FROM DOMINATOR MODEL TO PARTNERSHIP MODEL - a new story to live by
inspired listening to Barbara Marx-Hubbard, Charles Eisenstein & Adam Hall (2014) written by Ardhan Soulridge For many centuries we have been living a story of individual struggle, competition and material addictions. Now an exciting new story of ‘Interbeing’ is taking form, infused by an emerging new feminine archetype, a passionate co-creator fueled by love. This story is guided by a “vision of what WANTS to be born” (Charles E), an innate creativity in the heart of all life that has the capacity to triumph over reductionist rationalism. It shows itself as a longing to reconnect with that embodied child-like knowledge that we were all born with and it is inviting us to learn to live from that again. The pressures of the Dominator Model squeezes this out of most of us by the time we reach adulthood, but if we can sense that the world is not supposed to be this way, we can begin to re-connect with our original wisdom and join the process of co-creating the new story we need so badly at this time. From this perspective co-creation builds naturally, carrying with it an optimism based on what is possible within the new paradigm. This is Evolution, an emergent purpose in nature, the intelligent pattern in the universe, and it is in every one of us. Nothing happens by accident. Rational Neutonian science has its place, but it sits in the old story of separation and there are many other paths to knowledge. What was once true is true no longer. “The water is rising from another spring” (Ursula Leguin). It is a spring that heals, rejuvenates and empowers the sacred feminine. But what of the sacred masculine? The sacred masculine needs a new story too, with the mission of something outside of himself, to serve and protect all life on earth through a co-evolving humanity. Its not all about great work and big projects. One of the difficulties for women has been that in looking for empowerment they took on roles that were stuck in the old story of the Dominator Model, taking on a distorted masculine inner patriarch, while undervaluing the vital roles of tending to home and family. We need to re-sacralize the domestic work of caring, nurturing with love, as part of feminine (and masculine) power. We need to re-sacralize work out there in the market place where the nature of power needs to change as we enter ‘transition’, from dog eat dog attitudes to that of service and giving with grace, as well as receiving what is sufficient for our needs. During this period the masculine and feminine will enter a sacred marriage from which a new consciousness, already in evidence, can take humanity to unimaginable new levels. The old story wants to die even though we resist it. We cling onto its values and ways out of familiarity, in denial and terror for what might be to come from our destructive abuse of mother earth - all animal and human species. But out of death comes birth. We don’t need to know the outcome, we just need to be willing to step onto the emergent path in the spirit of co-creation. Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer SocietyFirst posted: 26 Apr 2015 by "What is Sustainable" We live in a fantasy world. We have blind faith that we’ll be able to sustainably feed nine or ten billion people in 2050, a wish-based belief. We have blind faith that technology will vaporize all challenges that appear in our path over the coming centuries. Economic growth will continue forever. We’ll celebrate a glorious victory over climate change by switching to safe, clean renewable energy, in a smooth and painless manner. Our high standard of living will keep getting better and better as we zoom toward utopia. The best is yet to come! Australian professor Ted Trainer is not entranced by blind faith, and he explained his heresy in Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society. Attempting to transition to a future powered only by renewable energy, while maintaining our current mode of high waste living, would be the opposite of smooth and painless. Indeed, it’s impossible, he says. Renewables simply can’t produce as much energy as we currently get from burning enormous amounts of sequestered carbon (fossil fuel). Today, about eighty percent of the energy we use is liquid fuels, and the rest is electricity. In modern societies, electric power is highly reliable for both households and industries. Power companies generate electricity, feed it into their distribution grid, and send it to consumers. Excess electricity cannot be stored, and insufficient electricity leads to brownouts. So, utilities must be very careful to generate electricity at levels that closely match the swings in demand. Today’s centralized power systems are designed to do a good job of this, but they are not designed to reliably distribute electricity generated by decentralized sources, like wind farms or solar facilities. Coal-powered plants can run at full capacity all the time, and they can be built anywhere. Solar and wind facilities can run at full capacity only during ideal conditions. For example, a solar thermal plant can run at peak on a hot summer day, but its average annual production is just twenty-five percent of peak. The capacity of solar and wind facilities is highly dependent on location. They cannot be built anywhere, and the ideal locations are chosen first. The potential for future expansion is limited. Photovoltaic panels convert sunlight directly into electricity. They produce little or no energy at dawn, dusk, night, or during cloudy periods. For large-scale generation, solar thermal is better, because it generates heat, which can be stored for use during off-peak periods. Ideal locations for solar thermal are deserts, like the Sahara, or the U.S. southwest. The drawback is that ideal locations are typically distant from population centers, and significant energy is lost when power is sent thousands of kilometers away. Even in ideal locations, output during summer is five times higher than winter. Wind power is even less consistent. Wind velocity varies from year to year, from season to season, and from minute to minute. For 54 days in 2002, a wind farm in Denmark had zero production. A farm in Australia was nearly windless for five straight days. Winds can suddenly go calm over a wide region. Ideal locations are on hills and ridges. This hard-to-predict variability is a serious obstacle to a renewable energy future. Neither wind nor solar can produce electricity sufficient to meet current demand, in a dependable manner. To provide dependable power, backup capacity is needed. One mode of backup is to use the surplus power, generated during peak hours, to pump water uphill into reservoirs, where it can later be used to generate hydroelectric power. For most regions, this is not an option. Surplus electricity can also be used to generate hydrogen, to be stored for later use. Storing energy in hydrogen is highly inefficient, expensive, and problematic. Putting one unit of hydrogen energy into a fuel cell requires at least four units of wind or solar energy. Hydrogen atoms are tiny, which makes them especially prone to leakage. A big tanker truck can only carry 288 kilograms (634 pounds) of hydrogen. Hydrogen does not make economic sense. Backup electricity can also be generated by burning sequestered carbon, but this would result in undesirable greenhouse gas emissions. In a renewable energy future, for each megawatt of wind or solar capacity, systems would also need almost a megawatt of backup. The backup systems would be expensive, and they would be idle much of the time. They cannot be quickly cranked up to respond to demand surges, or to supply shortfalls due to clouds or calms. A number of well-paid respectable-looking nutjobs are preaching that the cure for climate change is nuclear energy. But eighty percent of the energy used today is not electricity. Trainer concluded, “If all electricity was generated by nuclear reactors, carbon dioxide emissions might be reduced by thirty percent.” Uranium is nonrenewable, the supply is finite, and the top quality ores are gone. All facets of the nuclear industry are designed and operated by accident-prone tropical primates. Meanwhile, spent fuel remains intensely toxic for more than a million years, and we have yet to discover how to safely store it. A more mature option would be to focus intense attention on how we live and think. The variability of wind and solar generation is a huge challenge to a renewable energy future. A far greater challenge — the death blow — is the issue of liquid fuels, which comprise eighty percent of our energy consumption. Liquid fuels are used to power cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships, wars, and our food system. Under perfect conditions, renewable energy might be able to generate ten percent of the energy currently produced by petroleum. Options include ethanol, methanol, and hydrogen fuel cells. Trainer discusses the serious drawbacks. Clearly, a smooth and painless transition to a renewable energy future that allows us to continue living like crazy is an intoxicating fantasy. In addition to being impossible, it’s also unsustainable. The “clean,” high-tech wonderland will continue extracting non-renewable resources for wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines, roads, tractors, fuel cells, air conditioners, cell phones, and so on. It will do nothing to wean us from soil mining, water mining, forest mining, and fish mining — or shift population growth into reverse. The consumer way of life is a dead end path. While reading, I kept thinking about my four grandparents, all of whom were born into non-electric, car-free households. They lived good lives. Food is a genuine need, but unsustainable energy is a devastating addiction — lots of fun at first, but deadly in the long run. Trainer thought along the same lines. The big problem is that the dominant culture programs us to be competitive, acquisitive, individualists. He presented a dreamy vision called The Simpler Way, a joyful utopia of voluntary frugality, stress-free lifestyles, lovely gardens, and small cooperative communities — and we don’t even have to give up modern technology! Really? Instead of struggling to continue living like crazy, for as long as possible, by any means necessary, the intelligent option would be to slow down — to really slow down! That’s the message here. In 2012, Trainer wrote an updated 22-page summary of his analysis of renewable energy, Can Renewable Energy Sustain Consumer Societies. In 2011, he helped write a 48-page description of his vision for a happy green future, The Simpler Way Report. Trainer, Ted, Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society, Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 2007. |
Disconnection is fatal. When we remove ourselves, or are forcibly removed from the system that supports our lives and the mutually supportive relationships that are required for a fulfilling life, we begin to whither and die. It becomes impossible to even come close to fulfilling our potential. More money, more goods, and more pharmaceuticals can only cover this up for so long. "The water is rising from another spring" - Ursula Leguin Changing the Story
Published online at the Huffington Post by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee “The only way to change the world is to change the story.” We know only too well the story that defines our world today. It is a tale of consumerism and greed, sustained by the empty but enticing promise of an endless stream of “stuff” as the source of our happiness and wellbeing. We are finally coming to recognize the model of an ever-expanding economy on which that promise is predicated as an unsustainable myth, the domination of nature required to fulfill it as a desecration. All around us we are beginning to see the ravages of our culture’s whole-hearted embrace of the story: a beautiful world broken and dying, on its way to becoming a polluted wasteland. We may even understand how this contemporary story is built upon an earlier one that took hold many centuries ago with the spread of monotheism, the story of a God who has withdrawn to heaven, to reign, apart and above, over an earth now deprived of its divinity and its natural magic. This is the story, still alive and feeding into our contemporary story, of a world in which spirit no longer lives in matter, in which the whole earth-realm of feminine power is suppressed to such a degree that it has almost been forgotten. It was and is a story of domination and patriarchal power, enshrined in the still-potent myths of the monotheistic religions. And many of us now long for a new story, one that will restore to the earth its lost divinity and reconnect our souls to the sacred within creation, a story that will save our planet. Some have even already begun to articulate such a story: a beautiful and compelling vision of the entire universe as a single, inextricably interconnected, living whole, offering a dimension of meaning to our individual daily lives that arises from an understanding of our place in the whole. But is this enough? How do we change the defining story of our world? Our collective culture celebrates its story of endless desires. It feeds us with its images that, though they can never nourish us, work like a drug for our minds and bodies, even as they exploit us and the earth. We have become addicts to material prosperity and the ego-centered greed that drives it. We long for a story that can give meaning to our daily lives and restore the health and beauty of our planet, but we remain caught in our tale of celebrating stuff. Once we recognize how these stories hold us in thrall, entranced or entrapped, we can get a sense of their power. They are not just slogans created by politicians, corporations or even religions; they arise from the archetypal inner world where myths are born. We can recognize the archetypal dimension of earlier myths, the gods and goddesses of earlier eras, for example; some can see it in the more recent myth of a patriarchal, transcendent God living in a distant heaven. The archetypal power of the present myth of materialism is harder to recognize because it is deceptive as well as seductive. And yet if one looks more closely one can see the archetypes at work here too. There the patriarchal myth of the domination of nature—a primal masculine power drive. But less obvious is the way in which the dark side of the rejected feminine has caught us in her web of desires. For what is materialism but the worship of matter, which is none other than the domain of the goddess? We are more present in the archetypal world than we dare acknowledge. And now in our quest to redeem our civilization and the planet we speak about the need for a new story, a story that returns the spirit to creation and honors the primal oneness that is the web of life. Like our current story, this new one may also be based upon an earlier story: one in which all of creation was seen as sacred, with humanity just part of the woven tapestry of life—a story still lived by many indigenous peoples. But this emerging story is also evolutionary, drawing as well on the insights of particle physics into the underlying nature of creation to express its vision of the world as an interconnected whole, in which, like the symbolic image of Indra’s net, each part influences the whole. And this new story of creation connects the smallest particle with an ever-expanding cosmos of billions of galaxies—and does so in a way that bridges science and the sacred, understanding them as expressions of the same reality. This is a compelling story for our time. But do we recognize from where this new story arises? Are we acknowledging and honoring the inner dimension from which all such world-changing stories are born? We know the vital need for a new story, but are we seeking to change life without honoring the archetypal forces at work, the gods and goddesses that still reign in the depths of creation—without recognizing the primal world that is life’s inner source? If a story is not born from the inner world it will lack the power to effect any real change.[i] It will speak just to our conscious selves, the surface layer of our being, rather than engaging us from the depths. The stories of the past, the myths that shaped humanity, spoke to our individual and collective soul with the numinous and transformative power that comes from deep within. How many men have been called to battle by the archetype of the warrior or the hero? How many churches have been built on the foundation of the myth of redemption? The power of the archetypal, mythic world belongs to the river-beds of life that shape humanity. But sadly, our present culture has distanced itself from this inner world. We are not taught to revere these underlying powers, nor do we know how to relate to them. Our contemporary consciousness hardly even knows of their existence. We live on the surface of our lives, unaware of the depths that are in fact the real determining factors. How many people when they go to the mall realize that they are worshipping on the altar of the dark goddess? When our Christian culture banished the many gods and goddesses, and then when science declared that myths were idle fantasies, we became more trapped than we realize. The archetypal world does not disappear because we close our eyes, because we say that it does not exist. Its power is not diminished by either our ignorance or our arrogance. And yet we have forgotten how to access and work with this power. Unknowingly we have disempowered our self in a fundamental way. We have closed the door in our psyche and soul—we only look outward. And now, when there is this vital need to rewrite the story that defines our lives, we are left with the inadequate tools of our conscious self. We do not know how to welcome the energies from the depths, to constellate the power we need to co-create a real story. We have isolated our self from the energy of life’s source we so desperately need. And so we are left stranded on the shore of our conscious self. There is a new story waiting to be born, waiting to redeem the planet and nourish our souls. It is a story of a oneness that includes the diversity of creation in a self-sustaining whole, a story that can bring back the magic within nature that is needed to heal our damaged planet. It is a story of co-operation rather than competition or conflict. And it includes the mystery of life as well as the understanding that science can give us. It is also a new story, arising from deep within the psyche of humanity and the world soul at this moment in our and its evolution. We are not the sole creators of this story, because it is the story of life evolving, recreating itself anew, but we are needed to midwife it into existence. As with all births it needs to come from the inner to the outer world. Only when we recognize the inner origins of this world-changing story can we participate in this birth. Only when we work together with the symbolic, archetypal world can its power and numinosity come into our existence and speak to the whole of humanity. Only then will this story be heard. We cannot afford the still-birth of new ideas that lack the life force that comes from the depths. We are called to return to the root of our being where the sacred is born. Then, standing in both the inner and outer worlds, we will find our self to be part of the momentous synchronicity of life giving birth to itself. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [i] Thomas Berry hints at this in his talk “The Ecozoic Era” (Eleventh Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures October 1991). He speaks of a “creative entrancement” as well as the “psychic energies needed” for transformation: My effort here is to articulate the outlines of a new mythic form that would evoke a creative entrancement to succeed the destructive entrancement that has taken possession of the Western soul in recent centuries. We can counter one entrancement only with another, a counter-entrancement. Only thus can we evoke the vision as well as the psychic energies needed to enable the Earth community to enter successfully upon its next great creative phase. SOULDIERS OF A HIGHER ORDER
by Jeff Brown The polarities are changing with respect to gender. Soon it won’t be men vs. women. It will be the awakening vs. the asleep, the heartfelt vs. the heartless. Men will rise up and stand beside women in opposition to those men who imprison all of us. The kind of men who ordered the gang rape in India, the kind of men who manipulate economic systems solely for their own benefit, will be met with a gender inclusive force of benevolent souls, who will no longer tolerate the raping of this planet or the women who mother it. I appreciate the good intentions of those who believe that we are ready to move away from opposition as a construct altogether, but I feel they are putting the heart before the force. It’s premature. We still need to fight for our right to the light, and we need to do it together. Not as two polarized genders, but as souldiers of a higher order united by love. From Jeff Brown’s SOULSHAPING facebook group 22nd July 2014 Beyond Patriarchy by Thomas Berry
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Channelling the Joy In defending the natural world, we should be honest about our motivations – it’s love that drives us, not money. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 17th June 2015 Who wants to see the living world destroyed? Who wants an end to birdsong, bees and coral reefs, the falcon’s stoop, the salmon’s leap? Who wants to see the soil stripped from the land, the sea rimed with rubbish? No one. And yet it happens. Follow this link to the full article |
