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Welcome to challenging paradigm X. Do you know what the real story of a pastors is in sensitivity, cruelty and violence, part of the human nature and what is the key to true change for humanity? Is GDP the right measure for economic value and is domination the best way of running the economy, politics and society.

00:00:30  As I always say it isn’t a darkest hour that lights prevails. And this is why I always ask my guests about the turning points in life and why they do what they do today. I have a very special guest and I feel very honored that she took the time to do an interview with me.

00:00:50 And Isla experienced as a seven year old, the Christo now one of the darkest hours in the 20th century and the events of the night would lead her to conduct multidisciplinary research, to find out where the cruelty, destructiveness and violence are inevitable. Whether there are our human nature in the book, the great peacemaker she is amongst other people mentioned. In the same breath as Matt McGann, the Jane Goldwell Martin Luther king, the Dalai Lama mother Theresa, and more macro history.

00:01:25  She is considered to be one of the 20 most important macro thinkers amongst them. Adam Smith, Carl Marx, max Weber, and more.

00:01:34 There’s a system scientists futurist at horny. And macro historian, her work had a transformative impact on many humans worldwide. She is the president of the center of partnership systems, editor, and chief of the interdisciplinary journal of partnership studies at the university of Minnesota And also have multiple best-selling books, including the child is, and the blades sacred pleasure. Tomorrow’s children, the power of partnership and the real wealth of nations. That book was being hailed by Nobel peace Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as a template for the better world, we have been so urgently seeking.

00:02:20   Ryanne keynotes conferences, internationally consults governments on the partnership model, pioneer the expansion of human rights to include women and children received many awards for her work for human rights, peace, the environment, and the foundations for sustainable and better futures.

00:02:41 If you’re interested to find out more about this truly inspiring woman, stay tuned. Hello here’s Xerxes and I’m here today with Riane Eisler. Riane it’s a great honor for me to have you as my guest, please introduce yourself. 

00:03:01 Riane Eisler: 00:03:01  Thank you. I am a writer of quite a few books. In fact, one of my books  just came out recently in a new ,  German edition.

00:03:14 

00:03:14  In English. It was a real well, so nations ,  and ,  all my ,  recent books and recent over the last 30 years ,  starting with the childless and center blade, which is also available in Europe. Kitchens are really based on my multidisciplinary cross-cultural ,  historical research that ,  has attracted quite a bit of attention because it is what we might call whole systems analysis ,  that is unlike most studies.

00:03:47  Of society of the economy. It does not marginalize, or just ignore the majority of humanity, women, and children. And once you take this into account ,  you are able to see connection. That are otherwise invisible ,  that yes, the status of women, the status of children, these are not just quote women’s issues or just children’s issues, but they’re key social.

00:04:20  Issues. And my most recent book ,  nurturing our humanity ,  which came out with Oxford university press in 2019 ,  really shows how the evidence from neuroscience, which shows that nothing less than our brains develop in interaction with. Environments which we’re humans are mainly cultural, of course.

00:04:48 Especially in the first five or so years of our lives ,  really back up ,  the new categories that I’ve introduced. The partnership system and the domination system ,  or rather the partnership domination social scale, which transcends conventional right left religious, secular, Eastern, Western, Northern, and Southern, et cetera.

00:05:13  So that’s me. I ,  am very passionately committed to this work. Because what it shows is not only that a better way of living and making a living as possible. but that is actually deeply rooted in the real story of our past.

00:05:34 Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:05:34  So could you elaborate on that? What do you mean by the real story of our past? 

00:05:39 Riane Eisler: 00:05:39  That takes me back to Calhoun  out. And ,  two other books tell us in the blade, of course, in English ,  which was the first book  reporting findings from this research. And what we today know is that we have been told a false story. the caveman cartoon,  in one hand he’s got a club in our weapons and then the other hand he’s dragging a woman by the hair.

00:06:07  And we think nothing of showing this to children before their brains, much less, their critical faculties are formed. So what does it say? It says.  Male dominance, violence, inequality. That’s just human nature, right? It’s always been that way by definition. It always will be that way. Number one, we today know from neuroscience prize away that the pleasure centers in our brains light up more when we share and care, then when we win and dominate.

00:06:43 But we also the evidence and it is an enormous amount of evidence from archeology from sort of apology from linguistics, from  even DNA studies show that. Literally thousands and thousands of years, human culture was more generally equitable, more peaceful war. We now know, despite what we’re told is only between five and 10,000 years old, that’s a drop in the evolutionary bucket and yes, it was more gender balance.

00:07:23 In other words, it oriented more to the partnership rather than the domination site ,  and my books and articles. And  just, speaking teaching ,  has focused on this. And I, it’s very important that we know the real story about human nature. And the real story about our past, because otherwise we think we’re stuck.

00:07:50  Don’t worry. That’s the, now I’ve introduced four cornerstones that we must shift from domination to partnership. And one of them is of course stories, narratives, but also language. Because our language has a strapped. Think of, for example, the two only two categories in the English.

00:08:15  And I think most in European languages ,  for relations between women and men are matriarchy and patriarchy. And what’s the choice. Either fathers rule or mothers rule, there is no partnership volunteer in it. And as for right left religious, secular Eastern Western, for one thing, there have been oppressive, repressive, violent regimes in every one of these categories, whether it was a hit.

00:08:47  But, the Nazis or whether it was ,  Khomeini in Iran, which you are familiar with or ISIS, religious, secular, leftist,  stolen in the former Soviet union. It doesn’t really matter. But for another, if you really think about it and this fragments, our consciousness, every one of our conventional categories, like conventional studies of human society.

00:09:13  Either marginalized or ignore women and children, the majority of humanity. So we can’t see the connections and we can’t see that. Yes, the partnership configuration is very different from the domination configuration and that it’s not a coincidence that whether it was for Khomeini in Iran. And I mentioned how many, because.

00:09:41  Version Uranian ,  or a Hitler in Germany or stolen in the former Soviet union or the Taliban or ISIS, very different. But for all of them, a top priority is always either imposing. Or maintaining and are sorry. Terria rigidly male dominated and highly punitive family. This is not a coincidence. So we have to consider family and the new multidisciplinary work that is beginning, slowly to emerge in our very siloed universities,  shows.

00:10:26 Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:10:26  Okay. And ,  is there any hypothesis why it developed like that over the last ,  couple of thousands of years, because also there were other systems ,  parallel and before 

00:10:39 Riane Eisler: 00:10:39  The old were not matriarchies they were not matriarchies they were more partnership oriented. See how the language gives us trapped that if women had some power, it was a matriarchy. No, it was more partnership oriented. So when people say that there is no evidence of matriarchy they’re right.

00:11:01 Men also have.  Their position was nothing like the position of women are later became as subordinate, as helpers as basically male property. So I really need to ,  correct that my work, but to answer your questions there, access draws heavily from new approaches, new theories about living systems and societies of course, are complex living systems about how complex living systems maintain themselves and how they can change.

00:11:42  Transformative change from chaos theory from nonlinear dynamics, from a self organizing theory, and I’ve introduced cultural transformation, Siri, which incorporates some of these things. Sinking and what it shows to answer your question, how did, how do we get to this place that is taking us really to an evolutionary dead end, unless we shift,   with climate change and with ,  weapons like nuclear and biological warfare ,  et cetera.

00:12:19 It was during a period of great assistance. This equilibrium. Are both enormous climate changes, armed invasions are huge technological changes. But just because it happened that we shifted five to 10,000 years ago, we began in different places at different speeds ,  to shift towards the domination side.

00:12:49 Doesn’t mean that it had to happen.  I am not either an environmental determiners or a cultural determinist , I think that we have to leave that behind. And my approach is also not linear. We’ve been taught that the story of human culture is a straight line, right? From quote barbarism to quote civilization where, you look at some of the civilizations and they’re pretty grim aren’t they.

00:13:17 I feel whether it was a Chinese emperor or a ,  Arab Sheik or a Hindu pasture, during domination times or Nazi Germany or Khomeini is Iran. It’s, non-linear, it’s a non-linear Siri. And did it. Relief supported by evidence rather than by just, a worldview.

00:13:38  And it introduces a new way of thinking about our past our present. And most importantly, the possibilities for our future.

00:13:49  Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:13:52  so I’m really interested. How did you get into this work and why do you do what you do or what you did? So over the last couple decades, 

00:14:05 Riane Eisler: 00:14:05  It’s more than a couple of decades that I’ve been working on this for.  I was born as where you now live in Vienna. And when I was very small  my parents and I  a gang of Nazis came into our home on crystal night and drag my father away. So I really think that my work is very deeply rooted in that early experience, but also of course, I think of my life really like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle coming together, because there are so many different elements.

00:14:39  My background. My first job was with an offshoot of the Rand corporation, the systems development corporation, where way back when nobody was talking about systems analysis, I learned about it. Now it’s become a popular term. I’m also an attorney and pattern recognition. Is really part of being a lawyer because people don’t come to you and say, apply section 12, 22 of the civil code to my case, they say, oh, this and this happened.

00:15:14  And then it’s up to the attorney. Isn’t it to figure it out. It’s the Africa Vola, et cetera. But to go back to the roots, I witnessed cruelty destructiveness in sensitivity, but I also witnessed something else that I today called spiritual courage. And it was my mother who displayed that courage. The courage.

00:15:39 I call it spiritual courage because it’s the courage not to slay the dragon. Like we’re taught this discourage, but the courage to stand up against injustice out of love. And she recognized one of the young Nazis as a former errand boy from the family business. And she got fear.  How dare you do this to this man who has been so kind to you?

00:16:02  I want him back now. She could have been killed. Many Jewish people were killed on crystal night. Because of all the glass shattered in Jewish homes, in synagogues, in businesses, but by a miracle, she wasn’t. By a miracle with some money passed hands, she obtained my father’s released by a miracle escaped.

00:16:23  And that led me to the question that animates my research,  is all this cruelty, insensitivity, destructiveness, inevitable. As we’re told, as we talked about, human nature, or are there alternatives and if so, what are you. And to answer that question, I immediately could see.

00:16:46 The all social categories don’t answer it because none of,  there have been terrible regimes in every right left religious secular, Eastern, Western, Northern . And I also by then realized ,  something else that ,  it was looking at society through a very distorted and narrow lens. That really does not take into account by any means the whole of society, the majority of society of women and children, and therefore ,  what we know today from neuroscience really fast forward to nurturing our humanity.

00:17:27 Oh, really is so important because what does it tell us? It tells us that nothing less than how our brains develop and with this, how we feel, how we think, how we act, how we vote,  why after the Arab spring, did people vote for a repressive regime?  You have to ask yourself that question.

00:17:49 Because it felt more familiar.  It, you have to take the whole, including the family into account. Now, fortunately not everyone raised in domination. Families, grows up that way,  but we also know from neuroscience something very interesting, and this is all in nurturing our humanity, that the parts of our brain.

00:18:11 That help us ,  really be resilient and see change and go with change are less developed in the brains of people who consider themselves very conservative in my language, domination oriented.  They eventually get the chain. But it takes them a long time. So what are, you’ll get climate change denial.

00:18:38  You’ll get election result. Denial is follow the leader, follow the authority figure. You’ll get COVID 19 denial. This makes no sense. Does it? I mean it, but it does. If you look at the whole picture and understand that this. Really something that we have to address. So the four cornerstones I’ve introduced, start with childhood, go onto gender and then go on to economics.

00:19:08  But beyond capitalism and socialism, we need both markets, both businesses and the government policies I’ve uncovered 19 shows. Writ large, but a caring economics of partners. And I can talk more about that. And of course, narratives and new language, because as Einstein said, we cannot solve problems with the same thinking that created them and the language keeps us strapped.

00:19:39  Doesn’t it?

00:19:40  Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:19:40  Definitely it does. I personally think that language is very much connected to the stories we tell ourselves and the paradigms that lead us basically.  I would be really interested. To know ,  within those four pillars that you talk about ,  where do you see culture  and how would you define culture? 

00:20:04 Riane Eisler: 00:20:04  All four of these pillars are aspects of culture. But if you notice, they’re not the aspects that have been emphasized in most series of social change. If you look at modern history through the new lens of the partnership domination scale, you begin to see something that otherwise would seem obvious that every single, modern, progressive social movement.

00:20:34 Has challenged the same thing, a tradition of domination, whether it was in the 17 hundreds, the divinely ordained right of Kings to rule their quotes subjects or the 18th and 19th century feminist movement challenging. Again, the divinely ordained right of passage. To rule over women and children in the quote castles of their homes, whether it was the first, the abolitionist and then the civil rights and the anti-colonial movements.

00:21:08  Challenging again, another define the, everything is divinely ordained, right? A quote, superior race to rule over inferior ones, all the way to the environmental movement, challenging our once idealized dumb in dominion domination, conquest of nature. But if you look at these movements, that they have focused primarily on dismantling.

00:21:36  The top of the domination, pyramid politics and economics as conventionally defined because I define them differently. And left in place the foundations on which domination systems have kept rebuilding themselves in regression after regression, whether it was the Nazis, whether it was ,  stolen, whether it was Khomeini, whether it’s the Taliban ,  ISIS, you have to understand that for these.

00:22:07  Domination regimes because they’re all have the same configuration authoritarian family, and Tribers state rigid ranking of men and quote masculinity as defined or misdefined in domination systems over the soft, the feminine, caring, caregiving non-violence and a high degree of built in.

00:22:34  Abuse and violence because how else are you going to maintain these rankings of man, over woman, race, over race, religion, or religion. Did you see what I’m saying? There is some violence,  people lose it in partnership system, but it doesn’t have to be built into the system.

00:22:53 And of course, very different stories and language. And if we start looking at society from that perspective, then we see that we really have to pay much, much more attention to these foundations, because whether,  the shadow or became the flag right. of Khomeini’s Islamic dictatorship.

00:23:16 This is not coincidence.   Because I really want to talk about gender for a moment because we’re so drilled into us, especially ,  liberal people who consider themselves liberal that these are just women’s issues or children’s issues, because why? Because in our universities. There’s hardly anything.

00:23:39  I woke up one day and I realized my God in all my years of higher education, there had been hardly anything by about, or for people like me, women. And it was a big aha.  It was really whoa, something is wrong. So Lee, we really have to understand that this model. That is of our species, we’re difference beginning with the difference in form between the female and the male is a template for what I call ingroup versus outgroup thinking.

00:24:16 Inferior, superior, inferior, dominate, dominated, being served, serving it’s a template. So it’s not coincidental that whether it’s Shia against Sunni or Suni against chia in the middle east, or whether it’s racism or antisemitism in the west, it doesn’t really matter. It comes from this view.

00:24:43  That difference means you either. There are only two alternatives. You either dominate or you’re dominated just like with matriarchy and patriarchy. There is no partnership filter. And in reality, not only is there a partnership alternative, but we’re finding. It is much more effective, including economically effective.

00:25:09  And this does require ,  people tell me they read my work and it’s full of aha moments because things that seemed random and disconnect, that certainly makes sense. But gender and we have inherited Xaxis and I think this is really important. A gendered system of values that goes along with this male superior female inferior model of our species, where anything stereotypically considered soft, feminine, caring.

00:25:45  Caregiving non-violence is devalued. It’s you know, how, what is the socialization of quote, real men not being like a woman in domination systems. It’s a very negative, right. But that’s how it has been, but it deprives both men and women of their full humanity. And the good news of course is how many men are today.

00:26:11  For example, diapering babies, feeding babies are doing the code women’s work, which would be, th they would be despised ,  and are despised in domination systems. And how many women are trying. To be assertive, in, in men that’s highly valued, aggressiveness in women it’s, you must not assert yourself, but women are taking on more leadership positions, et cetera.

00:26:41  So we’re seeing movement towards partnership, but it hasn’t been understood to be key to the change and that really changing our definitions. Humanity of being human of masculinity and femininity is a key to change. And my work shows that, and as I said, the good news is that ,  we’re seeing changes, but not fast enough.

00:27:11  And people ,  need a new world view that connects the dots.

00:27:17 Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:27:17  Okay. And ,  do you have an idea ,  a hypothesis of how this can be accelerated? 

00:27:24 Riane Eisler: 00:27:24  I think that we have technologies of communication to do it.    In a sense, it’s a double edge sword,  on the one hand we were seeing the shortening of our attention spans, which is very bad ,  very bad because we have the capacity to make connections, to have to see patterns. But it’s very hard to do it if you’re jumping from one thing to another, but on the other hand, We do have technologies of communication.

00:27:56  I ,  I believe that strangely enough, because the domination system is taking us to an evolutionary dead end, an ISSOs of domination anti-technology are at least omics.    that in a strange way is a sign of hope. I also see hope in COVID that may sound strange, but it was a way of stepping back and people are beginning to talk about what I talk about let’s and go back to the old normal.

00:28:30  Where even in the wealthy United States, one quarter of all children, one quarter of all children lived in poverty. We don’t want to go back to that normal week. People are beginning to talk about creating a new and better normal, it takes an, and of course you have 70 million people who voted for Trump who are living in a complete virtual alternative universe.

00:28:53 Follow the leader. If the authority figure, whether it’s a pastor or whether it’s Trump tells them something, it has to be. So it is really fascinating, isn’t it? So we see the struggle for our future is not between right, and left and religious and secular and Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern is between these two configurations.

00:29:18 And we have to shift these foundations of childhood. We see trends towards what I call partnership, parenting authoritative, but not authoritarians. And certainly non-violent,  it, to hit a child, think about that for a moment to hit this helpless human being that’s wrong. But it’s also preparation for learning that is very dangerous to question authority, no matter how crazy, no matter how AngelList it works. So we have now have about 50 nations pioneered by Sweden. Some of the Northern European nations have been moving to the partnership side, more gender balance, more women in government. More caring policies, universal health care, child care ,  very generous paid parental leave. These are huge.

00:30:19  These are partnerships. Policies. These are caring economics policies, but Sweden also pioneered a law that said that it’s against the law to use physical discipline against children. And they launched a massive educational campaign. So you asked me, what do we need? We need a massive educational campaign to show people that there is a partnership built during a diff to show that childhood and gender are central to the shift to survive and thrive.

00:30:55  And that in our post-industrial age ,  we need new measures of economic health. We’re developing such a measure showing. We know from neuroscience today that if we are to have that high quality human capital that economists keep talking about right, flexible, creative, resilient people who can work in teams rather than just giving or taking orders, it starts in childhood.

00:31:24  So we have to turn reality right side up. And it can be done if enough consciousness changes. And that is what this work is about because action policy, I introduced the term human infrastructure ,  about in 2007 already. And now president Biden is using it. I wrote a book, the real wealth of nations, the subtitle is creating a caring economics.

00:31:55  It got co-opted to mean only the care economy rather than an economy that has as its school, caring for people, starting at Burruss and caring for our natural life support systems. That is what we need, of course, but we are moving, but there’s also 70 million people. Are in some kind of crazy domination oriented reality.

00:32:20  So we have a lot of work to do, but it can be done. And change does happen. Change does happen. Change has happened not only from partnership to domination, but. During the disagree Librium, the dislocations, the first, the industrial revolution. And now the shift to the post industrial knowledge service aid.

00:32:44  We’re seeing a lot of change, so it can happen.

00:32:49 Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:32:49  Definitely I’m sure.  I’ve ,  seen that you’ve talked a lot about ,  GDP, for example, that it’s the wrong measure. 

00:32:59  Riane Eisler: 00:32:59  It’s absolutely the wrong measure. Yeah,

00:33:02  Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:33:02  and could you elaborate a bit on this. 

00:33:05 Riane Eisler: 00:33:05  Yes. Of course we are. GDP is the result of what I call domination economics. And it isn’t just capitalism. It’s also socialism really because both capitalists, both marks and Smiths is still taught in economic schools today. In their time, caring for people was to be performed for free by a woman in a male controlled household so much so that even as late as when Mark’s room.

00:33:37  In the 19 hundreds ,  many of the laws still said that a woman and wife cause most women married ,  could not Sue herself for injuries inflicted on her. Only her husband could for loss of her services. So that’s what we’ve inherited. So GDP of course not only includes as quote, productive work because both marks and Smith’s relegated care, work to reproductive rather than productive.

00:34:14  All right. So what does GDP include us productive activities that actually harm and take life? Selling cigarettes, selling. Unhealthy fast foods and the resulting medical costs and resulting funeral costs. They all make GDP go up. Don’t they? A tree is not part of GDP, even though we depend on trees to threes, unless it’s dead, unless it’s chopped down, but not only does GDP include as quote, productive, negative.

00:34:49 It fails to include as productive the activities in the non-market economy, in the natural economy, in the volunteer community economy and in the household economy, because the system was simply set up to exploit those. I mean it was domination economics. We at the center for partnership systems are developing what we did.

00:35:17  We launched in 2014, what we called social wealth, economic indicators, metrics that show. The economic value of investing the return on investment. If you will, from investing in caring for people, starting in childhood and investing in caring for our natural life support systems. And we now have a team of economists working because there are 24 of these indicators and that’s a lot of indicators to condense and upgrade them into what we call.

00:35:53  His social wealth index. And hopefully by the end of the year, we’ll have the first prototype of this index. And is this different from other GDP alternatives, which don’t focus on the women’s work, gender again of caring. But also because it not only looks at where we are, a snapshot.

00:36:18  Quality of life as it is today, but it also looks at not on the outputs, but inputs, what investments.  Are needed for a better quality of life. So for example, the ,  when we launched the social welfare economic indicators, and you can find out more about them @centerforpartnership.org ,  the United States, for example ,  invests less than half the always CD average in family support and not coincidentally, the United States has the highest infant mortality, the highest maternal mortality and the highest ,  poverty child, poverty rates of any developed nation.

00:37:03 We have to connect the dots. Don’t. And again ,  family, women, too.

00:37:10 Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:37:10  Okay, thank you for your elaboration. I find it also very interesting from the perspective that before I got to know your work, I always felt like that. The systems that we are running now, basically in my personal opinion, have failed that they are contributing. Like if you would look at life like a computer game and how civilization develop ,  over the centuries.

00:37:38 And ,  now we are. Like in defining face of humanity, possibly even humanity dying. Then the question is why is it dying? And so an answer would be possibly that profit maximization doesn’t work. And one of the solutions that I was thinking of is  maybe  humanity needs to find out.

00:38:01 We cannot make it ,  through the challenges that we’re facing without collaboration. 

00:38:07  And then I found your work. And basically that’s what you’re talking about. You’re talking about partnership ,  starting with partnership  from the gender perspective. but really, it, also goes beyond that.

00:38:17 It’s also beyond the family and beyond the city and the country and nations. It’s really the collaboration. We’ll see those now during the COVID pandemic, basically that we cannot handle this pandemic. If we look at this ,  I would say it, from this perspective now transnational virus that is everywhere.

00:38:39  We cannot handle it, as nations. And ,  I think your work ,  goes very much into this direction, but telling us really where to start off. 

00:38:51  Riane Eisler: 00:38:51  Yeah  

00:38:52 It, and it, and we have to remember that people do collaborate. In domination systems, cartels, collaborate, gangs, collaborate, invading armies collaborate. We’re talking about the governing values and that takes us back to the agenda system of values. In other words, yes, partnership systems are based on mutual respect, mutual accountability, mutual benefit, but there are hierarchies too.

00:39:24  What I call hierarchies of actualization, empowering rather than disempowering ,  because we all are, and we read about it’s the trend in that direction, even in the management literature, but it is not placed in context. We need to understand that this is part of the shift from domination to partnership and that you can’t just ,  I spoke to the United nations and assertion organized by the country of Bolivia, on harmony with nature.

00:39:55  And I made the point. You cannot take on harmony with nature. To a fundamentally imbalanced system. You really need whole systems change and that’s happening in bits and pieces. But unfortunately ,  as yet, because yet this new worldview is not mainstream and we have to make partnership mainstream partner realism mainstream, because then people feel empowered.

00:40:26 They aren’t they’d stop fighting each other for the scraps because that’s how the domination system maintains itself. And really we can move, but we have to pay attention to these four cornerstones of child. And there are trends in that direction. Even the American psychological association last year or the year before finally said spanking is not only ineffective as a means of discipline, but it is harmful not only physically, psychologically, but it is all part of the movement from domination.

00:41:07  To partnership. And so I ,  do these interviews to get these ideas out ,  because people aren’t reading books as much, and I wish they would because my books are very accessible as they have tremendous amounts of evidence, but they’re written well, I’ve been challenged. It’s just a fascinating story, 

00:41:27  really. And ,  I ,  and certainly ,  My book on economics is getting a lot of attention now because it’s time the times have finally caught up or are beginning to catch up to the need for a new way of thinking and therefore new policies and ,  a new better way of living and avoiding disaster. Frank.

00:41:53 Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:41:53  Yes. 

00:41:54 Riane Eisler: 00:41:54  And you were part of the partnership movement. I can see that there. Yeah.

00:41:58 Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:41:58  Thank you.  So you’ve talked a lot about ,  paradigms, not basic. We’ve talked now all the way through about paradigms. is there any thing you would like to add to that when it comes to paradigms that really need to be challenged   

00:42:17 

00:42:17  Riane Eisler: 00:42:17  We have challenged paradigms. I sometimes say it as a joke that when I get really depressed, I think of the European. Ledgers. Why? Because they looked a lot like the Taliban, with the inquisition and the crusades and the witch burnings women had no rights, children, nobody had human rights.

00:42:37 You would say human rights, then people would think you’re crazy. Augustine St. Augustine said that. He said for anyone to question their status in life is like for a nose to want to be an Aww. Can you imagine and  so we have changed, but we have had regression after regression, and we can only avoid those by really paying attention to these four cornerstones.

00:43:06  This is very practical. This is not,  scenery. This is reality. Backed up by neuroscience.

00:43:14 So I have confidence that we, humans are very creative, look, everything around us is a human creation. And I don’t just mean the furniture of the houses. Our culture, our economics, this they’re all human creations. We can recreate them. And that’s what I’m counting on. And I want to be.

00:43:36 Part of helping to guide that shift from domination to partnership to a world, not perfect, but not a utopia, but what I call a Pragma Topia, practical SAIS.

00:43:54  Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:43:57  I really like how you always emphasize That everything is a human creation. And ,  for example, when it comes to the economy, as I said, everything is human creation, including the economy. And it often seems like people excludes the economy from being a human creation.

00:44:15 It is my opinion. I guess you share the same opinion. It is our choice, how we go forth with the economy.   It seems to be like a dogma that this, economic system, how It works now, it just needs to be optimized, but not essentially changed.  

00:44:30  Riane Eisler: 00:44:30  It needs essentially changed. And I’ll tell you, I wonder how people can think that we can continue with a, an economy that depends on over consumption. Depends on overcome Sumption when it’s taking us. To a disaster. Of course it needs to change. But see, I think that we have to change the definition of what is, and is not productive work.

00:44:58 We always have to go to basics and that takes us again, back to the gender system of values, right? And to getting economic schools, to stop dividing into productive and reproductive, a feminist economists are talking. And it’s crazy. The production of human beings that are creative, that are resilient, that can work in teams.

00:45:24 That is the most productive work. And we can do this all through life. We’re amazing creatures. So it’s the choice. It’s the truth. But  I hope more and more young people in particular will ,  make the choice to think and act and create differently.  

00:45:48  Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:45:49  I always like to ask ,  What would you would like ,  people to think of you a hundred years from now, but this time I would like to ask you a different question, because undoubtedly, you are one of the greatest women of our times. There is, there’s definitely no doubt about that.

00:46:06 I can look back and can see which impact you have had. So what I’m really interested in. In your case is I remember that ,  when Doris Lessing won the Nobel prize for literature, that I read that she said that her work, that she considers to be her most important work, where her science fiction books, she would call it space, fiction books.

00:46:29  And I found that quite interesting because ,  when the reprinted, her. When she ,  won the Nobel prize ,  they didn’t reprints there’s the science fiction books, which was a bit odd for me because I felt like she says that those are her most important books. So why don’t they reprint those also it’s not either or so, so why I’m saying this is.

00:46:53 You’ve published a lot of books and you’ve worked in different fields basically and connect them. is there any work that You feel like is your most important work? That possibly didn’t get the attention that it should have, what do you consider to be just very personally considered to be your most important contributor?

00:47:15 Riane Eisler: 00:47:15  It’s a difficult for me to choose this, like choosing among children. Who do you love more? I have to say that one of my favorite books that I wrote is called sacred pleasure. And it’s about sexuality and spirituality. You would love it by the way, if you haven’t read it yet, because it foreshadows so much.

00:47:37  But probably, it’s, I think that you have to take them all together because they’re like a childless and sacred pleasure, really look at how in the world did we get to this mess and what are our possibilities? And then I started to. Books ,  looking at specific aspects of society non-education tomorrow’s children.

00:48:02  And then I wrote a book on the survey, a self-help. The power of partnership or seven relationships and how they differ, depending on how much we relate to either end of the partnership domination scale. And then I wrote my economics book. The economics book is extraordinarily timely now. I would say, but so also is childless.

00:48:28  So also is sacred pleasure. And so also is nurturing our humanity because of the neuroscience that it brings to bear. And so I find it very difficult to answer your question about what is the one book. I usually ask people to start with jealous  because. But the German edition doesn’t have the epilogue that I wrote on its 30th anniversary, bringing it up to date, bringing it up to the Trump years.

00:49:00  So if you can get the English. But get the 57 sprinting or a little bit get the new one instead of an old one, because then it’ll you’ll have this. So is there access, I don’t know what to say. I’m going to leave it to you to let me and your readers know which you think is the most important.

00:49:21  Xerxes Voshmgir: 00:49:22  Thank you. for giving this overview. It makes things much easier for especially people who haven’t read anything yet. Yes. It was really a great honor for me to have you on my podcast. And it was a great pleasure to have this conversation with you and thank you for doing what you are doing, what you have contributed, and I’m a positive that it will have a positive impact on us right now.

00:49:49  And future generations. Thank you

00:49:52  Riane Eisler: 00:49:52  Thank you. Is there exists? Thank you. Bye bye. 

00:49:56   thank you for staying tuned for this edition of challenging paradigm X. If you like this episode, if Riane Eisler feel free to share it with your community. So Rihanna message gets spread even further.  In the show notes, you’ll find the links to her Institute, two books and her work in general.

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00:50:27 if you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact.  Next week, we are up again with another edition of challenging paradigm X until then I wish you a great week.

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