Pronounced Patriarchy

From Merriam Webster’s online dictionary definitions of pronounce and patriarchy:

Pro·nounce:  declare officially, authoritatively, or as an opinion; to employ the organs of speech to produce; to represent in printed characters the spoken counterpart of.

Pa·tri·ar·chy:  social organization, supremacy of the father, legal dependence of wives and children, inheritance in the male line; control by men of power.

Excerpts from The New York Times March 20, 2013 “Room for Debate” column “Do Women Have What It Takes to Lead?” which is pronounced patriarchy.    

Alice, Sex Differences – The Truth

Transformational leader acts androgynous;

mixing masculine and feminine.

Men work on social skill;

women on being assertive.

Women lean positive, reward;

men more negative threat.

Women avoid domineering, because of the backlash;

men get away with behavior, disliked in women.

Gregg, Caveman Blog

Female chief executives Fortune 500 – gasp – 4 percent;

dominance of male leadership spans centuries, cultures, and species.

Men have dominated for millennia, male animals dominate;

 preference for male, our biological makeup, threatening circumstances.

“Powerful” leaders expect war, conquer us and our national resources;

provoke evolutionary responses, threat hard-wired from history.

Impossible to overcome, drastic sexism;

grind for decades, without progress.

Stephanie, Strange Dawn

Our current economic and political climate;

penalizes communal behaviors, rewards self-aggrandizement.

Women mobilize men’s competitive advantages;

egocentric self-promotion and devaluation of others.

Men tout accomplishments,

prejudices against women.

Higher income brackets adopt individualistic values;

express less support for policies that raise the bottom.

Advancement of lower-level women diminishes;

into our existing corporate structure.

Values and priorities of our hyper-individualistic economy;

blind traditional male boards with their work responsibilities.

Alan, Toxic Leaders

Aggressive, bold, top-down, male animal under attack;

demonizing old school male behavior, continues to rule.

Domination is not due to ignorance, brutishness;

C.E.O. coached and consulted with.

Neanderthal top brass 21st century business;

screams – hard core!

Feminine behaviors construed as weakness;

reserved for privileged colleagues in need.

Sprinkling of feminine, a spicy condiment;

too much feminine is dangerous.

Competition, male agenda, beating out colleagues;

deeply embedded in U.S. corporate culture.

Embodied embraced Neanderthal;

raised her voice, caused loss of face.

Cautiously hidden consummate actor of male dominance;

needed to succeed in Fortune 500 jungle.

Schooled in M.B.A academic fog realized;  

distasteful male leadership works – Madly!

Ashleigh, University's Business.

Academic research on gender and leadership, writings in the popular press;

peppered with contradictory advice on how women can navigate up the corporate ladder.

Be assertive and even self-promoting;

temper with a friendly smile, a soft voice.

Put them in a bind, seem strong, nonthreatening;

innate skills are most effective, perform a delicate balancing act.

Seeming likeable, not threatening supervisors – avoiding the epithet;

plagued women do little to create, managing others’ perceptions.

Research suggests instructing women to act like men;

gurus tell male business leaders – moderate feminine with a sneer.

Green Begone.

 It is Saint Patrick’s day once again - a day of honoring the color green, in honor of the man who legend has it drove the snakes from Ireland.  As I look around this island filled world of ours, I am reminded that we might need another saint to grace our presence and help us chase out all the snake-oil salesmen who thrust their green go(o)ds in our faces.   We live in a technology driven world where we assume the next magic cure for what ails us is simply waiting for our scientists and engineers to unveil.  And like the green dye dumped in the Chicago River, we hope that nature will be able to clean up after us. 

Microsoft guru and philanthropist Bill Gates recently promoted the idea that  "Engineers are going to invent a magic thermos that leaks heat so little we don't need a power source. “ 

President Barack Obama encourages Americans to keep the American dream of owning your own car alive because – “We can support scientists who are designing new engines that are more energy efficient;developing cheaper batteries that go farther on a single charge; and devising new ways to fuel our cars and trucks with new sources of clean energy – like advanced biofuels and natural gas – so drivers can one day go coast-to-coast without using a drop of oil.”   

German Chancellor Angela Merkel encourages her fellow Germans to get rid of one potentially dangerous energy source for something greener - “We want to end the use of nuclear energy and reach the age of renewable energy as fast as possible,” 

But like the magic in the recent remake of the old classic the Wizard of Oz, there is mostly smoke and mirrors behind these technological bamboozlers that encourage us to continue burning through the energy to keep our consumptive lifestyles in the fast lane of growth.  As a former engineering student, I recall learning that there are thermodynamics limits to how much energy we can get from any process and there are always losses.  And having worked for many years as an environmental engineer I have learned first-hand that no matter what the source of energy – there will be waste to deal with in the end.  In other words you don’t get something for nothing ever, no matter who tells you so.  

Some examples of headlines that remind us of the need to look deeper at these immoral claims for energy immortality include:  

The Price of Green Energy: Is Germany Killing the Environment to Save It?

The Not-So-Sunny Side of Solar Panels

Rising Use of Corn Ethanol Stresses Midwestern Aquifers 

So Saint Patrick, we need you today as much as Ireland needed you 1600 hundred years ago to chase away the serpents that temp us with their own false claims.  The simple answer to our energy problems is we need to consume a lot less energy and everything else, or we will find ourselves once more driven into the rising sea of our own technological troubles.

Apocalyptic Now 1, 2, & 3

Excerpts from WE ARE ALL APOCALYPTIC NOW: ON THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF TEACHING, PREACHING, REPORTING, WRITING, AND SPEAKING OUT by Robert Jensen. 

Chapter 1:  What is an Apocalypse?

[…]; “revelation” from Latin and “apocalypse” from Greek both mean a lifting of the veil, a disclosure of something hidden from most people, a coming to clarity.

To speak apocalyptically, in that context, is first and foremost about deepening our understanding of the world, seeing through the illusions that people in power create to keep us trapped in systems they control.

Things are bad, systems are failing, and the status quo won’t last forever.  Thinking apocalyptically in this fashion demands of us considerable courage and commitment.  This process will not produce definitive answers but rather help us identify new directions. 

Chapter 2:  What is an Intellectual?

[…] real intellectual effort – the task of understanding how the world works and communicating that understanding to others […].

Intellectual work suggests a systematic effort to (1) collect relevant information and (2) analyze that information to discern patterns that help us deepen our understanding of how the world works, (3) to help us make judgments about how we want to shape the world.  […].  Defined in this way, it’s clear that lots of different kinds of people do this kind of intellectual work – not just professors, but students, organizers, political activists, journalists, and writers and researchers of various kinds.  They engage in the systematic effort in search of the answers to questions about the natural world, technology, human behavior, societies. 

[…] most intellectuals are subsidized by the institutions of the dominant culture.  The people who run those institutions generally expect a return on the investment, which argues for putting restrictions on the work of those subsidized intellectuals.  […].  These institutions prefer that research, writing, and teaching support the existing power system, and most intellectuals conform to that implicit expectation – either because they honestly believe in the system of power or because they want to avoid trouble.  But tensions arise when intellectuals follow paths that lead them to challenge the pre-ordained conclusions that the powerful prefer. 

[…]: The institutions that most often subsidize intellectuals (universities, think tanks, government, corporations) are the key agents of the social systems that produce inequality and threaten the stability of human life on the planet. 

Chapter 3:  The Condition of the World

Social Justice

More than 3 billion people survive – struggling for food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care – on less than what those in the privileged sectors of the developed world might spend on a fancy cup of coffee one morning. 

Inequality is a permanent feature of capitalism, and the gap between rich and poor is growing. 

In the United States, this class divide is also racialized, which is hardly surprising in a nation that has never transcended the white-supremacist ideology on which it was founded.

[…] the United States remains a deeply patriarchal society, […].

We live in a culture in which men are trained to see themselves as naturally dominant and women as naturally passive, in which women are objectified and women’s sexuality is commodified, in which men eroticize women’s subordinate status.  The predictable result is a world in which violence, sexualized violence, sexual violence, and violence-by-sex is so common that it must be considered to be normal, […].

We live in a woman hating world. 

A 2005 United Nations report, aptly titled “The Inequality Predicament,” stressed: “[…].  Focusing exclusively on economic growth and income generation as a development strategy is ineffective, as it leads to the accumulation of wealth by a few and deepens the poverty of many; […].”

Ecological Sustainability

If we remain on our current trajectory there likely will come a point – not in some future millennium but possibly in this century – when the ecosphere cannot sustain human life as we know it.  […] the living system on which we depend is breaking down.   

Look at any crucial measure of the health of the ecosphere in which we live – groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of bio-diversity – and ask as simple question: Where are we heading?

[…] we can’t pretend all that’s needed is tinkering with existing systems to fix a few environmental problems; massive changes in how we live are required, […].  

More to come.  

BETTER PLACE

What follows is a summary of Karen Garvey’s SIX STEP PATH TO MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. 

Simple things that take us to a better place.

1. Love yourself first. 

2. Stop judging.

3. Fear less.

4. Stop encouraging fear in others.

5. Support success and happiness in others.

6. Honor planet, animal & plant communities, and humanity.  

UNLESS ...

Earth From Space

It is my belief that one of the keys to being an effective leader is to understand and appreciate this amazing planet we live on.  The recent NOVA film EARTH FROM SPACE available at the link below is a great way to learn more. 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/earth-from-space.html