37. State tax v rent seeking economy: in today's world Jane Austen would be an economics reporter

With the Panama Papers, an underground war seems to be coming to the surface: the one that confronts two models: tax-supported states v rent-seeking landlords and "servicelords" (electricity, gas, water, etc).

The hidden structure
Most of our mental processes are unconscious. That gives them speed and capacity for processing. Our reptilian and mammalian brain are much faster in making quick and arbitrary decisions and process information than the pre-frontal cortex and, as they deal with matters of survival, they have higher hierarchy.

Most of our political ideas are governed by the brain that introduced social interaction and order to our evolution, the mammalian brain (or monkey brain). It makes decisions based on emotions and our unconscious inherited ideas of social order. In most cases, we understand politics based on our family or our ideal family structure (the structure we learned it is better to warrant our survival). We equate and respond emotionally to the candidates depending on which "family model" represent, and that's why appearing with spouses and what's their spouses profile is, are important reinforcements the candidates have to display. This is at least until we create an emotional distance with our ideas and we allow our rational mind to question why we feel what we feel and start the slow subconscious restructuring work.

In this article that appeared in Evonomics, Prof. George Lakoff in his article "No one knows why Trump is winning: here's what cognitive science says" writes how cognitive science explains that we metaphorically associate politics with family which puts Donald Trump as the candidate for a public with male dominated family models.

This social structure has been historically based in presenting men (and conservatives) as pure and owners of an indisputable moral superiority, whilst women are either corrupt and deficient (or possessors of beauty as their only power), justifying male's appropriation of power, property and decision making. By highlighting her links with the establishment and Wall Street funding, the attack on Hillary's candidacy is touching on this old, untrue but still unconsciously widely accepted premise, even if it might be a reasonable concern.

But beyond this presidential race in the US, there is a wider and global phenomenon going on: a war between rent-seeking and tax paying models, that challenges the idea of a democratic nation as the basic structural global order.

State tax and state debt

States are unconsciously perceived as feminine and maternal, so when we have an emotional response towards the state, we are in some cases projecting our unresolved issues with our mothers. I mean this, without removing any validity to any of the issues we may have with the state (or with our mothers!). I intend only to highlight that a lot of the emotional charge might not be entirely well placed and might blind us in finding a balanced response.
States can be perceived as invasive (dwelling too much in private matters), predatory (eating from us), neglecting (not paying due attention to the vulnerable), corrupt (the one that sells what is supposed to protect, the one that is disconnected to its original purpose), inefficient (wasting energy or resources in things that our not our primary concern), dictatorial (unilateral, cruel, not listening to us, castrating), etc, etc. In all this emotional logic, paying tax equates to a deep tension: feeding my mother is wrong, when she is supposed to feed me (with food, attention and unconditional love).

Of course, we are all adults now, but if we were not properly recognised in our individuality and were not fed with love and attention (most likely we have been left at least partially unsatisfied), we might be holding on to a feeling that either "she owes me", or if our mothers were so "hungry" of attention and recognition that she fed from our attention (with narcissist or controlling attitudes), in not paying we are staging a resistance to this unbalance, this abuse, and gives us the feeling we are liberating ourselves from her damaging hunger.

Because this issue is so emotionally dominant, we do not create the gap needed for our reasoning to stop justifying automatically our behaviour and thoughts, and question what goes on in which level. This underlying feeling of maternal debt (=state debt), makes us blind to all the things the state does provide (or can or should) to us or to the wider community and how structurally important this is for society.

Neoliberlism is where old conservatives  (I would argue that there is a place for a new/modern conservatism) and liberals (the political child in the trio right, left, liberalism) agree that the enemy they should get liberated from is the state (ie the mother) but without acknowledging their own dependency. In this sense, they share what I would call an "individuation paradox", they fight for cutting dependency of the state, but they are not individuated enough to see what the state is there for, or even to find business outside the state sphere.

Neoliberal ideas have a particular bias regarding the role of the state. It includes many ideas that are based on the very old need to demonise and dis-empower the state (what's female) to become "neoliberated" from it. It is not too far fetched to say there are connections that draw parallels between the old ideas regarding the role of women in society and the current ideas regarding the role of states: ideas like "women cannot have properties or run businesses" with "states should not have properties or run businesses", between "women as the temptresses and sources of all sin" with this very current idea of "all politics is corrupt, let the CEOs and corporations run the show" and "corrupt states"; between the control of women sexual power and uterus (women's bodies must be controlled externally) with the trade agreements that externalise justice and budgets that do not focus on its own will to create: the long term investments and innovation; "women should not interfere with men's businesses" with seeing all regulation as an undesirable state intervention; the idea that women are the ones that should sacrifice themselves (absorbing, internalising and taking ownership of an external lack) to states coming to the rescue and absorbing private debt to convert it in public debt, for which then the states are to blame on how they manage it, forgetting what was the real source of that debt; between "women as passive receptors" (always open to receive but never to demand) with the idea that "governments should be passive tax collectors"; "the only way to secure a future for women is to marry well" with "the only way for governments to succeed is to attract rich investors" etc. etc. In today's world, Jane Austen would be an economics reporter.


Rights v benefits

In our child stage, our biology assumes we will get acceptance, recognition of existence, shelter, food and love. These are rights that we get for "free". We are in Eden. From this perspective, it is interesting how the word "right" has made a come back in centre-left political speech. To a child, the 700-1000 calories a mother gives him/her in the form of milk has no earthly supply chain: the mother is a divine source of food, that does not need anything. Mothers were not taught how to feed themselves, while the rest of the adult part of the family (especially fathers) sometimes disconnect themselves from the supporting task. The sad thing is that when communities and societies do not support mothers in good enough measure while they are doing this job, mothers may start to feel empty, unseen, unrecognised and their reptilian brain -concerned for their survival- ends up rationalising how much food, attention, energy, they give their children (austerity), or start to feed attention from them (or they stop having children altogether).
In both cases, children are left with this feeling of maternal debt, hungry and angry. 
This is why in a context of economical austerity, anger arises which tends to be deflected towards immigrants, who are then blamed for the shortage of food, jobs and attention.

When a hungry mother does not challenge the social order that does not support her, she turns her attention to what's perceived as an energy drain: her mind justifies this, building a narrative where rights become benefits. And benefits can easily become expendable and fees become reasonable: the system feeds from bottom up. In this sense, putting the main pressure on workers to sustain society is similar to a family saying "the only way this family will survive is for this baby to eat less or even better, if he pays rent" (think of the student debt situation in the US when reading this line).

Interestingly enough, in this model, the top reaches the "Eden/paradise" they feel they never had and is due to them in tax havens. Let's remember that Paradise/Eden represents an idealised matriarchal stage. Let's also bear in mind that in Elite circles maternal attachment tends to be severed very early and sometimes traumatically, including through the use of boarding schools. In the individuation paradox, conservatives believe in their own patriarchal role of separating children from mothers as early as possible, as the only way for them to become individuated and independent, whilst conservatism itself is about not changing anything about the inherited ideas, sometimes not even the decoration in your inherited house.

At political level, this is reinforced by the erosion of state rights with trade agreements that minimise competition for corporations and maximise competition amongst workers. It is not an anecdote that in these agreements, once a service has been privatised cannot be nationalised again. Typical public services have a rent based model profiting from infrastructure normally built by the state. In the hands of the state, services like heating or water are considered first a right then a source of income, in private hands, it is a service and an income and probably for monopolies, only income.

Rent-based societies are based on hungry babies, disempowered women and minorities, disempowered states and the erosion of the very idea of civil (and economic) rights.

An obedient left 

In this context, the left is mocked, presumed incapable and something between idealist and ridiculous. In its polarised female role, it is subjugated under the patriarchal law too. It is forbidden for the left to write History or claim for the forgotten chapters, to assume power, to form circles and associate. And even if it does not hold power, it is forced to show self-criticism by the media in front of any wrong from the right, as it is the one that should assume negativity and guilt.  It is blamed for losing sight of the class struggle and losing the economical argument in favour of identity politics, when class tends to be the result of the right-wing hierarchical logic. They do somehow, however, play the polarised game by just 'inverting the electrical charge', by labelling positive what the other side considers negative. 
In opposition to the obedient left, the right presents itself as the "true" authority by showing itself to be rule-breaker, through breaking the codes of what now is called political correctness daring to be openly misogynist, racist and xenophobic.

An optimistic view

The reason why I'm optimistic about the future is that we've moved away from this way of thinking, particularly in the last few years were many pennies dropped, and almost all of a sudden many issues -such as equal marriage, gender identity rights, pro-choice, etc- stopped being issues in many countries. Other issues that used to be denied or considered resolved (such as racism) are having once more a visibility push. Motherhood (which -I argue- determines a lot about society architecture) is evolving with mothers in general being a bit more relaxed, following their instincts and approaching motherhood more naturally.
If these structures have already changed or are changing at the foundations level, it will eventually and inexorably trickle up. On the same note, we always need to bear in mind that any reactionary movement that on the surface deals with economical, political and even geopolitical issues, will try to revert progress picking on the issue of gender and sexuality.

Probably, this is what caused a first "shake" when the Pope felt he needed to speak about family this year. Without changing dogma or a still holding a conservative view of families, sexuality and women (which in my view is a deep rooted inconsistency), it seems to be more of a push for the church to connect to a changing reality. And the ever increasing demonstrations on the street might do the same with the leaders of the economy, who seem to be able to make decisions in complete oblivion of the effects they have in the real world (on society or on the environment).

Tensions are good

The sense that dependency is a drain for society is an admission of weakness. An admission of "lack of adultness", as if we do not have the resources or the tools to take care of people in dependant situations. However, accepting dependency as a possible reality of many people (children, unemployed, disabled, retired, even a worker is dependant), does not mean that there is no room for a conservative voice (embodying the patriarchal father) that sees dependency as a stage one should overcome or at least as a situation that should not stop us from the exploration of abilities. But ultimately they would however bear the weight of the responsibility without so much complaining that it is not fair.

Sharing a sense that tax is needed to enable states sustain common spaces, services, or to make high-risk and long term investments does not mean that it is not important to sustain a tension with someone who thinks the state can be corrupt and should be checked upon, or that taxes are too high and hold a battle of how much the state feeds from the private sector or the individual citizens.

Even if off-shoring is "legal", the amounts that is draining out of economies now is so big that in many cases countries have an equivalent of their annual GDP off-shore. In front of these facts, we also need to sustain the other side that creates a tension against these abuses.

Balancing individualism and collectivism has to come from this tension, where there are economic rights (eg the right to shelter, to make a living or receive support when it is not possible, etc) and civil rights are granted at individual level and they are the enablers of social and individual responsibility.

The real rebellion in today's world is against the idea of TINA (there is no alternative) and these speeches that ask us to be united, when they actually mean we should all think the same. We have to rescue the importance of the division of power and the acceptance of tensions as the natural digestive system of a democratic society.

Andrea

36. Emancipatory anger (as opposed to destructive anger)

It takes a certain amount of "aggression" and anger to use a sword or a pair of scissors that will cut our psychological dependencies and inertia. Anger, when used consciously, gives us that excess energy we don't normally need to do something we don't normally do.
For years anger has been given a bad name, and we have never been properly guided into how to use it constructively. That's why hearing a Peace Nobel Price winner, Kailash Satyarthi explaining that everything he did for children's rights wasn't because he was content but rather because he was angry, is very relevant today. Like fire, anger can be used as a transformative force, or can be destructive if left out of control. He argues that when this anger lights an idea and this idea is taken to action, change happens.

In a similar way, Beyonce called ladies to get in formation (ie get organised) on Sunday dressed like Michael Jackson with dancers dressed like the black panthers, with proud afros, subsequently forming a triangle (uterus), an arrow and an X in reference to Malcolm X, where the X was in itself the scissors cutting his ties with the past (the inherited slave surname).

In this excellent blog entry "We Slay, Part I" by Zandria, the Formation video is a analysed in detail the multi-layered messages as an articulation of southern blackness and resistance.

The enemy is not necessarily the system

Emancipatory anger helps us to separate not from the place, system or person we are now, but from a previous idealised past from which we were separated (that imaginary past when we were great, pure and innocent), that pulls us back to a state of dependency driven by our hunger, our need, our lack. This does not mean that our present is not problematic. It is. But first we need to deal with the past.  

In this sense, as a feminist, I don't think the patriarchy is the only enemy. The patriarchy, with all its shadows, has a purpose or at least a use. The other "enemy" to an adult (men and women) is the matriarchy. The matriarchy is fundamental for a child, but letting go of it is also fundamental for an adult. It is the feeling of wanting to go back to and idealised past to find someone (our mother, lost paradise) whom should satisfy our hunger (the need to be recognised and accepted in our uniqueness, respected in our space, the need to be fed with food, love and nurturing attention) instead of moving forward and developing the tools to feed ourselves (individually and in collaboration with others).

Rumi said "the wound is the place where the lights enters you", or as Zizec explains about the hegelian wound, in the wound heals itself by recognising in itself the solution (video below min 20-26 approx). If the wound is the first separation from the feminine, Eden under the command of the patriarchal father who threw us out, it is in this place outside Eden where we find the tools to heal the wound and connect to our own feminine -as opposed to go back to reconnect to the external one- (this is both for men and women). If for feminism, one of the characteristics of the patriarchy was the control over the uterus/sexuality, it was owning the control over the uterus (e.g. the pill, access to safe abortions, etc) and claiming the ownership of their sexuality what was most emancipating to women .
In Beyonce's performance, the emancipating spirit is not showing subjugation but rather being boldly american.

In this sense, even though both Trump and Sanders are these "outsiders" representing an anger against the establishment, the greatest difference between them is that the negativity of todays' is used to lead people in opposite directions: "to make America great again" is leading people backwards, aiming to recover an idealised lost state whilst blaming a demonised other. Bernie Sanders' messages are more inward-looking and forward-looking, seeing the current problems as new ones.

We love, we hate, we become

Freedom to love and create comes when we transit these stages: we love, we hate, we become. The first love is blind. It's attachment which fuses us in a blur with the other.
In hate, love still exists but it is working towards its emancipation, to cut dependency. It is an effort to put a distance in between us and the dependence we hold with that other who is important -we only hate people who are somehow important to us, even for the wrong reasons-. And in this distance, we gain perspective, we see a fuller picture. Then we stop hating. The hated one does not define us any more in any way. We become. We are not longer blind. We are no longer victims. We want people to look at us for who we are, in all our perfect imperfection. At this point we are free to love, to love freely (without the fear of loss, or the fear that in a potential loss of the loved one we will be disappear too) and we are free to create and collaborate.

Hungry women and angry women

Anger and hunger are closely related. 
The only way to overcome the social patriarchy is that we use the tools that the patriarchy has given us to see our shadow and integrate it. 

For women, we won't finish with the patriarchal process if we don't talk about motherhood for instance, and its shadowy aspects without a taboo. 
We need to be able to see in motherhood the potentiality of becoming -even if it is from time to time- the spider of Lord of the Rings (who numbs, immobilize and wraps like a baby our children to feed from them), the witch (with the house that looks very sweet from the outside but that inside keeps the children jailed and in control), the evil queen (the narcissist that needs to be looked at and fed with attention, impoverishing her children of attention) or the stepmother (the one that is not emotionally involved and able to enslave her children to do what she wants). We need to know this negative space of motherhood, this hunger. In this sense, we should take ownership of this knowledge. 
"Yes, we know we can be like that at times. But because we know, we can recognise it and address our hunger differently". Embodying the patriarchal mother without recognising it, leaves children empty and in need, hungry. In fact, I'd argue that the patriarchal mother is the main vector of the patriarchy (as much as neoliberal governments are the main vector of neoliberalism). 
Later on this infantile hunger transforms itself into over-attachment to other forms of maternal patriarchy (abusive/intrusive or neglecting governments, cold corporations, etc), to debt, to things not changing, and anger whenever an experience reminds us of our wound (losing jobs, changing environment and our sense of collective identity, appearance of other people in greater need...). Under this logic, if poor, refugees, minority groups -in other words competition in terms of unsatisfied needs- disappear then my mum will be free to take care of me. Governments will struggle to talk about helping refugees whilst imposing austerity and welfare cuts over its own population (embodying the stepmother /patriarchal mother model). Whenever we see "haters" complaining about others, the analysis should focus not in what they say but instead in what their own economical situation is. 

It is probably this what makes Hillary Clinton not such a clear candidate for women yet. Her links with the establishment cast a doubt on what sort of woman she really is. Is she truly free? Is she an empowering figure? Is she able to see the others? 

This reflection on the patriarchal mother is not to cast blame on women, on the contrary, it is empowering because it means it is in our hands. The more women reflect on the patriarchal mother model, the more they can transform it. The biggest trap is, of course, violence against women.

We won't finish with the patriarchal process either if we don't confront the mandate of being the good girl, the good pupil who never uses the energy of her anger to be assertive. Famously, this has been discussed not so long ago in the press after Jennifer Lawrence pointed out that speaking her mind was easily taken as aggressive behaviour. In the analysis of this even, the press provided with a translator English-woman in a meeting to explain how a woman should say a famous quote without being perceived aggressive or bitchy:

“I came. I saw. I conquered.”

Woman in a Meeting: “I don’t want to toot my own horn here at all but I definitely have been to those places and was just honored to be a part of it as our team did such a wonderful job of conquering them.”

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Woman in a Meeting: “I’m not an expert, Dave, but I feel like maybe you could accomplish more by maybe shifting your focus from asking things from the government and instead looking at things that we can all do ourselves? Just a thought. Just a thought. Take it for what it’s worth.”

Woman-in-a-meeting language keeps us in the patriarchal process (as much as men who fear assertive women are still in doubt of their our "performance" and remain castrated by the patriarchy).

Transformative fire

I always hypothesise that the left and the state tend to mirror the feminist issues. So a state that is aware of its own shadow (eg potential to be over-controlling, smothering, disengaged with the people and submissive to the corporate world), can start to show its teeth (to feed, to take a bite of life) and become creator again. Whilst the right and the corporate world could also reflect what would it be the post patriarchal right, the one that is against dependency but does not neglect, the one that pushes for focus and discipline but does not castrate, that one that encourage risks but assumes responsibility, ultimately the one that does not need to control or undermine the creative power of the state to succeed, nor humiliate people for them to align in pursuing a group purpose.

It is only when we don't fear our own anger that we can break away with past mandates and take action independently. In this sense, and even though I think yoga, meditation and mindfulness are very positive practices as a personal choice, I am suspicious when the corporate world encourages it actively, as its purpose could easily become to tame people's anger instead of listen to it and address the issues that might be triggering it.

It is only when we don't fear our own anger that we can use it as a transformative fire instead of a destructive explosion, claim ownership of our words, and break with the patriarchal language, not to go back to the maternal narrative but to move forward. 
Both narratives need to be recognised as foreign. 
Then, we become.

Andrea

35. The not-so fragmented female experience

There are many streams within feminism, each of them dealing with different aspects of the female experience, which sometimes enter in discussions with each other.

The sometimes called "Earth mothers" support non medical intervention in births and are exploring the depths of breastfeeding, both as part of the vast territory of female sexuality. Many of them stop working to live motherhood fully, resting in the privilege of a chosen economic dependency -a sort of conservative feminism- (probably because it is less limiting for them than for most of women), or want to break the barriers of work and home, and make children more natural in work spaces.
Some voices in this stream, knowingly or not, exclude women who can't breastfeed, and are fighting against internal and external guilt.
In the most hard core versions, they may exclude (and are excluded by) the women that won't breastfeed because they belong to a stream of feminism that feel that their emancipation is about decoupling motherhood and womanhood and for whom economic independence (current and future) is crucial. They may call each other "disconnected" (disconnected mother or disconnected woman), and tend to clash.
And here come too the women who have no children (up to 18% of women in their 40s in the US). Sometimes discussing if they are "child-free" or "childless" or wondering why they should be defined at all by this absent hypothetical child from whom they are free and also having to reassert their worth as women.

The same happens with those women who fight to break the glass ceiling to reach higher levels of power, who tend to forget about the women who are actually working a lot caring for others but this work is not being paid, or forget about the ones who fight for women's rights  at the other end of the ladder, in the "precariat". This tension was very well exemplified by Marissa Mayer's decision to take only two weeks of materinity leave being Yahoo's CEO.

In the Anglosaxon world, women fight against cultural mandates that have imposed specific beauty standards onto them and want to redefine beauty. On the eastern side of Europe, women want to regain the right to express their femininity in a way that communism had frown upon when treating them as equal (here equal meant men and women were "male/ish"). Both -somehow- are exploring what it means to be a woman and how this can be expressed.

Malala and many women in the middle east fight for access to education and freedom of expression (among other things). In Central Africa (and everywhere where this practice has travelled to, like Indonesia), women fight against female genital mutilation. In China, women suffer -mostly in silence- the over-control the state has imposed over their uterus, rendering girls as the least desirable outcome of a pregnancy and sometimes forcing sterilisations or abortions, while in many other countries women fight for the right to access safe abortion procedures, etc. etc (there are more themes, of course).

Finally, those who campaign against violence against women are often accused of being too aggressive, which is always an interesting example of two principles: how anger is forbidden for women and how the male gaze works. The male gaze means that when seeing a situation where men and women are involved, what's being seen and judged is the women: the public consciousness imagines itself in the position of the man at the receiving end of this quite deserved anger. The discussions to break this male gaze tend to be very heated. 

These struggles may seem to have little in common or be even contradictory. But they are all the fields where women are reclaiming rights, with the common goal of defending women's right to dictate our own lives. We would be worse off if any of these battles is not fought, even if some of them are not ours in this particular moment in time. They might be ours later, or they might be our sister's fight, or our daughter's.

Even if we enter in these debates, and we accuse each other of things and the media exploit it to wedge groups apart, from sufficient distance they are all very coherent. Engaging into "mummy wars" and fragmenting female experience are in fact a way of avoiding diverse women to get together and exchange findings. Feminism is plurality and because of this, disagreements are an integral part of it. 

In the entry "The Revolution is in the hand of women" I wondered: 

Women cannot feed others with love and attention if they don't feed themselves with love and attention. And how women feed themselves is a mystery, some sort of divine source of food. (Some assume) They don't need to be paid fairly, or recognised, or given a job at the level of their capacity, or given assistance while they search for their own food. 

A response somehow came in the following video, through the mouth of these two women speaking about female friendship. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin talk about their personal experience and even comment on the latest research done by the Harvard Medical school, pointing out at the health benefits of having close female friends, and how oxytocin is increased in their presence.

Jane Fonda even claims "I have my (female) friends, therefore I am". Pointing out that these friendships are -in fact- the main source of recognition she received. Recognition of the self, the soul, the fact that there is a person in front who tells you "I see you". 
I don't mean to say that we should not claim recognition anywhere else, but as Kristen Schaal points out that we'll have flying cars before women will be paid equally... while we work for it (and wait for it) it feels like an good tip.

Andrea

34. From symbolic matricide to bureaucratic statecide

In the age of "everything is so strange that nothing is surprising"(1), we are back again hearing and reading the word fascism more than we would like. I go back to some of the things I wrote in previous posts in an attempt to set a context of why this could be happening and the work we might need to do.

Believers series - Free at last
Jaco Van Der Art

Changing smothering for castration

We could understand our personal biological and psychological journey through life and our individuation process as a series of birth and rebirths with particular stages. None of these stages is pure, simple and complete, but a general scheme might provide a useful reference. This process is somehow followed collectively as well (in micro and macro cycles), where the state and the left represents the feminine side and the private sector and the right tend to adopt a "masculine" role. 

In this journey, it is well known that there is a stage where the patriarchy commits symbolic matricide. Nowadays, seeing all the issues regarding sovereignty that are emerging (politics governing the EU, TTP, TISA and TTIP, developed and discussed in secret) should make us reflect if we are in front of a political/cultural patriarchy committing a bureaucratic statecide where democratic institutions do not govern countries and the principle of "division of power" does not keep power in balance any more eg treaties that include clauses that take corporation-states disputes out of the judicial system to secret mediation processes, and clauses that forbid the country to make certain decisions (eg once a service is privatised, it cannot be renationalised ever), even castrating future generations to make their own political decisions. CEOs make decisions from their positions and if that's not enough by penetrating democratic institutions and do this job with their own hands in a similar, even if softer way, as military structures used to do.

This video is worth watching in its entirety, but this particular point is covered by Julian Assange at 1:16. 

The personal journey: First, the matriarchy

In order to draw the parallels, I need to go back to the primal structure.
Since we are in our mothers wombs we are fused to their psyches. We grow within, we feed from her until this space is too small (even if it is unclear, it is though that the fetus releases substances that induce labour ie the baby "decides" when to be born) . As a species we are born underdeveloped, and continue this process outside the womb. From this moment, a long process of individuation starts: the one in which we slowly realise we are our own person and are free to make our own decisions and to write our own history. But it takes some time. For the first years of our lives, our mothers organise with their words our consciousness, with their silences and disapproval, our shadow. Her narrative (even if it is patriarchal script), the combination of words and silences is the structure that represents the virtual womb in which we are immersed until we are born out of it by recognising it as foreign. 

During these first years, she provides food, comfort, attention, safety. We are dependent but this is Eden. This is the matriarchal stage. This stage builds the foundations of our personality and it's almost impossible to emphasize enough how fundamental it is for our future well being: how well our needs were satisfied at this stage will have probably the biggest unconscious influence in our future.

During this stage, she is perfect to our eyes. This is "the reign of the perfect mother". We grow, fed by this physical and virtual womb until it is too small for us, because of course, the mother is not perfect and we need to be born out of the matriarchy to develop our own independence to become free: this is the primary purpose of the patriarchy. 

Then, the patriarchy: finding our sword

At this point the perfect mother dies. The patriarchy kills the good mother to show us the side that was invisible to us: her shadow. 
God expels us from Eden. Eden becomes Egypt. We fall. 

In almost every fairy tale, the real story begins when the "good mother" dies because this is the beginning of the hero's story, when we have to learn to make decisions and earn our bread. We would not be able to separate ourselves from the "good mother" and that's why this false perception of perfection has to die. We need to challenge the narrative we have received from her so we can build our own. With all its shadows and forced hierarchies, cutting dependencies and gain freedom from the inherited narrative is the true purpose of the patriarchy that we should always bear in mind.

In fairy tales, the good mother and the stepmother (or witch) are two halves of the same person. When the good mother dies we start to see our mother's shadow, the side she does not acknowledge of herself: the stepmother (not completely emotionally invested) or the witch (over-controlling, eating children), the evil queen (a narcissist "feeding" attention from children), etc. In this demonisation, we find the strength to challenge some of the things we have inherited and are not ours or are not useful to us. Up to this point, fused to our mother's psyche, we could not see this shadow because our mother was blind to it. If she could not see it, neither could we. The fact that we start to see it, is a sign that we are becoming independent. 

During the patriarchal stage (which is by no means the final one), we need to learn four main things:
-Listen to our instinct 
-Re arrange our unconscious world, our beliefs 
-Feed ourselves (our basic needs... you shall earn your bread)
-Learn to use our resources through the development of self-discipline and self-mastery
Basically, to become independent.


When a princess marries a prince at the end of the story it has little to do with "only a man can rescue a woman". It is in fact the princess integrating her masculine side, the one that allows her to focus her energy and with a sword cut the dependency with the "evil" stepmother.

Patriarchal language restructuring

This stage is the patriarchy, because a father figure is the one the invite us to go outside the world of mum and penetrate the external world. He is the vector demonising the mother, neutralising her words and claiming power over the narrative. He starts to restructure her discourse, with new vocabulary or by changing the meaning of some of her words, whilst urging everyone to stop listening to the 'enchanting words of the sirens'. 

At this point, it is not difficult to begin to see a parallel between this and what the media does with anything related with more leftist opinions. Jeremy Corbyn has been systematically attacked by the British press. Whilst Bernie Sanders has been working to un-demonise the word socialism. Right wing politics are now 'pragmatism' and 'realism', leaving the space of 'idealism' to the 'deluded' left. Rights become benefits or even entitlements. The ideological nature of neo-liberalism is thus invisibilized (to be fair, all ideologies work by self-invisibilization). In this video for the Renegade Economist, Eliane Glaser speaks about this use of language.

The point is that we are not children, the symbolic mother or the state are NOT pure evil. And the symbolic father and corporations are both liberating and castrating figures: we need to be born out of his narrative, which is blind to its own shadow too. In stories, this shadow appears as ruthless kings, emperors, fascist dictators. As an example of a patriarchal "fairy" tale: In Star Wars, Obi Wan Kenobi is the good father (the master teaching self-discipline and self-mastery), and the Emperor is his shadow. Two halves of the same person. It is Obi Wan Kenobi the one that cuts Anakin's legs, physically castrating him and thus subordinating him to the power of the Emperor. See this article from the Huffington post about this sort of precarious manhood.

Need comes first, ideology comes after

Before I continue, I have to stop and say that how much our survival needs are satisfied are the most important element of how we choose to transit our lives. Desperation, hunger, exclusion, dispossession are the most basic triggers why anyone enters into a fight or flight mode, or even in submission. When fear of survival kicks in, the one in power is our "reptilian" brain. The most ancient part of the brain structure that commands survival. In situations of fear, it overrides all other circuits. In front of a tiger, it's not time to sit down and analyse. For people to engage in other thinking processes, they cannot be in fear of survival, their basic needs must be satisfied.

Patriarchy - Star Wars v Lord of the rings

There are different ways of going through the patriarchy and these two stories provide a useful example. Note: the reason I pick on 'fairy' stories as a useful tool is because they are archetypal and our minds understand the sequences they follow. Religious narrative works in a similar way. In many senses we are telling ourselves the same stories over and over again. 

One of them is wearing a mask that hides our wounded self: the one that has been separated from the mother traumatically. This is the persona we adopt and show to the world. Famously Star Wars replaced an "inefficient" Republic with the "efficient" Empire, and Darth Vader (the traumatised hero), wearing a mask, submerged himself completely into the dark side of the force, where he could fully enact the anger that the traumatic separation from the female created: the lack, the wound left open and claiming -by force- her service. 
In this process, there is a false freedom (the one that lacks love), false strength (the one that denies vulnerability instead of integrating it), brutally subjugating anyone that represents his own weakness: women, children, foreigners, people from other races or religions. 
It is resolved at the end of six movies when he is able to connect with his internal source of love: his paternal instinct. Killing the emperor marks the end of the patriarchy.

It is not difficult to find this logic in Boko Haram and their brutal treatment of women or in the hyper-(wounded)masculine image of ISIS.

There are also "elements" of this behind the surge of right-wing populist messages appearing everywhere. In Germany, "We are Germany" demonstrations replaced the "federal republic" with "shit state" or "gang state", anger against the state, which needs to be dominated or reclaimed. The article in Der Spiegel "Fear, Anger and Hatred: the rise of Germany's new right" speaks about it and says: 

Such hateful slogans and sentiments against the state and foreigners are coming from law-abiding citizens from the heart of society. They display a mixture of old prejudices combined with new conspiracy theories that is typical for the movement on the right-wing of Germany's political spectrum.

Another way, is through a more conscious journey. In the West, power is politically divided to keep it in balance like the rings of power, but also concentrated through political agreements and treaties, that might as well end up responding to "the one" ring that subjugate all the rest. 
In Lord of the Rings, the passage through patriarchy is not done by wearing a mask, but enacted by a journey where Sam (the 'chief hero') walks with both his hero side (Frodo) and his shadow (the one that needs, the wounded self, Gollum) towards a place where he needs to destroy his old dependent self (the ring). Almost as if it was a psychoanalytical journey led by the shadow (Gollum) to enter the unconscious (Mordor). He can destroy the ring only once he had revisited his past with his mother (the spider living in the cave feeding from victims that are alive and wrapped-like-a-baby) and accepted his shadow: when Frodo claims "the ring is mine", he is kind of admitting "I am still hungry for the attention my mother did not give me, this need is mine". When he acknowledges his attachment his need becomes conscious and thus the unconscious need, the hungry, denied, baby-adult wounded self - Gollum- dies. 
Sam integrates his hero side too, in stages: Sam carrying Frodo (he is assuming responsibility for the first time) and then when Frodo tells Sam he is now the writer of the story and leaves. So even though the war happened, the Emperor never took control. 

And finally... the almost happy ending
Of course here comes the happy ending for the hero. We did our hero's journey: "we loved, we hated and we became". And we are all at the verge of the end of the patriarchy.

But what happens to the step-mother and the Emperor? What happens when these two still hungry people see the empty nest? Do they know how to create again? What's their own mission and purpose? Do they remember how to feed themselves? 

Patriarchal economical struggle: Creditors v creators

For a while, there is a patriarchal inertia that will try to extend dependency through debts. A king needs feudalism and the rentier economy to feed from. Or else, it will empty the coffers. It will keep on demonising and dis-empowering anything considered social (maternal), citizens and democracies (accusing any policy of populist if it works in their interest), and crashing start-ups and entrepreneurs, that if left unchecked will destroy countries. Mothers under patriarchy (and states under current thinking) are left lost, disconnected, not knowing where to feed from (austerity, austerity). The patriarchs (bankers, insurance companies, hedge funds, private equity firms, big corporations) will pass a bill to the next generation, to the children. 

These creditors create a unpayable debt to extend a state of dependency and avoid addressing their own emptiness. This is not "conspiratorial" thinking. It's mostly survival behaviour, that in some cases turns into predatory eg Hedge Funds arguing in favour of sacking teachers and close schools in Puerto Rico to avoid a default that would affect them. This behaviour is only possible within a particular structure of institutional and social order. We need to remember that the creditor's narrative will always exclude the creditor and its behaviour of lending too much and thus creating debt as means of creating dependency and concentrating power instead of being a genuine investment, with its rewards and its risks I should add. 

Blue scream - Survivor series
Jaco Van Der Vaart

The first problem with this creditor is that does not know how to create himself. Does not know his own purpose. He depends on extraction of wealth or others creating for him. He has the resources but in reality does not know how to use them or what for. The liberal tragedy is that it fought to become independent from the monarchy, only to concentrate as much wealth as the monarchy and start to behave similarly: unquestionable, with some sort of divine right.

These creditors do not lend to equals. They need "empty" people fearing for their survival to capitulate their power: 

• a robot/slave (the one that does not think for itself and follows orders), 
• a "prostitute"/a corrupt (the one that sells him/herself to survive), 
• a coward (the one that fears the fight/cutting the dependency), 
• a child (the one that is/feels dependent).

Patriarchal political struggle: against the tyranny of TINA

When there is only one correct answer, "There Is No Alternative", democracy is made redundant. It is reduced to being "managed" by technocrats. Countries have no other option rather than to sign treaties and accept the role they are given in a hierarchical world structure. 

1989 gave us the winner. The only allowed Ideology (neoliberalism) wears a mask of "truth": it becomes the correct answer we have to learn in school and masters in business administration. Then the only question open is how efficiently we are going to get there. 
When efficiency is the priority, then competition is made redundant, because competition is not necessarily the most efficient model (from the corporations point of view). Concentration and cartels can be more efficient as companies are not wasting money in advertising, price finding or wage wars (even Silicon Valley played this game with a 'no poaching' agreement challenged in court). One aspect of the Euro project was to avoid competing currencies. 
Work is also in danger of being made redundant, as empty workers (robots, slaves, traumatised workers) are more efficient from the corporation point of view. Somehow we all ended up consuming products produced by child labour (smartphones using Cobalt mined by children, sports gear, clothing), slave work (clothing in particular), or work done in very precarious conditions with few rights.

Slavoj Zizec suggests in this video, that the gap left for this lack of options in the political sphere is being filled somehow by religion.  In this sense, we lose a lot with the lack of diversity in politics. When religion comes to correct or express political conflicts, one of the ways that are going to be resolved is through holy wars. It is also worth noting, that the main figure speaking against a model of exclusion (a "leftist" sort of message) is the Pope (again, religion filling this gap). 

Lie to me

In this game, the media is doing a lot to sell us TINA, demonise the left, etc. etc. and the public does little to demand more objectivity. In any of the wombs we might be submerged in (the real, the matriarchal, the patriarchal, an ideology, etc) we are being fed with acceptance, with attention, in other words with a narrative we accept. The food we take make us grow, but this food also feeds our attachment with this environment. It is a reward to our presence there. It confirms we are right and that we belong. It's not uncommon in research done in focus groups for participants to say "you have to tell me ..." this or that. They know which are the lies they should be told. If they are offered a skin care product, they would ask "tell me what's the magical ingredient! Call it pro-something. I know it's not the real thing, but at least I know you made the effort". In this state of submissive acceptance, an incongruous proposition will be simply rejected. 

The era of the child: finding our pen

In the three videos embedded here, there is a call, a need of a new idealism, a new utopia. Eliana Graser wonders if what we have is really what we want. Julian Assange suggests that some sort of new Christianity is needed, which is interesting, as Christianity showed the story of the Son, who he is, what he creates and how he overcomes the roman emperor. 
If the patriarchy arms us with the sword to cut our dependency with the matriarchy, in being born out of the patriarchy this sword is turned into a pen. We must start to coin our words and become authors of our story. When we write from our own individuated perspective, we can see and bring back to life the mother by seeing her and her shadow, we can overcome the empire of the patriarchy by seeing the father and his shadow. 
We can create this distance, that allows us to see, accept and decide what does it mean to us and how can we act upon what we believe in. Because this choice is a free choice and there is more than one alternative.

Andrea

(1) Virginia Woolf, discussing Lewis Carroll's Alice's adventures in Wonderland 

33. Ambiguity and polarisation

Lately, there were a few of completely unrelated news, somehow touching the issue of ambiguity and polarisation particularly in identity-related subjects: gender identity, ethnic identity, religious identity, political identity, national identity or any other label that attempts to qualify the "I am" statement. The news show our difficulty in dealing with ambiguity (with the help of the media and some politicians) and how easy it is to wedge two groups apart. 

Regarding sexuality and gender

On the one hand, a controversy generated by Germaine Greer after she shared her opinion that trans-gender men to female that have been gender reassigned are not women. In her discussion with Kirsty Wark there is no alternative even discussed to the male-female polarity.
By this time, Facebook had already introduced more than 50 possible gender descriptors even adding the option of customise the description, suggest a new one and choosing which pronoun people should use in relation to your gender.
On the opposite side of the globe, in Argentina a different discussion was taking place. Immediately after a law that allowed people to change their gender in their official documentation became effective, people started to complain this binary definition was already old. I'm neither, I'm both, I don't know, I don't want to omit my history, these two polarised classifications don't define me. People even entered in the discussion of the complex realm of sexual identity that is composed by more than one dimension (biological, gender identification, predominant sexual preference, non-predominant sexual preference, etc.) or why should anyone be labelled (an argument that Foucault also discussed).

Regarding ethnicity and cultural integration

In light of the Paris attacks, a new debate emerged discussing the two different models of cultural integration that France and UK have followed: assimilation v multiculturalism, and their failures to avoid having home-grown terrorists. In an article for The Guardian, Kenan Malik reports: 

The French critique on multicultural policies:

Such policies, they claimed, were divisive, failing to create a common set of values or sense of nationhood. As a result, many Muslims were drawn towards Islamism and violence. “Assimilationist” policies, French politicians insisted, avoided the divisive consequences of multiculturalism and allowed every individual to be treated as a citizen, not as a member of a particular racial or cultural group.

Kenan Malik concedes:

Many of the French criticisms of multiculturalism were valid. British policy-makers welcomed diversity, but tried to manage it by putting people into ethnic and cultural boxes, defining individual needs and rights by virtue of the boxes into which people are put, and using those boxes to shape public policy. They treated minority communities as if each were a distinct, homogenous whole, each composed of people all speaking with a single voice, each defined by a singular view of culture and faith. The consequence has been the creation of a more fragmented, tribal society, which has nurtured Islamism. 

In the meantime, in assimilationist France, policies were officially based on tolerance and the  “droit à la differénce” (the right to be different), following Foucault logic of why-the-state-should-label-the-citizens (in fact, by law they cannot collect ethnic statistics) and considering that ethnic classifications are a racist concept that belonged to the past (colonial France or Vichy). As a result, they had little information about the reality of minorities. They did not know that there was higher youth unemployment, they did not know there was more school desertion (that could only be observed when researches quite recently stating to use tangential data as country of origin and country of origin of parents), they did not know that if you presented a CV with an Islamic name it had highly significant chances of being dismissed. They did not know, therefore there was no programme or policy. They did not know either that most immigrants are secular and relatively liberal.

After a big wave of North African immigration came to France and the 2005 banlieue riots happened, France moved towards more active assimilationist policies: imposing common national values, showing hostility against "divisive" symbols (eg religious) whilst making a bit more effort to "appear" diverse in public spaces. It was only in 2006 (!) that the first black news reader was appointed in French TV (TF1-Harry Roselmack).

Neither putting everyone in the same box with the label "equal" -rendering their issues invisible- nor putting the minorities in boxes with the label "different" -different to the majority-, seem to have worked because neither of the approaches was truly accepting of individuality and circumstances. This seems to be particularly true for those with the ambiguity of feeling they belong to the collective identity that somehow rejects them and thus making them feel they don't truly belong (eg the second generation immigrants/passive immigrants, as much as any disfranchised teenager that fantasises with finding the acknowledgement of existence in acts of violence or even -ambiguously- in self destruction).

Syria and the Islamic state

Of course, when we read in The Intercept that ISIS goal is eliminating the grey-zone of coexistence, we are in front of another polarisation attempt and wedging this reaction when a group rejects a minority.  After the Charlie Hebdo attack, the Intercept reports:

"The attack had “further [brought] division to the world,” the group said, boasting that it had polarized society and “eliminated the grayzone,” representing coexistence between religious groups. As a result, it said, Muslims living in the West would soon no longer be welcome in their own societies. Treated with increasing suspicion, distrust and hostility by their fellow citizens as a result of the deadly shooting, Western Muslims would soon be forced to “either apostatize … or they [migrate] to the Islamic State, and thereby escape persecution from the crusader governments and citizens,” the group stated, while threatening of more attacks to come.

They also report that it is the same strategy that Al-Qaeda used in Iraq to wedge a sectarian war:

In a 2004 letter to Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, laid out his proposal for provoking such a conflict, calling for terrorist attacks against the Shiite majority population that would lead to a harsh crackdown on the Sunni minority. In such a scenario, his group could then coerce the Sunni population into viewing it as their only protector. “If we succeed in dragging them into the arena of sectarian war,” Zarqawi wrote, “it will become possible to awaken the inattentive Sunnis as they feel imminent danger and annihilating death.”

Slavoj Zyzec writes for the New Statesman in "We need to talk about Turkey":

This obscure background makes it clear that the “total war” against Isis should not be taken seriously – they don’t really mean it. We are definitely dealing not with the clash of civilisations (the Christian west versus radicalised Islam), but with a clash within each civilisation: in the Christian space it is the US and western Europe against Russia, in the Muslim space it is Sunnis against Shias.

The Heute Show, a German comedy show, has produced a fake advertising for Hasbro's wargame Risk "Syrian edition" claiming to be for 23 to 96 players (you don't need to speak German to understand the point).

Living in Wonderland

We could write forever about the ambiguity of these times where in every action, in every piece of news there are multiple meanings and intentions sometimes conflicting, when we find "everything so strange that nothing is surprising" (Virginia Woolf, discussing Lewis Carroll's Alice's adventures in Wonderland - even though she could perfectly be speaking about Donald Trump).

In a time where the never-ending economic crisis and the need of stabilising mechanisms for the Euro pushes Europe towards more political integration, populist right movements are surging in many countries aiming to go backwards and reclaim sovereignty back from the Union, increasing border controls, etc.

Another clear example of this ambiguity is Saudi Arabia. 

1) They are expanding women's rights (they are holding the first election where women can stand and vote). In an article for the Independent, Brian Murphy reports:

“Saudi Arabia has done a great PR job in selling these elections as part of much-touted reforms,” said Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs. “The reality is that not much changes.”

Whilst also saying:

"Yet to dismiss the elections as mere window dressing also fails to grasp the moment."

2) They are fighting an oil price war apparently against the fracking industry being developed by their ally US that would cut their energy dependence (and their share of the market), but most significantly affecting the Russian economy.

3) They are blocking decisions at the Paris summit, when the middle East is one of the regions that will probably be uninhabitable due to climate change (higher temperature, more sandstorms, more social unrest as we saw in Syria). They admit to a potential future without fossil fuels and attempting to ask for compensation for the loss of future oil income. 

4) Being an ally to the US, it is claimed to be in cohort with Turkey both not being particularly transparent about their interest in fighting ISIS.

Living in ambiguity

I go back to the conclusions of "The ghosts of conflicts past".

A veil that polarises everything into good and bad has many advantages. A world full of nuance and imperfect decisions is uncomfortable, but it is also more real. A world view that can be reduced to the format of a football match with two emperors disputing territories or trying to prove their system better might be easy, even entertaining, but keeps us in the illusion that we are mere spectators. We do not connect to our reality and thus we cannot affect it.This connection with reality is particularly difficult in the fog that the media creates for us trying to feed our sense of identity and belonging for repeating a pre-crafted opinion, that comes with a label pro or anti (in political issues), skipping all the rational argumentation part. We should be able to discuss our own ambiguity. See what Zizek says at min 14 and 39 onwards on the following video:

This veil not only polarises but also fragments. It decouples economy and politics, warfare and arms trade, freedom and the structures that provide opportunity, and probably most importantly past and present.

But if studies show that we find truth in groups, and that the way that thought, science and emerging structures are networks and not trees, that means that each point, each individual, each nation is important. Our own personal perspective might not be "the truth" but it has a purpose and in expressing it, it can help the person next to us to drop his own confirmation bias and vice versa. And for that happening, we should not be all saying the same things, repeating the words of others, aligned and even less, labelled.
I am. No labels.

Andrea

32. History got erased first at home

The silence and invisibility of women affects us all. When history is not told in full, shame and secrecy leave us wordless, unable to name what happens to us, we cannot free ourselves from our past and feel powerless.

Unveiling the hidden history

Dr. Amanda Foreman is working to unveil a part of History that hasn't been told: the history of women. She was behind the four-part series on BBC called “The Ascent of Woman,” telling the story of women in civilization and is about to launch a book , The World Made By Women: A History of Women From the Apple to the Pill, is the story of humanity from the perspective of the female half. And this work to remove the invisibility cape women in History seem to be wearing is amazing.

From an initial herd social structure, a pyramidal, hierarchical structure appears to manage the new found abundance. In this structure the concept of private property emerges and the family structure follows as the pattern to pass on wealth to the next generations. For this, women sexual power needed to be put under control so men would not be raising or passing wealth to children that were not theirs. With shame governing women's sexuality, their voices got silenced. 

In "Women: invisibility or blindness", I've touched upon the issue of how women get erased from History: history of science, art, literature, etc. but suggesting that it is not down to their invisibility but our blindness (all of us, women and men), and this being down to the relationship we establish with our mothers. In our early childhood, she is the narrator, that voice over putting words to events, describing the context. But this story is imperfect, it leaves a lot out. These women, shamed by their own sexual power, made bad historians. Secrets became a survival tactic. History got erased first here. At home. Women invisibility starts with her silence. How many secrets have we discovered in our family tree? How many abortions, extra marital children, pregnancies kept in secret, false birth dates? Without the modern day birth control methods every single family of the world is full with these stories. Have we discovered them yet? 
And if these quite harmless secrets were kept secret, what about the not so harmless ones such as cases of abuse?
This issue goes far beyond a "feminist" problem. When we are not dealing with reality, we cannot affect it.

Experiences lost in time

In this 7-min video from Big Think (please watch it) Dr. Vincent Felitti speaks about his work with childhood trauma, involving 17500 middle-class adults. He found that traumatic life experiences in childhood that are lost in time and further protected by feelings of shame, secrecy and taboo play out powerfully in adulthood and is behind many diseases, emotional states and shortening life expectancy. He found that 1 in 11 (!) in a middle class population have experienced 6 or more of 10 categories of trauma in their childhood. These individuals are 4600% more likely to become drug addicts, and similar increases to the likelihood of attempting suicide. I cannot even imagine what the numbers would look like for deprived populations. The prevalence is incredibly high. 1 in 11 is a number worth pondering on. How many of the kids we went to school with could've been going through these terrible experiences? 

Acknowledging suffering is so important that our bodies and our lives can be hijacked by traumas left unnamed. People may feel that not speaking about something makes it disappear or makes it less real, our silence can sustain a perfect version of our story, time will erase the memory, but in the unconscious there is no time and these feelings are stored in a state of ever-lasting-present. And if regaining the power of our lives is not attractive enough, we have to know that our traumatic experiences can be passed somehow to the next generations, who by copying our behaviour, our coping mechanisms or having to believe a history -that they sense- does not quite add up, they will carry the weight of the trauma without ever understanding where it is coming from. Without transmitting our real story, we are stopping the next generation from learning to see and accept reality.  

I don't think there will be real changes in our lives, or in the world we are living now, without opening Pandora's box. I speak about it in all its different meanings: the box as the uterus (and the feminine voice) and as the container of the things we fear, because there is nothing more toxic than secrets and nothing more healing that letting things breathe.

Andrea

PS: watch what research says about children that know more about their family history: