way, regarding the world outside of ourselves as simply an extension or part of our own bodies.