China Roses, by Enya

 

 A. The Eternal Feminine – A Simple-minded Dick-Free Zone or a 21st Century Joan of Arc?

Humans are on a dream-filled death march. Led by non-negotiable, masculine-behaving, lust for power, forgetful of others, social personality. This icon represents the essence of the species and its leadership. It is also out of touch with its context.

Men somehow gained the leading role in defining what is human, including a manly war against all that is natural and non-rational. This is seen in all religious teachings including the strange “Christian garden of Eden”  story. It is also apparent in sporting events in America. It is perhaps most clearly depicted in the images of feminine servitude in Russian and Japanese porno movies?

Men seeking power over all things, especially that which they do not understand, has come to be shown as the essential trait of being manly where being “manly” is key to acting like a leader; i.e., acting like Donald Trump. Some mothers, perhaps Donald’s mother, encourage this attitude via their misplaced encouragement of sons learning to behave like idiots.

A Manly Attitude as The Manifest Destiny

A small but growing number of women, and some men, now sense this as a death march of a species towards an undesirable and probable end state.  Is there a way to turn away? The Foundation management is not overly optimistic but feels a need to change the trajectory.  In this context we work towards an alternative leadership. It might come to be our last best hope for systems of living order, perhaps the order of life.  To illustrate this we need only look at our context of a confused and confusing mental state seen in the vacuous manliness of a Donald Trump. He obviously is not a leader but what is he leading?

Is there an alternative set of values and an attitude to provide humans with leadership towards a desirable end state?  is there a healthier approach to life and living order, one more inclusive of themes such as Carl Sagan’s quest to examine the human role in the Cosmos, even if trivial.

Should we allow conflicted social groups and/or strange mental states to assume leadership roles via attitudes we don’t like or can’t understand?  Is the species out of control?  Herein we question the values and attitudes now driving humans towards an unwanted and undesirable end state. To be more direct can we begin to rethink the masculine attitude for conflict and against the conflicted? Ernst Becker describes the situation quite clearly in his 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning “Denial of Death.” The seeking of immortality projects to deny death’s role in the natural course of life seems more like the doorway to evil then the path to progress. The emergent end state may well be the projected use of nuclear bombs by out-of-control men with small hands like as “Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un”.  Somehow democracy and masochism seem able to arrive at similar ends.

Just now it seems unlikely that the “manly mind” will turn from the conflicted consequences of destroying an environment on which life depends. The masculine is now seen via the small fingered mentality of  “Donald and Kim.” Their followers seem incapable of seeing them as unfortunate by-products from a war on the outer and inner nature of humans. Sanity depends on natural reconciliation.

Immortality Projects from Mental Cases

 

 

The More Feminine Approach to Being

 

 

The Leadershit Problem, How did we Get Here?

Allowing Societal Low Points to Act as Leaders? Shame on Us.

In the 19th Century man industrialized his war against nature, including the nature in women. In the 20th Century the results of mechanization became more applied to the need for conflict as seen in war against nature and the nature seen in other humans we came to dislike. During the 21st Century expanded mechanization is applied to the war against the nature in ourselves. The results appear dumb, then humorous, then devastating.  The end state is clear unless business as usual is changed.

While humans were thought to be a smarter  species, at least in the human mind, we appear to be not so smart. We now seem more evidence of being self-organized into a death march for our planet’s occupants. Via a peculiar form of representational government we strive to make others believe we are a “democracy.”  Until voters are allowed to mark “None of the Above” the democratic dimension limited to those with enough money to nominate leaders.  We now have arrived at an icon of humanity’s low point in governance. “Donald” is not the problem. He is only an early indicated of the troubles in all those “manly” followers who aspire to be just like him and women who long to just be near him.

This has been an evolutionary phenomena. It can be seen in the human evolution of was might best be called business as usual. Via the promises give to humans, by humans, from ever more industrialization we bought into a masculine myth. We have even organized public education around the myth of the machine. Universities via business-like motives evolved to even bring executives and their union adversaries to campus. As such they lead the university as an enterprise. Therein the myth of a place to encourage an endless search for knowledge and wisdom turns into a short-term professionally segmented trade school for corporate employment. Increasingly, companies themselves show they can do a better job of this end. Organization to build more knowledge and have glimpses of wisdom are lost.

We truly need true alternatives to society business as usual, including new kinds of education. We do not claim the search for and rediscovery of the Eternal Feminine as a guiding myth for better leadership is our last best hope but it increasingly looks to be so.

It is a part of a wide-spread search for better ways for we humans to relate to each other, our world and ultimately ourselves. This understanding provides a basis upon which processes seek results, begin, run their course, encounter problems, end, then have consequences.  Where we are lucky we understand the consequences of results prior to beginning, then change our plans. This requires knowledge which knows the differences that makes a difference. Unfortunately, we are mostly unsure of what difference means? Herein, we look to the differences between the feminine and masculine, their differing ideas about values and desired end states. We then ask which set of values and end states is most appropriate to the challenges we face, challenges humans have never before confronted.

What is our end game?  Locked into a severely limited brain, practicing  disabling management systems supported by technological potential that can end life on the earth we have troubles facing us. How can we better see these troubles, as well as better responses?

 

Ultimate Endgame, Is your shelter stocked?

The feminine perspective on life and living is presented and developed herein. It is to see if the values guiding the feminine perspective offers a better end game.   We assume values guide our pathways of thinking and our ways of behaving. As such they are fundamental to creating context and understanding what we have created, then escaping from parts of it. Feminine values are different from those of the masculine.

Different from dictates of the masculine to disregard obstacles the potentials of feminine sensitivity  instead invites reflection prior to action. Now we need a way out from centuries of masculine leadership that has been absent of reflection. The consequences that now loom are deadly. This is not a focus on the differences between men and women but the differences in the values that motivate. Of course some women illustrate a masculine perspective while some men exhibit a feminine perspective. Thus we pursue the idea of the eternal feminine, and their values.

“The eternal feminine is a psychological archetype or philosophical principle that idealized an immutable concept of “woman”.  It is one component of gender essentialism, the belief that men and women have different core “essences” that cannot be altered by time or environment.” (http:..en.wikipedia.org/wki/enternal_feminine)

The Foundation’s mission is to tap into the feminine and the difference it allows for an end state. We wish to see if can make a difference to improving our relations to our various worlds via a wider perspective on who we are and what we shall become. We believe the female perspective on life offers a difference that can be very helpful and make a difference to living systems.

Institutions are based in time and space, where the space of the Foundation is seen in the action in its two urban settings, Shanghai and New York, and its two rural retreats for reflection in the Eastern and Midwestern United States.  These give a sense of the basis of and futures to be discovered in the Foundation. All institutions need a symbol, an icon of what they protect as they eternally become.

Joan of Arc, a timeless Icon, by Leonard Cohen

An eternal symbol of femininity in the west is Joan of Arc. Born into a peasant family in France she grew to be leader of the French army that defeated the English at Orleans. Captured, found guilty of heresy, she was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431 by the English. 500 years later she became canonized as a Catholic Saint. Mark Twain declared that Joan was: “By far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced.”  Joan of Arc, at age 19 she was burned at the stake for heresy by religious English idiots for beating them in a battle of the 100 years war.

From Feminine Mystery to Human Mastery

Human intelligence clearly has limits. These limits arise from many sources, including the limits of the rational, where it is perceived as more real than the non-rational, and represents much more of human reality. The mysteries of the non-rational are captivating. In that the rational represents 10% of reality and the non-rational represents 90% there is much more to consider. Stephen Hawking clearly illustrates this in his work. Several of his casual comments offer an inviting doorway in the mysteries of life. Via a touch of Hawking humor we see a “doorway into the eternal feminine.”

He was responding to a “New Scientist” interviewer when he argued how humans need to move to colonize other planets. He could see how “manly” actions were creating an uninhabitable location via global warming and the emerging nuclear warfare.

At the interview’s end Professor Hawking was asked of his deepest concern for the human condition in responding to the interviewer:

“You’d be forgiven for thinking that Professor Hawking spends most of his waking hours thinking about these cosmic subjects…. but, when he was asked what most preoccupied him he replied, ‘Women. They are a complete mystery.’ “

Dr. Hawking on End-games

Dr. Hawking thus takes us to the doorway of the Eternal Feminine. His concern is very hopeful to further investigation into the feminine.  Other great men had related feelings about women, and how special they were, but not knowing what to do about them? Paul Valery fits into this with his summation on how women are special:

“An intelligent woman is woman with whom one can be as stupid as one wants.”

 The Foundation is set up to tap into the insights of the female perspective, to give insights into a perspective that may redirect human activity. Herein is a forum and a voice for experimentation and development of ideas about life and living via the eternal feminine.

 

“The mysterious feminine,” that scares Dr. Hawking

The foundation’s mission is to get beyond women as mystery and arrive at an agenda where they can demonstrate a new form of mastery. Females can show a different leadership capability for our species. Perhaps they can best forestall the consequences of what men have brought to systems of life.

Failing in this we hope to lessen  the consequences of some of the manly effects from what Hawking points to as the end state of our species managed by manly directives.

Mythology stands at the core of current societal beliefs about females in society. The late Professor Joseph Campbell of Princeton University was very clear as to how myths come to structure society. Professor David Hawk used this work to thus argue that many societies operate via outdated, dangerous myths. These are in urgent need updating: e.g., the American myth of the eagle as the pioneer of land acquisition flying on high with unrestricted freedom of movement and taking. Hawk has lectured that the”eagle” is coming in for a landing in current reality. The question is will he bump along the ground or crash? An ungraded myth of relevance is needed. This is the case in all societies in all times. Note: A myth does not need to be true, but is used to reinforce accepted truths.

The myth of women’s reduced role in society, as drawn from those writing the protestant Bible, provides a prime example. The subjugation of women to men’s desires is relatively recent to human affairs. It gains legitimization from religious teachings of the last two thousand years from the Bible and related writings. Support for this thesis can also be seen in virtually all religious books as composed by men during two thousand years. It was further supported by extensive distribution of the written word via the invention of the printing press in the 15th Century.

One dominant religious teaching is seen in the story line of the Garden of Eden via the need of men in early Christianity.  In that story humans came to be banned from paradise due to a woman’s dishonesty, thus relegating her to an unfortunate status. Via and early Faustian bargain she got humans banned from paradise by seducing an honorable but weaker man attracted to her stimulating sex. As such the scriptures circumscribe a sad role for women in the Christian community. Other religious groupings followed in a similar manner, or even towards a lower status.

In the Beginning there was Light, then, via the Bible, there came Dark:

“For the man is not of the woman, but the woman is of the man. Let the woman keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commended to be under obedience , so saith the law. And if they learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.” (I Corinthians 11:3, 7, 9)

Boys, why must they say such ugly things about and to me?

 

It is hard to recover from these edicts, but if the Foundation is to help our species recover we need to get over such “religious teachings”.

Instead we need to take note of the reality of motherhood and its central role in being the basis for the eternal. The process of Motherhood is basic to the eternal and at the center of the feminine.

We see the potential of the feminine most clearly in the eyes of young girls, in the sparkles of their curiosity and delight.  In their eyes we see the new possibilities for living in the life if the species. It is optimism without restraint. The beauty in their eyes offers openings to the beauty in their minds. Therein is revealed the variety of the human mind. Therein we see apprehension, self-assurance, love of life and concern for others.  Much hope is seen in what should and could be.

The dreams lying in the eternal feminine offer a key resource to our collective future. The girls have a vision of a better society, one that knows the right things to do and knows how to do them better. All they need is the opportunity to turn from learning to do the wrong things and how to do them every more efficiently.

There is a story in each young girl, a story that begs to be told and perhaps even realized. The little girls below exemplify our hope. The point to the hope while illustrating the variety.  This Foundation is created to tap into their most neglected potential, as society is in urgent need of it.  We only hope that you will have interest, listen to and support our work to make use of their largely untapped potential. They have much to say that is different.

The sadness is that with age comes recognition that the vision of the feminine is devalued, it is seen as irrelevant or even in opposition to business as usual. The female comes to see how she is laughed at or simply ignored. They sadly see how business as usual is ignorance of the natural processes behind living, learning, loving and life, but that they have little control over business as usual.  In being kept from the edge of human reality they become discouraged. In their discouragement something unfortunate happens. Their hope and curiosity becomes dimmed. They see a world not of their liking, their making or their ability to change.

Two Sisters: one Curious, one Confident

 This third sister has her own attitude towards reality and how to relate to it. This one reads much and loves books but then lays them down to go off to read people instead.  She offers a third approach to doing things differently. She sees how young boys are given preference, given authority, even encouraged to experiment, to try new things, to so what they like and avoid what they don’t like. She sees how boys are encouraged to experiment in life, even with young girls like her, while girls, like her, are to resist the advances of boys, if they want to be seen as “good.”

Educated to simply put up with and adapt to the unfair girls are drawn into the seeming forever entrapment of what is. Girls are thus drawn into a definition of life at odds with what they know to be better, even perhaps right. They see business as usual defined as the unnatural, the non-feminine. The see the current state as in opposition to systems of living order. Cynicism dims their souls. The soul flickers, while anger emerges.

The Curious, the Confident, then the Reflective

Entombed in a world-view not of their creating or choosing they see strictly enforced limits on experimenting with life. They see a world of men that for a variety of reasons has gone naturally wrong. They see some men having declared war on the nature of which they are an integral part, and whose well-being they depend upon. Perhaps the greatest sadness awaiting the girls as they age is to see how their colleagues in life, the young boys, are educated to disrespect larger systems of nature and life.

The feminine deals with the emotional interacting with the environmental, not the rational seeking to control the environment.  The emotional exceeds human physicality while the physical defines limitations of humans and their environment. The feminine, in its eternal form, thus offers a significant resource for change of our species.

Hope for change is seen in how the current business-as-usual ideas and practices are failing, even leading to difficult to solve consequences to the commons we all rely on for life and living. The stability in two hundred years of industrialization now presents us with the incredible instabilities to life as we know it via climate changes. As the idiom goes, we need to be careful of what we wish for, as we may end up with it.  Or, as John Brunner states it an overtly graphic manner in his “The Compleat Traveller in Black,”  “As you wish, so be it.” The story is of a man going from community to community, granting them their deepest wishes, thereby destroying each community. Is there a way out from doubling down with business as usual, the long standing double bind of creating large instability via trying to ever impose wrongful stability to resist natural change?

The Feminine: Naturally Sexual, Reflective or Responsible for Life?

Lao Tzu is obviously a very helpful figure to finding wisdom from the dilemma of what is the Feminine. Gregory Bateson is helpful in illustrating that such wisdom will lead to new kinds of ways to find new kinds of questions about the feminine. This is illustrated in the following photos, sketches and drawings of the Eternal Feminine Image in history?

 “Woman Cave”& a Feminine Sauna

Foundation Board Room

 

5. Women and Their Values: Are they Better for our Collective Future?

The needs of women may not be completely different then those of mean, and certainly not in opposition, but women seem to notice and interpret needs in a different way; perhaps less hierarchical and organized in ways that are more skeptical of those relying on power, conflict and warfare. The Eternal Feminine Foundation is formed in the spirit of a different arrangement of values, values more in line with nature and life, where even some men adhere to them in their life’s work. These include: Lao Tzu, Socrates, Heraclitus and the womanhood of Joan of Arc – “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”

The following is put together by a few women, intended in humor, not a serious indictment of those men they may love and those men they need.

ABC’s of the Manly Values – Machines, Religions and Sons

a) Men, and Machines

Successful machining of the Industrial Age initiated a human dilemma on the machining of man, as expressed in the words of Gregory Bateson: “If men do not become more predictable their machines will become angry and kill them.”  While men are becoming more predictable it seems their human need for the unpredictable and the wild are emerging in the dark side of what we might call the wilderness if the human soul.

wow!

 Men, and Religions

When all else fails in reflection, logic and follow up actions men then turn toward a mysterious higher order, controlled by a non existent being, to justify who they are, the mistakes they make and to where they will go in death. The non existent being can become any nomena or phenomena in a society or even in the mind of a single man. Belief can outweigh facts and substance and then erode common sense and humor. In contemporary society this can be see as the Taliban Effect.  The thinking of the Taliban challenges and motivates the need for the Foundation.

Dreaming of the afterlife, 72 virgins, raisins, or cheeseburgers

 c) Men, and Sons

“Hi papa. I may be tiny but soon I will become larger.”

Fathers, sons, and the didi effect.  Men will be men, and Yes, boys will be boys, from the belief that boys are of obviously greater value than girls to the family and world. The Eternal Feminine Foundation is in search of “both plus more,” especially the “more.”

Back to the Garden

More then 2,000 years ago an idea of men in charge, men as good, men as strong, and women as corrupt and weak, prone to evil, and a cause for removing humans from paradise gained currency.  That set of ideas, put forward as societal ideas. continues to this day.