I am still kind of not done with those recent big ecotrain questions about patriarchy, matriarchy, ideal society. Something is still bubbling inside, trying to express itself. I guess it´s that there are just too many angles and facets to those topics to express all my thoughts about them in one go.
So today I wanted to write an article about Kurdish feminism but it sort of got hijacked by some thoughts about power itself. Funny, how the monkey mind sometimes refuses to give up its grip on power.
Hanging on to power with Theresa May
The fighting women of the YPJ, the Women´s Defense Units in Rojava have got a lot of attention from the Western media in recent years, because women with guns always make for nice footage.
Many Western feminists applaud them for breaking into what is conceived by them as one of the last bastions of masculinity, that of armed combat.
However, if you watch interviews with YPJ women you will see that they don´t have much sympathies for Western feminism which they see as divisive, as another trick of capitalism to make women compete with men according to the rules of capitalism instead of creating a new society together, the old divide and rule game.
According to the belief system of the YPJ you cannot overcome patriarchy and sexism without overcoming capitalism.
I sort of agree.
In capitalism a man can be the biggest loser, some poor alcoholic, but as long as he has a wife to boss around, as long as he can play patriarch at home, the system provides him with some power over another human being, so he does not feel too bad about himself.
Also using women and children as a labour reserve army which can be employed at lower costs is always one of the capitalists´ favourites.
But also communism is not exactly known for allowing women to rise to the very top, among the big names of communism, like Lenin, Trotzki, Stalin, Mao, etc there is also no woman.
And I guess an alcoholic factory worker under the toxic influence of communism can be also rather unpleasant to his wife.
So apparently there must be some deeper issues there than just a political system. Patriarchy has been around for a few thousand years and it has produced all kinds of systems, like monarchy, fascism, feudalism whatever, so patriarchy is not only a system of men ruling over women, but also of a few powerful men (or women) ruling over other men, but granting those ruled men the right to at least rule over the women in their family, so being ruled by other men becomes more bearable.
So at the core of the patriarchal system is power over other humans itself, the idea to divide humanity into the rulers and the ruled. So to attack and destroy patriarchy one must look at power itself.
The Power (Official Video)
In a new paradigm power must be seen as just a tool to do good for the community, not an end in itself. Attempts must be made to spread power and decision-making as evenly as possible, respectively there must be mechanisms in place where people who, out of necessity, practicality, lazyness or whatever reason, chose to relinquish their power to some leader, committee, governing body, representing body or whatever must be able take that power away (because what was given can and must be taken away sometimes) in a heartbeat, so that power cannot consolidate, take on a life of its own, as happens in all states, whatever the system.
The knowledge that power can be taken away at any moment (like a hammer out of a toddler´s hands when he starts breaking his toys with it) should make for wise leaders who act in the interest of the common good, who see the power invested in them as a sign of trust which must be earned on a daily basis, as an honour to be able to serve their community.
I think it is human nature that there will always be leaders and followers because we are not all the same. There are those who dare to go where no one has gone before and those who are just happy to listen to the surviving heroine´s stories by the camp fire and then maybe, sometimes very reluctantly, follow to see if the grass is really greener on the other side, or choose to stay put, being happy with the grass they already got.
To deny this reality, to mix up humanity in a stale uniform stew of levelling egalitarianism has never worked, because it hampers the heroes and stresses out the camp fire guys.
But in a free society there would be no fixed roles, you could be heroine when it comes to one thing and camp fire guy the next day with some other thing, no need to be heroic all the time to be a leader.
Like some Native American tribes had one chief for times of war and another one for times of peace, because obviously very different qualities are needed in different situations, so leadership becomes a fluid state, not a God-given leading to consolidation and accumulation of power and all the abuse and corruption that comes with it, especially in case the position of power gets challenged.
Mama rulez!
@ecotrain
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Well spoken,power is transient and the earlier most of our leaders see this as a reality, the better their sense of reasoning will be shaped.There is no gainsaying that a lot of abnormalities have been recorded due to the unpleasant system called political system that has been hijacked by some self centered and greedy politicians who ridiculed the principles of leadership most especially this age
I do not believe that capitalism or communism really have anything to do with this type of behavior, it is something that must really be focused on the moral issue.
On the other hand, I do not believe in that dichotomy between patriarchy or matriarchy, the social structure is always the same and it is something that we can not change, it can take many different forms, but like a hive of bees or ants, human society has a hierarchical organization that repeats itself constantly.