The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler

Author:Riane Eisler [Eisler, Riane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062046307
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1995-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

The Patterns of the Past: Gylany and History

History as taught in most schools is largely a matter of the struggle for power among men and nations. It is the dates of battles and the names of kings and generals noted for alternately constructing and destroying fortresses, palaces, and religious monuments. But if we look again at history in light of the new information we have examined and the new theoretical framework we have been developing, a very different kind of struggle emerges. Now, behind all the bloody dates and names can be seen some of the same underlying processes being studied by scientists such as Dya Prigogine, Isabel Stengers, Edward Lorenz, and Ralph Abraham in the natural world:1 fluctuation, or apparently patternless movement; oscillation, or cyclic movement; and systems transformation at critical “bifurcation points,” when, as Prigogine and Stengers write, “the system can ‘choose’ between or among more than one possible future.”2

Looking at the surface, we may, first, observe fluctuations throughout history from warlike to more peaceful times, from authoritarian to freer and more creative times, from periods when women are more repressed to times when, at least for some women, there is a broadening of educational and life opportunities. For the traditional historian these kinds of fluctuations hold no real surprise, being simply what exists, not necessarily of any great meaning.

But is this really only random, patternless movement? If we look more deeply, we see that there are patterns to these historic fluctuations. From the perspective we are developing, it can be seen that the times of war usually are also times of greater authoritarianism. More peaceful times usually are also times of greater equality and may also be times of cultured evolution and high creativity. And if we look still deeper, oscillations, or movements in cycles, also become apparent. Moreover, we see that behind these cyclical movements is an underlying dynamic that has received only cursory or peripheral study until now.

If we look at history from a holistic perspective, taking into account both halves of humanity and the full span of our cultural evolution, we see how these cyclical patterns relate to the fundamental transformation we have examined: the systems shift in our prehistory that set us upon a radically different course of cultural evolution. And if we look at what happened after this shift from a partnership to a dominator model of social organization in light of the new principles about systems stability and systems change being discovered in the natural sciences, recorded history acquires both a new clarity and a new complexity.

Mathematicians studying the dynamics of systems processes speak of what they term attractors. Roughly analogous to magnets, these may be “point” or “static” attractors, which govern the dynamics of systems in equilibrium; “periodic” attractors, which govern cyclical or oscillatory movements; and “chaotic” or “strange” attractors, which are characteristic of far-from-equilibrium, or disequilibrium, states.3 Somewhat like Gould and Eldredge’s peripheral isolates, chaotic or strange attractors may sometimes with relative rapidity and unpredictability become the nuclei for the buildup of a whole new system.

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