Eastern Patriarchy

Tuesday, May 9, 2006

I have written about Western patriarchy, but the Far East is no stranger to the same mindset. In fact, it might be possible to assert that the domination of women by men is much stronger in Asian cultures. Women have been kept out of the higher workplace positions...were more or less used as slave labor in the fields and factories while men enjoyed the pleasures and advantages of a life that had been reserved to them. Besides the fields and factories, women were relegated to their other usual tasks...cooking, bearing and raising children.

How far back this attitude goes is indeterminate. Suffice it to say that it is part and parcel of the world of Confucious...and...an examination of the I Ching evinces the fact that patriarchical thinking predates the Confucian era. I sincerely believe that the I Ching and a careful study of it's 64 hexagrams can be instrumental in developing intuitive insights. And, to the extent that it has Taoist components, there are unique and special relationships between the masculine and the feminine that need to be explored.

I certainly do not advocate a blinders approach in which gender is non-existant. What I do support and promote consists of a twofold understanding. Firstly...the expoitation of the feminie by the masculine must be discontinued. In the 21st century, it is neither useful nor accurate and is, for the most part, counterproductive to all endeavors. Secondly...I stongly advocate and end to our binary understanding of gender. To force it to be an either/or scenario is, again, neither useful nor accurate and needs to be abandoned.

Rational and thinking beings are able to adapt, to grow and develop in different directions when their knowledge reaches a quantum stage. Thus, we have expanded our understanding of geometry and accept that the Euclidian model is no longer satisfactory in its ability to explain geometric principles. Or, our understanding of physics has surpassed the atomic model; in fact, physics has, today, surpassed the Einsteinian model. Additionally, our understanding of the scientific method is also undergoing radical changes with respect to the question of what constitutes proof and the questions regarding the role of the experimenter in the experiment.

Why, then, are we unable to push forward in our understanding of gender issues? Well...a large part of the recalcitrance can be attributed to literalistic, reconstructionist interpretations of scripture, both in the East and West. It is time to enter the Aquarian Age and let our humanity guide us, not the rigid shells of dogmatic thinking that were developed in an era when our world views were radically different then they are today.

trickster108