“in marked contrast to other high civilizations of the time, this religion—centering on the worship of the Goddess—seems to have both reflected and reinforced a social order in which, to quote Nicolas Platon, “the fear of death was almost obliterated… — Riane Eisler Copy Share Image
“Now, perhaps nowhere as poignantly as in the omnipresent theme of Christ dying on the cross, the central image of art is no longer the celebration of nature and of life but the exaltation of pain, suffering, and death.25 For in this new reality that is now said to be the sole creation of a male God, the life-giving and… — Riane Eisler Copy Share
war and the 'war of the sexes' are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. — Riane Eisler Copy Share Image
The link between intimate violence in the home and the international violence of terrorism and war is as tightly bound together as the fingers… — Riane Eisler Copy Share Image
It is not coincidental that for so-called religious fundamentalists - whether they are Western or Eastern, Muslim or Christian - rigid male dominance and… — Riane Eisler Copy Share Image
The bad news is that the movement toward the partnership side of the social scale (and it is always a matter of degree, as… — Riane Eisler Copy Share Image
“Like the absence of gender-specific terms such as glyany and androcracy from the vocabulary of historians, the systematic omission of women from accounts of our past serves to maintain a system founded on male-female thinking. It reinforces the central tenet of male dominance: women are not as important as men. By omitting any hint that "women's issues" are central to… — Riane Eisler Copy Share
“Indeed, if we look closely at the art of the Neolithic, it is truly astonishing how much of its Goddess imagery has survived—and that… — Riane Eisler Copy Share Image
“The Goddess-centered art we have been examining, with its striking absence of images of male domination or warfare, seems to have reflected a social order in which women, first as heads of clans and priestesses and later on in other important roles, played a central part, and in which both men and women worked together in equal partnership for the… — Riane Eisler Copy Share
“Many cultural stories worldwide present the domination system as the only human alternative. Fairy tales romanticize the rule of kings and queens over “common people.” Classics such as Homers Illiad and Shakespeare’s kings trilogy romanticize “Heroic violence.” Many religious stories present men’s control, even ownership, of women as normal and moral. These stories came out of the times that oriented… — Riane Eisler Copy Share
Obviously there is pain in childbirth. But giving birth is also a moment of awe and wonder, a moment when the true miracle of… — Riane Eisler Copy Share Image
“It is also more than likely that women invented that most fundamental of all material technologies, without which civilization could not have evolved: the domestication of plants and animals. In fact, even though this is hardly ever mentioned in the books and classes where we learn history of "ancient man", most scholars today agree that this is probably how it… — Riane Eisler Copy Share
“So again and again we see how under the prevailing paradigm our real past—and the original thrust of our cultural evolution—can only be seen as through a glass darkly. But once we are face to face with the full import of what this past foreshadowed—what we, at our level of technological and social development, could have been and still can… — Riane Eisler Copy Share
