Gordon Robinson | Gender war and peace

This year's Christmas message is a wish for peace on Earth, so there's no better place to start that effort than mediating, if possible, the gender war.

Generally, we won't accept that we're all the same. Egged on by Church, we take life as a reality-show contest with a ticket for the train to 'Heaven' as the prize. We can't see that 'Heaven' is just a rejoinder with God from whence we came. We won't accept that our return is inevitable and it's the journey that's our mission.

To complicate matters so that we'll focus on (and pay for) this false objective, we created God as male, invented a male 'Satan', and built a male-dominated 'Church' to sell us our tickets.

By this sleight-of-hand, we've created an illusory separation between men and women. To keep us apart, rules regarding male/female behaviour have been developed to ensure distrust and enmity between genders. This keeps tithes flowing into churches' coffers, keeps us dependent on God's retailers, and discourages us from buying directly from God.

 

Unity is strength

 

Church teaches us that individual power is strength. And it has the power. And the glory! It's a carefully crafted chimera. It's the same lie men used to wrest "power" from women; turns genders into warring tribes; and keeps us from discovering unity is the only true strength. Unity is the way we were; the way we should be; and the way we will be.

This is the time that we all should live as one, brothers.

This is the time that we all should live as one, sisters.

So come along brothers and come along sisters

U.N.I.T.Y. is unity

So come along, brothers and sisters ... !

Both genders have bought into the modern patriarchal society. Men need to believe in patriarchy to support fragile egos and keep 'power'. Women have swallowed the baloney that's the illusion of patriarchy so much so they can't recognise their own power. So they substitute defensiveness for self-esteem. They saturate social media with nonsensical generalities like 'all men are dawgs', 'men are trash', or similar stimuli for disunity. This only adds fuel to an already raging, unnecessary wildfire.

If we studied world history, we might avoid repeating its mistakes. But we prefer dogma and fear to research. If we studied world history, we'd know there was a time, up until circa 3000 BC, when the world was a matriarchy. It lasted about two million years and was driven by ignorance just like current patriarchy. At the time, men's contribution to childbirth (paternity) wasn't known, so women were worshipped as sole creators of the species. We're gradually returning to those days, this time 'scientifically', as remote fertilisation becomes a new normal. Matriarchy is making a comeback!

Renowned feminist Gloria Steinem spoke of matriarchy in a 1972 lecture:

"Once upon a time, the many cultures of this world were all part of the gynocratic age. Paternity hadn't yet been discovered, and it was thought ... women bore fruit like trees (when they were ripe). Childbirth was mysterious, ... vital, and ... envied. Women were worshipped because of it, considered superior because of it ... . Men were on the periphery ... worshippers of the female centre, the principle of life.

The discovery of paternity, of sexual cause and childbirth effect, was as cataclysmic for society as, say, the discovery of fire or the shattering of the atom. Gradually, the idea of male ownership of children took hold ... .

"... Women gradually lost their freedom, mystery, and superior position. For 5,000 years or more, the gynocratic age had flowered in peace and productivity. Slowly, in varying stages and different parts of the world, the social order was painfully reversed. Women became the underclass, marked by their visible differences."

To aid this transformation, men invented bogeymen like Satan to convince women that sex was solely for childbirth (otherwise it was a sin). Like Delilah cutting Samson's hair, this separated women from the source of their power over men and transferred that power to men who convinced women that men 'had the goods' women needed to procreate.

So men, limited in creativity, used fear to take power from women. Thereafter, not even the coming of Jesus and His teaching that love and unity was the answer stopped men from their testosterone-driven pursuit of power. Men warped Jesus' teachings into 'Church' to bamboozle women into believing that Jesus wanted them to worship and submit to men. They succeeded despite the resurrected Jesus sending an explicit message from the grave (or His short vacation from it) to His male disciples via women to whom He first appeared exclusively. But they misconstrued. Maybe deliberately!

 

Brainwashed to be afraid

 

Men also used fear to convince other men that the world had to become a patriarchy. Women couldn't withstand this unexpected weapon. Men were bigger and stronger. And brainwashed to be afraid of women. So women were bullied into believing might was right. They were conditioned to believe that power came from physical strength. So it was that men, basically only useful for paternity and moving heavy objects, used fear and strength (and fear of strength) to wrest power from women.

So goddesses like Ishtar, Sumerian/ Babylonian goddess of love and fertility whose cult spawned Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, beauty, and sexual passion were abandoned for biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But the oldest indicator of the mythological change comes from the Enuma Elish (Babylonian mythical version of Creation). This is what began flipping the narrative in favour of men. Instead of the sacrifice of the son-lover by the goddess (as the metaphor of the seed that dies and revives again in the eternal cycle of life), the goddess is sacrificed by her son. This makes little sense even as a myth, but it created a new paradigm in human consciousness, which has been repeated in the three main patriarchal religions. In biblical mythology, Abraham showed his fealty to God by his willingness to sacrifice his son but was stopped at the last minute. There's no 11-hour reprieve for the goddess. British psychologist and spiritualist Anne Baring explained:

"One particular heroic myth, dated about 1700 BC, tells the story of what happened in mythological imagery. In ... the Enuma Elish, Marduk, the young solar god, kills Tiamat, the great dragoness mother, by shooting an arrow into her open mouth, which tears her belly and splits her heart. Marduk throws her carcass on the ground, stands on it, and cuts it in half like a fish, creating the sky from one half and the Earth from the other. He then creates the planets and the constellations. Then, almost as an afterthought, he creates humanity from the blood of Tiamat's murdered son."

So the patriarchal society we know was created by violent images glorifying strength over love and fear over truth. Men used mythology from within and without the Bible to keep genders separate and wield power over women.

Women would be wise to eschew similar strategies. There's a better way. If we want to heal the world, know the secret of the ages, find the Holy Grail, unlock the door to world peace, we must pursue one objective: unity!

We must live as one

'Coz, because two wrongs can never make a right!

Desmond Dekker (born Desmond Dacres July 16, 1941; died May 25, 2006) and the Aces were leading lights in the ska/rock steady era before Desmond migrated to England and pursued a solo career because Aces' member Winston Samuels maintained: "Rastaman don't fly 'pon iron bird." His Israelites became reggae's first UK number one.

Dekker wrote and recorded U.N.I.T.Y. for 1967's Festival Song contest during Jamaica's 'rude bwoy' era. It's one of the few songs to escape Festival Song stigma and become a crossover hit, but in the contest, could only manage second behind the Jamaicans' Ba Ba Boom.

Desmond's warning still rings true. My crystal ball is cloudy, but I know the future depends on today's actions, which depend on awareness of yesterday's. I pray we take steps to create peace, ecological balance, harmony between genders, and a truly egalitarian society with neither gender in ascendancy.

To achieve that ideal, we must stop acting individually. To achieve THAT, we must accept that men and women are intrinsically the same but differently abled (neither are disabled) to ensure a diverse life experience. Stop seeking power over another gender. Or anyone! Don't act as if we're separate from anyone. Act together with fellow man, woman, and God. That provides real power. Power comes from inner strength, not the other way around. Collective consciousness is the unity of individual inner strengths to produce unstoppable power. So don't seek power over anyone. Seek power with everyone. In the blink of an eye, you'll save the world.

Merry Christmas to all and, to all, see good light!

Peace and love.

- Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.