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Eclipse of the Feminine

Fascination with objects, power, the external world, acquisitiveness, control, and goal-oriented doing has become far more than a male specialization with adaptive value; it has become the root metaphor and obsession dominating life, the motive and rationale of modern culture. It has eclipsed the more feminine values of relationship, openness, compassion, surrender, nurturance, contemplation and just being. In thought, if not yet in deed, the whole of nature has already become an it, a dead thing, a machine. Instead of promoting equitable distribution of the benefits of technology, economic institutions—enforced by war machines—have become mechanisms to divert wealth and power into even fewer hands. If technological and economic optimists have their way, the world will become an ever more inhospitable place to all but the extremely wealthy, whose resources will be used trying to shield themselves from the effects of war, crime, pollution and ecological catastrophe they themselves have promoted for gain. And even they cannot live on a dead planet!

RELATED TAGS: [materialism, male specialization, masculine obsession, external orientation, externally-oriented mind, feminine value, nature as machine, economic mechanism, technological/economic optimism/ist, goal-oriented society/civilization, fascination with power]