Colleagues,
I has been at least half a decade since I posted a concept for this group.
Brief background: I dream science fiction plots.
I'm now stuck with a story that requires me to figure out
how to replace current patriarchies worldwide
with matriarchies.
>>>>>>>>>>> Think about that for a moment.
Two recent dreams suggested that I combine mime management
with the what-if statements used in Neural Linguistics Programming.
So far, the approach is considered only on a personal family level.
Scaling up is an open question. On the other hand,
the web is an astonishing toolkit for reaching audiences.
>> This would be one of a suite of strategies.
I would appreciate your academic wisdom. Logic, potential, boo's, cheers... etc.
I've put text directly in this email. Not sure attachments would work.
To see story text, contact me directly.
This strategy is just one of 25 elements of design of Libra, the business.
Analysis results are available, again at your request.
Thank you for your time and expertise.
Best,
Gary
...................................................................
Gary Lundquist
GaryL@Market-Engineering.com
Director@InnoSearchColorado.com
303-840-9929
Energizing Innovation
The Libra Project
Civilizing Civilization
Female Equality Worldwide
Put a Woman in Charge!
Memes, What-Ifs, and Righteousness
Gary M. Lundquist
© All Rights Reserved
Preface: "Beginning in the 1970s, the lens of gender brought into sharp focus a psychology so wedded to patriarchy that the omission of women from its research studies had, for the most part, not been seen, or if seen, had not been considered consequential. It was an omission so obvious that no one noticed."
MALE FEMALE
Mind Body
Reason Emotion
Self Relationships
Culture Nature
Let's restate that in terms of humanity in general. Before language, gender differences were determined by realities of size and strength. Though physical differences continued through the millennia, the minds of females evolved with males. As strength becomes less important, women compete equally in thinking skills and outperform men in a wide range of other essential skills. The ancient patriarchy, however, continues to dominate and to perpetuate the psychological differences across human culture. (Carol Gilligan and David A. J. Richards, The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy's Future
Meme: An idea or belief transmitted person to person to person. A core idea strong enough to survive multiple tellings. An idea that might be positive, neutral, or negative when viewed from different perspectives. An idea that might empower one constituency and disrupt another.
Gilligan's observation demonstrates the blindness caused by memes. What is and what can be is influenced by culture as defined by powerful, memorable, archetypical stories and beliefs. The impact of memes is far more deep and broad than is obvious. This expanded list was developed after the terrorism of 9/11, before awareness of Gillgan.
MALE TENDENCIES FEMALE TENDENCIES
Dominance Equality
Urge to procreate Urge to thrive
Warrior nature Peacemaker nature
Faith in dogma (what is) Curiosity (what might be)
Short-sighted prioritizations Sustainability
Tribalism, racism, nationalism Community
Greed, scarcity, stockpiling Abundance, sharing, nurturing
Self righteousness Negotiation
Product Process
Logic, as if pure Recognition of emotion
Justice, judging Responsibility, caring
Self destruction Preparing for the future
Boundedness Limitlessness
Male Meme Management: Male-dominant civilization operates on hoarding of power and resources. Consider the breadth of influence.
Basic human nature: Conditioned characteristics of males listed above.
Human civilization: Vast, interwoven webs of social constructs and social contracts designed by men.
Pillars of civilization: Male-dominated bureaucracies of religion, industry, militaries, and governments.
K-12 Education: Used by males to produce conforming citizens.
Basic belief systems and religions: Almost always male defined, organized, and controlled.
Power structures: Primarily designed to further self-centered, male-driven agendas.
Justice systems: Based in decisions made entirely by men until very recent times for "western nations" and still entirely male dominated for the vast majority of humans.
Vested interests: Males largely control resources and cash flow, though women make most or many purchase decisions.
Growth: Greed-based measure of economic health.
Fears and self doubts: Developed and leveraged to manage others from families to nations.
Corruption: An almost entirely male-driven enterprise.
Abuse: Verbal, emotional, physical, sexual, psychological, economic, social, and spiritual. Almost always committed by males rather than females. Most often committed by males against females.
Discrimination: Used by males to sustain inequality of opportunity.
Destruction of ecosystems: By the greed of males.
Conditioning of women: To the point that they believe males should lead civilization.
Memes can be changed. E. O. Wilson has observed humanity for decades. In underdeveloped countries with little access to doctors, Mothers regularly had six children because so many died. (meme: It takes six children to get two adults.) The same women now understand that taking good care of two children delivers the same family. (new meme) Even simple practices such as clean water, washing hands, and mosquito netting make a difference. ("Birth control" and "abortion" are distinct memes in themselves, with complex and emotional stories to back up pro and con.) With spare time, then, women can create income and become less dependent on men. (new meme) New bases for decisions deliver greater opportunities for parents, children, communities, and nations.
Leveraging Memes for Positive Change
Ideally, adults recognize the conditioning built into society and make conscious choices about accepting or rejecting each concept. Clearly that does not happen. We absorb memes every day. Advertising sells with memes, and has for millennia. The core of social media is accelerated distribution of memes. As you read this article, you are infecting yourself with memes about memes. We know, yet pay little attention to the conditioning we meet.
Children don't have the wisdom to protect themselves and make life choices. What mother or father says, children learn. The memes of adults are ingrained into children, influencing worldviews of growing minds. Positive memes empower healthy ways of dealing with the world. Negatives can stunt mental and emotional development.
Think back. What were you taught? What behaviors brought praise? You've just now recalled memes from your childhood, probably in some secure home in some modern nation. Now change your mental context. Conceive of the memes in a poor family in a poor nation. Negative memes abound: about the nation, the village, the family, the child.
Consider the memes that boy babies are more valuable. Girl babies are a burden. In China, many hundreds of girl babies are aborted each year because of this meme. In other nations, girl babies may be born, then simply be thrown away as trash.
Common memes of surviving children worldwide include: "Boys are better." "Daddy is stronger." "Men have power." Look again at the memes of males in the comparison above. Results include loss of confidence before the girl has a chance to decide for herself. "Don't make Daddy mad." "Do what you are told." "Be seen, not heard."
Overcoming parental and community memes might require separation such as a boarding school or finally getting to college. Sadly, public and private schools often collude around the memes of male dominance. After all, God is male. Surely men are closer to the image of God than women can ever be.
Evolve the memes: Once they understand the issue (no simple task), mothers can take responsibility to change the little stories in their cultures. Change the content, tone, and emotion. Replace every "girls can't," with a "girls can." Unfortunately, change may be outside of Mother's ability; outside of her willingness to stand up against husbands, local political systems, and religions.
Managing Memes with What-Ifs
A "what-if statement" is a powerful tool for change. A what-If, spoken even silently, causes the brain to prepare for a shift, idea, or change. Repeating the question reliably creates mental, emotional, and physical changes. "What if" is a classic tool of Neural-Linguistic Programming (NLP). "What ifs" have been proven over and over as ways of changing consciousness without therapy. Repeated use consistently changes the odds of success through internal capacity to focus, persist, and leverage internal strengths.
Example: What if I could achieve my most important life goals.
If a male chooses to honor female strengths, he might pick a strength and create a supportive what-if statement. "What if I could become more of a peacemaker?" Or he might be more specific: "What if I could become more of a peacemaker within the family? "
Always be clear that what-ifs are not questions; do not raise tone at the end. Instead, what-ifs are simply spoken in a positive voice. Indeed, smiling while repeating the statement further increases the positive impact.
At risk of stepping outside of psychology, what-ifs impact souls. Not just minds, but the intangible, internal resource that influences moral decisions and spiritual connections. Prayer is another way of changing memes, yet most often it reinforces memes.
Back to the point of this essay, what-if is a very compact and efficient way for mothers and supportive others to change memes. We focus here on mother and child.
During pregnancy: Positive what-ifs condition mother to give child her best caring. Child hears a positive voice with an optimistic tone. Mother changes her own memes through repetition of positive memes for her child. e.g., "What if you could grow up strong and smart?" Will mother still abandon the child if a girl? No tests have been run.
After birth, before language: Mother's voice still connects child to mother. A light, happy tone of voice conveys joy and safety. "What-ifs" continue the relationship with a range of positive, supportive emotions. Eye contact makes a difference. After birth, others will have direct contact with the child. Mother holds responsibility to correct negative memes. Rather than arguing about language with, say, an uncle, Mother can use what-ifs to reinforce positives. She has the deepest connection.
As language develops: Teach the child to do what-ifs. We clearly recognize that words used over and over in early years comprise a form of conditioning. If Mother allows or perpetuates negative memes using what-ifs, those memes will be instilled more deeply. Mother holds responsibility to correct or overcome negatives as they happen. If Father says, "What if she is stupid," then by continuing examples, sometimes said together, say a countering what-if.. "What if you could go to college." By five years of age the girl will believe she can change the world.
Advanced What Ifs: See the sister paper, "A Way of Mind."
Self-Righteousness
The Seven Deadly Sins don't begin to address the sad state of humanity. The real sins are abuse (at least: verbal, emotional, physical, sexual, psychological, spiritual, economic, social, and/or ecological). Abuse begins with self-righteousness. If we can conquer self-righteousness, we will have solved much of the human condition.
Being righteous means acting in a just and upright manner. Self-righteousness, however, has earned a different connotation. The word implies action with the permission or pleasure of God. In the vernacular, then, self-righteousness is acting on one's own decision about what is right, as if sponsored by God.
Science fiction author, David Brin: www.davidbrin.com/addiction.html. "I want to zoom down to a particular emotional and psychological pathology. The phenomenon known as self-righteous indignation. We all know self-righteous people. (And, if we are honest, many of us will admit having wallowed in this state ourselves, either occasionally or in frequent rhythm.) It is a familiar and rather normal human condition, supported -- even promulgated -- by messages in mass media.
While there are many drawbacks, self-righteousness can also be heady, seductive, and even... well... addictive. Any truly honest person will admit that the state feels good. The pleasures of knowing, with subjective certainty, that you are right and your opponents are deeply, despicably wrong."
Abuse of all kinds are primarily results of male self-righteousness. Expanding on Brin, self-righteousness is a self-administered and highly addictive drug evolved within our bodies as a way to survive our early days as humans. We evolved hate and guilt at the same time to reinforce right behaviors. There is no hate or self-righteousness elsewhere in Earth's nature, and precious little guilt.
Self-righteousness is the addictive experience of self congratulation for creating and/or honoring a barrier between peoples. We humans can and must let go of such barriers (memes). Rightness is the addictive experience of self logic for defending a barrier between parts of civilization. We can let go. Conditioned responses to stimuli are simply experiences as they happen. We can let go, and what-ifs can help.
Moderating Civilization: The list of male/female tendencies presented above provides a starting place for replacing male-dominant, righteousness-driven memes. The alternatives, of course, are the female-cooperative, negotiation-driven memes. In these examples, the memes are underlined.
What if true gender equality spread throughout humanity.
What if humanity chose to rear fewer children with greater caring.
What if men worldwide chose to become peacemakers.
What if we humans set aside our greed to save our ecosystems.
Obviously, humans can and do use NLP for male purposes. The nature of what-ifs, however, tends to moderate urges by stopping to think. Saying "what if" opens mental doors to alternative motivations. In particular, what-if clashes dramatically with self-righteousness. What-if may be an essential global solution to restraint of acting before thinking that is so consistent with self-righteousness. This author has not found studies of automatic behavior.
Convey New Memes: To change civilization, metaphorically use the four winds of ancient beliefs that today translate into: voice, text, art, and web. Convey female memes as paths to peace, equality, and an end to abuse. Engage the story-teller in every person to transmit memes from person to person, family to family, group to group. The memes of peace and community are part of our genetic inheritance. Refuse to let male dominance overwhelm peace, sustainability, and community.