You said: "On my browser, a Pocket recommendation was “What we can learn about America from teenagers.” Why? What should we be learning from those who’ve never taken responsibility for themselves?"
Well, is one thing we could learn from teenagers, and that is how they would have handled the pandemic if they were in charge (and not first dosed with endless fearporn of course): NO LOCKDOWNS. Period. It would have been quite similar to what Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem did, basically. They might have even gotten to live out their ultimate fantasy and "grounded" their parents and/or grandparents for a few weeks "for their own good" to protect them from this very age-stratified virus, while young people went out and rapidly built up herd immunity, rather than stupidly lock everyone down and merely drag out the pandemic longer while doing massive collateral damage. Of course, they would be far too busy partying to enforce the "grounding", lol, so it would really be more of a guideline. But looking at Sweden, Belarus, Tanzania, Nicaragua, and the 12 US states that eschewed lockdowns entirely, plus the ones with only brief and mild lockdowns, who did similarly or better than their stricter neighbors, the teenager's favored approach would have not been any worse at least, and most likely better.
Who would have thunk that one of the wisest people during the entire pandemic was that young college spring breaker in Florida in March 2020 who nonchalantly yet defiantly said, "If I get corona, I get corona"? Well, in the end, he was right. We would all have been better off if cooler heads like his had prevailed.
Yes indeed, we live in a culture that fetishizes youth, but yet also vilifies and marginalizes youth as well depending on the context. It is one of the many strange love-hate relationships of patriarchy.
In honesty, I've learned a lot from teens, I just don't like being told I should.
What my economic system would have enabled, at the beginning of the pandemic, was paying young people on each block to deliver groceries and toilet paper (lol) to older folks. They could also do a daily check-in and see if they needed or wanted a visit from home-care nurses, and delivered ivermectin and Vit D, etc.
After two weeks of home isolation, the whole block would know they were safe and could get together to socialize. Two weeks later, the neighborhood would open up with people cooking for others and having get-togethers. All mortgages and business leases would be deferred (extending their end date but not increasing the payments). Beaches and parks would be opened for local residents only. We'd take a break from travel and get to know our neighbors. We'd homeschool in the 'hood with shared skills and knowledge. It could have been cool.
Of course now we know that would have completely defeated their purpose. But it would have been fun.
Good article overall, Tereza. Especially that brilliant jab at Jordan Peterson at the end. Women are indeed the better half of humanity, and are thus the real natural born leaders. Matriarchy (not to be confused with simply reverse patriarchy!) is thus the only real solution.
Thank you, Ajax! Over on my YT, I have a couple of episodes on Jordan that take a couple more jobs ;-) Overall, though, I like him. Here are the links if you're curious:
I think perhaps the “women are indeed the better half of humanity…” may contribute to the overall problem. As indicated by Eisenstein, the harmony, collaboration and flow of healthy matriarchs with healthy patriarchs makes for a healthy society.
Now the work is healing the matriarch and patriarch within each of us and finding our way home.
Thanks, Kathryn. On one of my other videos, someone was talking about matri-archy still having the 'archon' in it, meaning ruler. So maybe there's a male correlate to the matrix form of the networked feminine. Just as a thought to play with.
Weirdly, just based on the title of your YT video and before I even watched it, I had already decided I would leave a comment about the current Galadriel disaster in Amazon’s “Rings of Power”. Then you mentioned Eisenstein’s comments on that series. (We must be tuned to the same subspace radio transmission from the Orion Nebula.) I don’t often read his substack, but I read his essay and while I find the current woke-ist confusion over gender especially telling about the state of western civilization, that is not exactly what bothered me most about the “Guy-ladriel” controversy (over which at least a couple hundred YouTubers are commenting, the best of which is Critical Drinker).
It may come off as unPC to not go off on a tirade about how monstrous this view of feminine power is and how it maligns the whole concept of matriarchy. But I don’t think it does…at least not in any materialistic way. All material power is the same, whether wielded by a man or a woman. (See George R.R. Martin’s works, not J.R.R. Tolkien’s, for that story.)
Where this series fails, is on the metaphysical level: it has none. There is almost nothing elven about any of the elves, especially Galadriel. She is not only devoid of the feminine mystique, she is devoid of all mystique. She has no magic. And this world has no enchantment. There is no divinity, masculine or feminine, in this series. It is rooted, instead, firmly in the dense materiality of the Amazon corporate boardroom. And materialism is always especially toxic to the divine feminine.
In Tolkien’s magic-infused world, elves were ethereal creatures. Only in our world can one of the largest corporations spend a billion dollars on a story-less, anti-mythical, CGI-intensive series and, unsurprisingly, turn Tolkien's world into just another shiny bauble of imperial soulessness.
I remember reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings by the bathroom light shining down the hallway, laying on the floor of my bedroom with my head in the hall. No wonder my eyes are ruined! It had to have been before I was in high school, that I still had a bedtime.
LotR is one of the most nuanced magical stories ever told. But it's the character of Gollum that makes it so and Bilbo and Frodo's acts of mercy in sparing Gollum. Is that feminine power? After all the battles and violence, it's pity and intuition and relationship that saves Middle Earth.
I love Critical Drinker's moniker, as do a million others. I haven't read GRRM. Should I? I have a theory that masculine sci fi is heavy on the science and technology and feminine is about character development and relationships. What do you think, Jack?
With regard to your theory about masculine and feminine sci-fi, it’s a question I feel totally unqualified to answer. But why let that stop me. Your take seems like an accurate and useful generalization. When I was a kid I consciously read books only by male authors (which was easy because that was the vast majority of writers in those days) because they wrote about men stuff. Then I had this funny experience: I especially liked Andre Norton’s juvenile books and was shocked after reading a slew of his novels to find out Andre was a woman (Andre Alice Norton). That upset my twelve-year-old apple cart, and became my first recognition of issues of feminine and masculine in writing styles and subjects...and in everything else. Then I read The Wizard of Earthsea and loved it. However, I never found another Le Guin novel I liked as much. Was that because she focused on character development and relationships? Maybe, though my conscious reason was because I find her other books too “anthropological”, which I prefer delivered in nonfiction, but also because when it comes to storytelling, I’m an Aristotelian, i.e., there has to be an action. And I found her plots too internal (which is no doubt a completely stereotypical male thing for my generation). This is why I tend to enjoy genre fiction more than most literary fiction. Ultimately, I suppose I find these breakdowns between feminine and masculine—in everything, not just literature—prone to overgeneralization and anti-individualist (which is probably also an overgeneralization). Also, just from the perspective of someone who has probably taken too many writing classes, I find character development integral and inseparable from story development; I need both in perfect balance.
Regarding George Martin’s books, I’ve only read the first three GOT novels, which were like Tolkien if Tolkien had been raised by syphilitic whores who followed dark-age rabble armies of murderers and rapists across Europe. In terms of the four elements (my own favored type of literary analysis), Martin’s fantasy is an extremely rich mixture of earth mainly (soaked in blood), and fire (dragons), and ice (white walkers), ample airiness (the Citadel Library and the prominent role of Maesters), but with only a few glistening drops of liquid water (deep spirit) which somehow makes those drops seem most important. Is that masculine or feminine? I’d say it is both in heaping quantities too large to digest, or I’d just call it divine human. I haven’t found a better exploration of worldly power in any other works of literature. Should you read it? Yes. But do I recommend it? No.
So you ARE a writer, Jack. Your skill with words isn't just from being a voracious reader.
I also loved The WoE but The Left Hand of Darkness has informed my thinking on the nuances of political power and how to manipulate it without being a 'player.' Much as I love LeGuin, I've gotten bogged down in some of the future-primitive like Always Coming Home and the poetry is a slog, for me.
I don't cut a clear distinction between male and female writers writing masculine or feminine sci fi. Plenty of men have plots that go nowhere and women write cardboard cut-outs. Masculine-feminine started my thinking about third paradigms and false dichotomies. More of one didn't correlate to less of the other if they were qualities (i.e. rational/ intuitive) and not inverse quantities (strong/ weak).
I have Orson Scott Card's book on Character & Viewpoint on my bedside table. Some of his characters, like Speaker for the Dead, have always stuck with me. I also don't find that what I mean necessarily correlates with a female protagonist--Galadriel as Amazon-rendered perhaps being a case in point.
So why even make the generalization? It helps me figure out why I'm left dissatisfied by ones that are all plot, no believable personality. So by that, I think we agree.
Your GRRM description really made me laugh. I'll look for it the next time I'm at the bookstore in a mood for dark power spelunking ;-)
This is a very worthwhile topic and I will study your whole article closely. Thank-you.
About, hells-bells, must of been about 16 years ago I made acquaintance with a fella, I think he was out of the northeast part of the us of a, and he was well traveled and an expert on the Minoan civilization in Crete. I believe in that civilization they took Matriarch's seriously and the ladies there had much authority. It made for better balance - too bad the Minoan Cretes got wiped out.....
I'll read it all and thanks for your efforts.
So far, a new day has always arisen and the sun shines day after day and I doubt that is gonna change anytime soon - only question left is who will be left to feel the sun.
So what my friend shared, and I could go back and find the emails specific on this, and maybe I should, was that the Minoan women, who made it to Matriarch level, did not "rule" the country but they were strong women and firm in resolve. In essence, they didn't put up with any shit. At the same time, that is dependent upon specific Matriarch's and specific times they were in position of authority granted.
So everybody was getting along supposedly, but then an outside force, one out of anybody's control, an act of God some might speculate, resulted in the Minoan culture being decimated and relegated to obscure study of history students emerging later......and is it not a shame in a way, or was it all planned in the first place?
Hells-bells if I know, but the ladies lately some of em got so much to offer but some of these "head girl" types are just so tiring.....so I don't know other than I know this....time moves on and I think we need both the fellas and the ladies in the future and I think one is a fella and another a lady and basically all babies are born one or the other, and I think the confusion around this lately is just so harmful for everybody and I don't understand why it needs to be as so.
I think it time for better ideas and oh if the Minoan matriarchs could be around today to help wise decisions being made or that need to be made, but they aren't, so we are just going to have to figure it out for ourselves I reckon.
What is kind of funny and what I sort of like about Substack is you can get this feedback seemingly out of nowhere, but I know better and the Minoan ladies did as well I think. So, I think it is a shame of sorts that their ideology seems to have been lost - my friend was a serious student of the culture and he shared with me his thoughts and ideas and I really ought go back and dig those emails out, and maybe one day I will, but what matters to me most just now is the future and it seems most precarious indeed.
The alleged heresy of the Knights Templar (which led to the dissolution of the organization and many being burned at the stake) was that they worshipped Baphomet. One wonders if that was considered especially egregious because of that imagined creature's sex.
Great essay. I am still stuck at places like healthy cultures support evolutions and unhealthy cultures support death. I've written about this. The Ouroboros. But one of the things I really like is how Russell Means speaks to the interdependence of men and women. 2nd video. I highly value distilling complex thoughts into simple form. I believe Means expressed this well. There is much complexity to be understood as well as you express. Will write about this down the road.
And near the end, of this video, accepting grief associated with the changes we, as humans and society, are going through https://youtu.be/86cEx7gXApo
You know that my bias is soil health for climate change mitigation and food security, in that field, almost all the leaders are women - each in their own way confronting the $158B agrichemical industry to create change.
I have been thinking about the sacred masculine and sacred feminine, to counter the Trans and the woke. You have given me some things to ponder. Thank you.
Just one mild point of contention:
You said: "On my browser, a Pocket recommendation was “What we can learn about America from teenagers.” Why? What should we be learning from those who’ve never taken responsibility for themselves?"
Well, is one thing we could learn from teenagers, and that is how they would have handled the pandemic if they were in charge (and not first dosed with endless fearporn of course): NO LOCKDOWNS. Period. It would have been quite similar to what Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem did, basically. They might have even gotten to live out their ultimate fantasy and "grounded" their parents and/or grandparents for a few weeks "for their own good" to protect them from this very age-stratified virus, while young people went out and rapidly built up herd immunity, rather than stupidly lock everyone down and merely drag out the pandemic longer while doing massive collateral damage. Of course, they would be far too busy partying to enforce the "grounding", lol, so it would really be more of a guideline. But looking at Sweden, Belarus, Tanzania, Nicaragua, and the 12 US states that eschewed lockdowns entirely, plus the ones with only brief and mild lockdowns, who did similarly or better than their stricter neighbors, the teenager's favored approach would have not been any worse at least, and most likely better.
Who would have thunk that one of the wisest people during the entire pandemic was that young college spring breaker in Florida in March 2020 who nonchalantly yet defiantly said, "If I get corona, I get corona"? Well, in the end, he was right. We would all have been better off if cooler heads like his had prevailed.
Yes indeed, we live in a culture that fetishizes youth, but yet also vilifies and marginalizes youth as well depending on the context. It is one of the many strange love-hate relationships of patriarchy.
In honesty, I've learned a lot from teens, I just don't like being told I should.
What my economic system would have enabled, at the beginning of the pandemic, was paying young people on each block to deliver groceries and toilet paper (lol) to older folks. They could also do a daily check-in and see if they needed or wanted a visit from home-care nurses, and delivered ivermectin and Vit D, etc.
After two weeks of home isolation, the whole block would know they were safe and could get together to socialize. Two weeks later, the neighborhood would open up with people cooking for others and having get-togethers. All mortgages and business leases would be deferred (extending their end date but not increasing the payments). Beaches and parks would be opened for local residents only. We'd take a break from travel and get to know our neighbors. We'd homeschool in the 'hood with shared skills and knowledge. It could have been cool.
Of course now we know that would have completely defeated their purpose. But it would have been fun.
Good article overall, Tereza. Especially that brilliant jab at Jordan Peterson at the end. Women are indeed the better half of humanity, and are thus the real natural born leaders. Matriarchy (not to be confused with simply reverse patriarchy!) is thus the only real solution.
Thank you, Ajax! Over on my YT, I have a couple of episodes on Jordan that take a couple more jobs ;-) Overall, though, I like him. Here are the links if you're curious:
The Divine Feminine: https://youtu.be/ja_ADXTe7G4
and Waking the Dragon Mom: https://youtu.be/E7IxL3WOf1w
You're very welcome. Thanks, I will check them out :)
Thank you for your thoughts.
I think perhaps the “women are indeed the better half of humanity…” may contribute to the overall problem. As indicated by Eisenstein, the harmony, collaboration and flow of healthy matriarchs with healthy patriarchs makes for a healthy society.
Now the work is healing the matriarch and patriarch within each of us and finding our way home.
Thanks, Kathryn. On one of my other videos, someone was talking about matri-archy still having the 'archon' in it, meaning ruler. So maybe there's a male correlate to the matrix form of the networked feminine. Just as a thought to play with.
Weirdly, just based on the title of your YT video and before I even watched it, I had already decided I would leave a comment about the current Galadriel disaster in Amazon’s “Rings of Power”. Then you mentioned Eisenstein’s comments on that series. (We must be tuned to the same subspace radio transmission from the Orion Nebula.) I don’t often read his substack, but I read his essay and while I find the current woke-ist confusion over gender especially telling about the state of western civilization, that is not exactly what bothered me most about the “Guy-ladriel” controversy (over which at least a couple hundred YouTubers are commenting, the best of which is Critical Drinker).
It may come off as unPC to not go off on a tirade about how monstrous this view of feminine power is and how it maligns the whole concept of matriarchy. But I don’t think it does…at least not in any materialistic way. All material power is the same, whether wielded by a man or a woman. (See George R.R. Martin’s works, not J.R.R. Tolkien’s, for that story.)
Where this series fails, is on the metaphysical level: it has none. There is almost nothing elven about any of the elves, especially Galadriel. She is not only devoid of the feminine mystique, she is devoid of all mystique. She has no magic. And this world has no enchantment. There is no divinity, masculine or feminine, in this series. It is rooted, instead, firmly in the dense materiality of the Amazon corporate boardroom. And materialism is always especially toxic to the divine feminine.
In Tolkien’s magic-infused world, elves were ethereal creatures. Only in our world can one of the largest corporations spend a billion dollars on a story-less, anti-mythical, CGI-intensive series and, unsurprisingly, turn Tolkien's world into just another shiny bauble of imperial soulessness.
I remember reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings by the bathroom light shining down the hallway, laying on the floor of my bedroom with my head in the hall. No wonder my eyes are ruined! It had to have been before I was in high school, that I still had a bedtime.
LotR is one of the most nuanced magical stories ever told. But it's the character of Gollum that makes it so and Bilbo and Frodo's acts of mercy in sparing Gollum. Is that feminine power? After all the battles and violence, it's pity and intuition and relationship that saves Middle Earth.
I love Critical Drinker's moniker, as do a million others. I haven't read GRRM. Should I? I have a theory that masculine sci fi is heavy on the science and technology and feminine is about character development and relationships. What do you think, Jack?
With regard to your theory about masculine and feminine sci-fi, it’s a question I feel totally unqualified to answer. But why let that stop me. Your take seems like an accurate and useful generalization. When I was a kid I consciously read books only by male authors (which was easy because that was the vast majority of writers in those days) because they wrote about men stuff. Then I had this funny experience: I especially liked Andre Norton’s juvenile books and was shocked after reading a slew of his novels to find out Andre was a woman (Andre Alice Norton). That upset my twelve-year-old apple cart, and became my first recognition of issues of feminine and masculine in writing styles and subjects...and in everything else. Then I read The Wizard of Earthsea and loved it. However, I never found another Le Guin novel I liked as much. Was that because she focused on character development and relationships? Maybe, though my conscious reason was because I find her other books too “anthropological”, which I prefer delivered in nonfiction, but also because when it comes to storytelling, I’m an Aristotelian, i.e., there has to be an action. And I found her plots too internal (which is no doubt a completely stereotypical male thing for my generation). This is why I tend to enjoy genre fiction more than most literary fiction. Ultimately, I suppose I find these breakdowns between feminine and masculine—in everything, not just literature—prone to overgeneralization and anti-individualist (which is probably also an overgeneralization). Also, just from the perspective of someone who has probably taken too many writing classes, I find character development integral and inseparable from story development; I need both in perfect balance.
Regarding George Martin’s books, I’ve only read the first three GOT novels, which were like Tolkien if Tolkien had been raised by syphilitic whores who followed dark-age rabble armies of murderers and rapists across Europe. In terms of the four elements (my own favored type of literary analysis), Martin’s fantasy is an extremely rich mixture of earth mainly (soaked in blood), and fire (dragons), and ice (white walkers), ample airiness (the Citadel Library and the prominent role of Maesters), but with only a few glistening drops of liquid water (deep spirit) which somehow makes those drops seem most important. Is that masculine or feminine? I’d say it is both in heaping quantities too large to digest, or I’d just call it divine human. I haven’t found a better exploration of worldly power in any other works of literature. Should you read it? Yes. But do I recommend it? No.
So you ARE a writer, Jack. Your skill with words isn't just from being a voracious reader.
I also loved The WoE but The Left Hand of Darkness has informed my thinking on the nuances of political power and how to manipulate it without being a 'player.' Much as I love LeGuin, I've gotten bogged down in some of the future-primitive like Always Coming Home and the poetry is a slog, for me.
I don't cut a clear distinction between male and female writers writing masculine or feminine sci fi. Plenty of men have plots that go nowhere and women write cardboard cut-outs. Masculine-feminine started my thinking about third paradigms and false dichotomies. More of one didn't correlate to less of the other if they were qualities (i.e. rational/ intuitive) and not inverse quantities (strong/ weak).
I have Orson Scott Card's book on Character & Viewpoint on my bedside table. Some of his characters, like Speaker for the Dead, have always stuck with me. I also don't find that what I mean necessarily correlates with a female protagonist--Galadriel as Amazon-rendered perhaps being a case in point.
So why even make the generalization? It helps me figure out why I'm left dissatisfied by ones that are all plot, no believable personality. So by that, I think we agree.
Your GRRM description really made me laugh. I'll look for it the next time I'm at the bookstore in a mood for dark power spelunking ;-)
This is a very worthwhile topic and I will study your whole article closely. Thank-you.
About, hells-bells, must of been about 16 years ago I made acquaintance with a fella, I think he was out of the northeast part of the us of a, and he was well traveled and an expert on the Minoan civilization in Crete. I believe in that civilization they took Matriarch's seriously and the ladies there had much authority. It made for better balance - too bad the Minoan Cretes got wiped out.....
I'll read it all and thanks for your efforts.
So far, a new day has always arisen and the sun shines day after day and I doubt that is gonna change anytime soon - only question left is who will be left to feel the sun.
Peace,
Ken
Very true indeed.
So what my friend shared, and I could go back and find the emails specific on this, and maybe I should, was that the Minoan women, who made it to Matriarch level, did not "rule" the country but they were strong women and firm in resolve. In essence, they didn't put up with any shit. At the same time, that is dependent upon specific Matriarch's and specific times they were in position of authority granted.
So everybody was getting along supposedly, but then an outside force, one out of anybody's control, an act of God some might speculate, resulted in the Minoan culture being decimated and relegated to obscure study of history students emerging later......and is it not a shame in a way, or was it all planned in the first place?
Hells-bells if I know, but the ladies lately some of em got so much to offer but some of these "head girl" types are just so tiring.....so I don't know other than I know this....time moves on and I think we need both the fellas and the ladies in the future and I think one is a fella and another a lady and basically all babies are born one or the other, and I think the confusion around this lately is just so harmful for everybody and I don't understand why it needs to be as so.
I think it time for better ideas and oh if the Minoan matriarchs could be around today to help wise decisions being made or that need to be made, but they aren't, so we are just going to have to figure it out for ourselves I reckon.
What do you think?
BK
Yes, agree. Find the mythology with Ariadne, the Bull, the labyrinth very truthful. Follow the threads. They do lead somewhere.
What is kind of funny and what I sort of like about Substack is you can get this feedback seemingly out of nowhere, but I know better and the Minoan ladies did as well I think. So, I think it is a shame of sorts that their ideology seems to have been lost - my friend was a serious student of the culture and he shared with me his thoughts and ideas and I really ought go back and dig those emails out, and maybe one day I will, but what matters to me most just now is the future and it seems most precarious indeed.
It's a man's world
Women make the world go round
The alleged heresy of the Knights Templar (which led to the dissolution of the organization and many being burned at the stake) was that they worshipped Baphomet. One wonders if that was considered especially egregious because of that imagined creature's sex.
Great essay. I am still stuck at places like healthy cultures support evolutions and unhealthy cultures support death. I've written about this. The Ouroboros. But one of the things I really like is how Russell Means speaks to the interdependence of men and women. 2nd video. I highly value distilling complex thoughts into simple form. I believe Means expressed this well. There is much complexity to be understood as well as you express. Will write about this down the road.
I'll look forward to reading your piece, KW. Do you have a link for the Means video?
https://open.substack.com/pub/kwnorton/p/i-an-only-a-small-percentage-native?r=boqs0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Second video. Let me know if it fails to link.
Hi Tereza -
I'm guessing you saw these, but in case you didn't, some thoughts on
forgiveness https://tessa.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-forgiveness
tolerance https://medium.com/@auntiegrav/fight-bad-systems-not-people-stuck-in-them-92da855469e3
forgiveness https://medium.com/discourse/surround-yourself-with-bright-positive-glowing-people-and-lighten-up-9379c0b18808
tolerance https://medium.com/predict/super-organism-as-suicide-7fa216cd6601
And near the end, of this video, accepting grief associated with the changes we, as humans and society, are going through https://youtu.be/86cEx7gXApo
You know that my bias is soil health for climate change mitigation and food security, in that field, almost all the leaders are women - each in their own way confronting the $158B agrichemical industry to create change.
Thanks, I read Tessa's article but not the ones on Medium. And yes, you and I strongly share that bias ;-)
I have been thinking about the sacred masculine and sacred feminine, to counter the Trans and the woke. You have given me some things to ponder. Thank you.