December 27, 2018
The Center for Partnership Studies is happy to announce that Riane Eisler is a member of the guest Editorial Circle for the Winter, 2018 edition of Kosmos Quarterly. Eisler’s article, “Breaking Out of the Domination Trance“, is reprinted from her keynote speech at the 2018 Safe Ireland Summit in Dublin, Ireland, October, 2018. (See: Riane Eisler receives SÍLA award at the Safe World Summit 2018“).
In this article Riane Eisler shares the traumatic story of fleeing with her family from the Nazi occupation of Austria as a girl, and growing up as a post-war refugee in Cuba. Asking the question: “Why, when we humans have such an enormous capacity for consciousness, caring, and creativity—has there been so much insensitivity, cruelty, and destructiveness? Is it inevitable, or are there alternatives?”, she outlines her work researching the roots of Domination and Partnership Societies, and shows how we can work within the framework of four societal cornerstones: childhood/family relations, gender relations, economy, and new narratives to co-create a Partnership society that respects all of humanity.
Eisler writes, “Now the good news is that a substantial number of us are beginning to wake up from what I have called the domination trance, a trance perpetuated by all our institutions, our systems of belief, both our popular and scientific narratives, and even our language, so we are just beginning to see something that, once articulated, may seem obvious: that how a society constructs the roles and relations of the two basic forms of our species—male and female—as well as how it constructs early childhood relations, are actually fundamental social issues that directly impact whether all our social institutions—from the family, education, and religion to politics and economics—are equitable or inequitable, authoritarian or democratic, violent or nonviolent”.
Eisler outlines the core configuration of partnership systems and points out that “all modern progressive movements challenged one thing: traditions of domination”.
“It’s up to us—to you and me and our colleagues and friends—to change this major obstacle to moving forward. We have to join together to bring into both popular and academic circles the partnership system and the domination system, which show connections that are not visible through the lenses of old categories”.
Each season, Kosmos Quarterly convenes a new Editorial Circle for the upcoming edition.”Kosmos’ vision is to inform, inspire and engage individual and collective participation for global transformation in harmony with all Life. We do this by sharing transformational thinking and policy initiatives, aesthetic beauty and collective wisdom, local to global”.
Review Riane’s past articles in Kosmos
Listen to Riane’s Safe Ireland speech, Waking from the Domination Trance, October, 2018
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