Muttergeist
Genevieve Vaughan
I would like to ask what is the reason for and the consequence of this Zeitgeist movie’s leaving out the voices of women and people of color? Is it possible that such a gender and ethnically restricted sample of the population can have come up with the truth about any situation? Or is it possible that these heterosexual white men are taking responsibility for the situation which heterosexual white men have in large part created? And that they now begin to realize has failed? Still where are the other voices? And faces?
What are the changes in hearts and minds that are necessary for the coming economic shift to begin in a peaceful way? Surely one change has to be greater inclusiveness.
I think that we are not grappling with the fact that patriarchy has merged with capitalism, possibly mainly Euroamerican patriarchy, and that many people who are anti capitalist are still not anti patriarchal (and perhaps not really anti racist either). I do not think the goal is an egalitarian society. I think an egalitarian society is the necessary premise for a workable and humane economy.
In other words the change in hearts and minds that allows us to be egalitarian has to precede our attempts to practice a new economy. Feminist criticism has shown that the male dominance model of the human (hegemonic masculinity) does not work, even in the neutral or neuter version of dominance by science and technology.
I propose instead a maternal model, which is a model for both genders,and is very widespread because children of both genders everywhere learn from their gift giving, nurturing mothers.Generalizing the maternal values into society at large and to both genders (as many indigenous societies do) instead of patriarchal and capitalist values would allow the kind of change of consciousness and values that would let us be more egalitarian and would also provide the basis for an economy without money and without exchange. Understanding how the process of socialization works to develop our humanity, language and community, can give us some guidelines outside of patriarchy and the market to show us what to do.
The market creates the scarcity and the values that make mothering difficult but mothering, not greed for power, is the basis of our humanity.
I don’t agree with the film that nature is a dictator because we can’t walk through walls. Dictatorship is a human invention and projection. The laws of giving and receiving are not laws at all and they are also social. They are the structure of who we are. The fact that we cannot walk through walls is just that the walls do not give us that gift. In fact they give us just the opposite gift, of impeding our passage.
By interpreting the world according to gift structures and building our economy on them we can create a peaceful world. Even problem-solving is an attempt to satisfy a need, to give a gift. There is a need for a transition to a de monetized gift based society. In fact there are many different needs that have to be addressed in order to make it happen. I think it would be important to methodically discuss what those needs are so that we can give the gift of radical social change.
Gender is not a question of biology (which would make everyone in each of the two genders alike) but a question of values, and processes and behaviors that are valued or not. So even if Hilary Clinton is a woman and a mother she is not forced into the roles we stereotypically associate with women and mothers. The stereotyping does not mean those roles and values don’t exist.(and that they don’t have something other to say) It just means they have been dressed up and hypostasized according to the patriarchal capitalist frame. Hillary Clinton has the behaviors of a cog in the political machine. As does Barack Obama. People outside the patriarchal capitalist frame do often have something else to say, a different perspective (at least many of them think they do).
Although the Zeitgeist film showed us pictures of fetuses and pictures of mothers and children and tells us how important parenting is, it did not show us or suggest any ways to make it easier for mothers to take care of children such as arrangements beyond the nuclear family. It also does not let the mothers themselves tell us about it.
By saying ‘people of color’ I mean to include all the races and even the trans (rainbow perhaps?). It is mostly so called ‘pre’ capitalist indigenous people who continue to propose and practice gift economies even now. That is, people of color who have not given up their traditional ways. There are such societies still in Africa and India as well as the Americas and elsewhere. Many are matriarchal societies (not mirror images of patriarchy but egalitarian care giving societies.) There is a different family structure for example where the mother’s brother is the main male model for the child, a fact which dis joins sexuality from paternity and diminishes or avoids the Oedipus complex.
Inclusiveness comes from looking at the needs of others in order to satisfy them as caregivers of small children do. We learn this as children and then have a refresher course as motherers. This is not identity politics but gift-giving other- orientation. (I use the word mother-er because men can take care of children too, though this is still not very widespread). Taking care of small children is exercise in the gift economy on a personal level.
I think the relation between mothers and children is not a typical power relation because 1. The differential is so great and 2. because mothers have to bring their children ‘up’, that means make the similar to themselves as adults. There are all kinds of depravity that can take place of course but generally it is this way or children would not survive.
I guess I am just not on the same technological solutions page as the Zeitgeist folks even though I have been trying to promote an exchange-free gift economy for about 30 years.
My background is in information technology. In my opinion, the greatest fruit of the information technology is the systemic thinking. Before the advent of information systems, people tried to simplify nature, politics, everything into a single cathegory, or at best a pair of them. Materialism/idealism. Individual/society. Humanity/nature. Male/female. It was as if the analysis was unfinished as long as the reality contained more than one (or two) cathegories – perhaps an influence of monotheistic religion or feudal society. Everything HAD to be traced back to God. Or Nature. Or abstract Men or Women, Culture or Economy.
For me as a system analyst, this kind of thinking seems odd – when I’m trying to build a model, I try first to find out exactly how many cathegories there *really* are. Everything else would not be an adequate model of the situation.
This relates to the article above in following manner. Technological/male/white outlook of Zeitgeist does not have to be wrong or useless *just* because it does not include cultural/female/colored outlook – as long as it admits that it is focused on a certain limited area of the cultural puzzle.
What I’m trying to say is – two different outlooks do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Perhaps reality is simply a bit more complex and there’s time and place for maleness as well as femaleness in the world. A society that could somehow integrate gift-giving or care-giving outlook and technological might, creative power of imagination and scientific awareness of available means would in my opinion possess vitality and vigor that has never be seen before.