As the world searches for solutions to the endemic and seemingly intractable violence and conflict in Syria, the Middle East, Yemen, Africa, and around the globe, we almost invariably seek military, political or economic answers while ignoring the forest for the trees. We are looking in the wrong place and using the wrong lens. If we take a global perspective not only now but throughout recorded history there is virtually only one unacknowledged common denominator in all this strife that the world has yet to confront – patriarchy and patriarchal values. The permanent answer to entrenched antagonisms has deep roots and unchangeable dynamics found not in geopolitics, but in gender politics. Our entire social and ideological structure has evolved from a male warrior culture that continues to give pride of place and deference to males in our society. If we are ever to eliminate violence we need to attack the problem globally at its source. Short term solutions to random violence must be accompanied by long-term changes to our core beliefs.
Patriarchy, or the socio-cultural dominance of men, is the wellspring of all human conflict and has been the one constant social force since the dawn of recorded time. It is universal and knows no barriers of colour, race, religion, education, politics or geography and is the meta-ideology that has spawned and forcefully shaped our social institutions and their male worldview whose hallmarks are violence, domination and control.
Rather than being about the exploits of heroic men, history is in fact a story of the incredible devastation that patriarchal heroism generates and the ongoing resistance of the majority of humanity against the rule of men. What we fail to face is that violence is and has been perpetrated by males and it is they who must be held fully responsible for it. We need to actively modify their mentality of competitive supremacy and power as the only means to organize human activity from childhood on up. Aggression and dominance are not genetically pre-determined, ingrained or unchangeable human traits – but human choices that are largely socialized behaviour patterns that can be modified. It is not the situation or the issues that are the problem, but the values and beliefs of the men who are gathered around the tables of power trying to solve them. As the wise cartoon character Pogo once opined: “We have seen the enemy and it is us.”
The pervasive influence of this ever-present male ideology has saturated our global mentality to the point it has become the invisible yet critically problematic backdrop of many of the world’s geopolitical problems such as the Russian militarism in the Ukraine or the carnage of Syria. Patriarchy is completely absent from active formal consideration as one of the world’s major evolutionary flaws and primary roadblocks to real change. We are not compelled to be aggressive but choose to be so.
Whether in the genocide of Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Rwanda or Kosovo, the Troubles in Ireland, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, the brutal beheading of American journalists by Daesh or the recent grisly killing of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia we see the presence of callous patriarchal male defiance and brutality. However, these are the most extreme examples of patriarchy. We see it also in our male competitive sports, heroic and romanticized action movies that glorify violence and the chauvinism of university frosh chants. We also see it most vehemently in the scripted chauvinism and religious intolerance of theological deviance in the world’s major religious traditions such as Islam, Christianity and Judaism who have fought millennial battles over the primacy of their respective religious traditions under a misguided assertion that men and only men are ordained by a higher male power to rule. It is evoked through our predatory capitalist economic system that promotes an aggressive, amoral and exploitative social Darwinism in the pursuit of profit and wealth for the few at the expense of the many guided by the invisible hand of economic greed. We see it in our glorification of violence in the ghoulish and unhealthy pre-occupation with graphic horror, death and violence in modern media, movies, TV and video games that negatively socialize our children. We witness it daily in the ongoing domestic violence of men towards women across the globe and in our male-infused social organizations and laws that value hierarchy, control, and obedience to authority as primary values within education, law, politics, religion and personal relationships. It is present in our traditional leadership theories and practices that are consistently premised on heroic military models where leaders are expected to be forceful, decisive, fearless visionaries and motivators who can engage others with their charisma or force them to comply through intimidation. Our sports are modelled upon these values. As a society we abdicate our responsibility for humanity to a few flawed men. Patriarchy is the social cancer for which there is no cure because we don’t even see it as a disease.
In our paradoxical modern world we condemn violence with one breath and extol it with the next. Heroic male behaviour is romanticized, mythologized and lionized in media, entertainment and history. As a society we continue turning a blind eye to the pervasive bias of male dominance while rationalizing its negative effects on our world. We continue to pretend that nothing is wrong when in fact everything is wrong. Women, who make up half the world’s population are still infantilized, exploited and treated like second-class citizens and sexual objects as are minorities and the poor. They are absent from key decision-making leadership positions in business, politics and religions and struggles for equal treatment resisted by the male status quo. Even where women are in such positions they conduct their leadership in the well-scripted patriarchal paradigm that mimics men. Women in Middle Eastern, African and other developing nations such as India continue to be subject to the fickle and dogmatic whims of strict male demands and hostility. Currently Islamist extremists want to regress society into the dark ages with draconian ideologies like Sharia Law premised on male superiority but so do Christian fundamentalists all over the world. On every front, in every way we venerate and tolerate the male in all its extremes in our society while marginalizing everyone else. In all these issues the pace of progressive change is glacial.
In reality slow change is no change. We cannot continue to delude ourselves that our modern world is fair and equitable while men dominate in virtually every category of life and continue to define our world while acting in self-serving, violent and self-destructive ways that cause the death of millions each year as a result. The snail progress of change is unacceptable. Pay equity for women will be achieved in just under two hundred years at the present pace. Nor can we accept the male status quo and its extreme inequities that continue to drive much of the conflict and economic inequality that we see in the world. These problems are generated by patriarchal values and beliefs and we will not make any headway as a global civilization towards a truly peaceful and democratic society unless we address them directly. As long as men think that might is right and men should decide what is good for everyone we will be unable to claim that we are an enlightened, progressively advancing civilization. Men have proven throughout history that they are capable of anything and we would be well advised to heed this warning and begin to set clear limits on their ability to control our collective destiny before it is too late. Men are incapable of running the world. As with earthquakes – the big one is still coming. The alternative to immediate change is a dark, destructive and increasingly violent and fractured future that will ultimately consume humanity and the world with it. We need to begin to speak truth to power in more than deferential ways and demand a clear change in the status quo. Men do not have a divine right to own, run and destroy the world.
Patriarchy and all its social institutions have been forced on humankind rather than accepted by it. It has deeply skewed the social evolution of society in favour of violent males in such a profound manner that we have become completely desensitized to its corrosive influence on our cultural and social mentality. It has been referred to as the invisible visible. Whether religion, politics, economics, education or any other aspect of human social relations – all have been touched and shaped by patriarchy. This has been accomplished by eliminating (literally and figuratively) the ability of the world to develop naturally towards peaceful, collective, collaborative, inclusive and fully democratic ways of organizing life and society – even in the purportedly democratic nations of the west who practice a benevolent brand of patriarchal ideology called democratic capitalism. Those who believe in a harmonious and fully democratic world have been either suppressed, eradicated, or ignored. The solution to violence will not be found in solving the Syrian conflict but in a society-wide effort to solve all conflict by addressing its root cause. It is time for the global community of peaceful men and women to unite in one voice to reject the male myths of dominance and leadership that continue to drive our social culture. We need to begin to create a fully balanced and equitable world by re-socializing humanity. As Pope Francis stated to the leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos: “Employ wealth to serve humanity not rule humanity.” The same might be said about patriarchy.
If we are truly committed to sharply reducing violence in the world we must begin to make difficult choices as a society to control it. In a globalized world we need to abandon nation-state mentalities and begin thinking about our entire global community and its wellbeing. We need to get serious on the issue of arms control and elimination of all kinds and their sale. We need to address economic inequality. We must focus on domestic violence and harm reduction strategies and place clear limits on the negative example of violence in sports, media, television and entertainment and the impact it has on the psychological development of impressionable young people.
These changes may seem improbable in a violence centered culture but they are a required beginning of a critically needed solution ensuring we do not allow patriarchal ideology to destroy society by overwhelming good social judgment and collective reason. Anything is possible as long as we demand it, including reasonable social controls on conflict that create healthy models for future societies. Only apathy can block this change. We cannot be apathetic bystanders to our dysfunctional social existence as we have become in our pacified, materialist, consumerist, technologically distracted world. Global issues are local issues. We need to start investing as much time, money and effort into building a peaceful world as we currently do in producing a confrontational one. Governments must rule business, not be their friend. If we begin this process, we might just have a small chance of turning the tide of global violence that we currently seem incapable of solving by focusing on the real problem in the world – patriarchy.