Ep. 041: Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry

Transcript

Susan: Welcome to you both. This is the first time I've actually had two guests on the show. And Riane, it's such a pleasure to have you back here. As, I don't know, some of my audience might know you were on Episode 28: Partnership or Domination: voices from the past? What was it, whispers from the past? And something better? I'll figure out our title exactly. You were so amazing and excellent. And I hope listeners will be inspired actually to go back and listen to that episode as well because they really will go hand in glove. And, Doug, it's really a pleasure to have you. We don't know each other. But I know of your work. And I was really excited that you could join us today on this episode.

Doug: Well, thank you. I'm just so delighted to be here.

Susan: So maybe I'm going to just start with asking the two of you. Why did you write this book? And why did you write it together?

Doug: Riane, I think actually, you should start off.

Riane: Happy to start off. First of all, it's a pleasure to be with you both. And I started to write this book actually 10 years ago because I began to see the relevance of neuroscience to the research that I've been doing now for decades, identifying two very different social configurations that transcend right-left, religious, secular, Eastern Western -- what I call the domination system and the partnership system. And then, what was it about four years ago, I was in touch with Doug. And it occurred to me, my gosh, he brings such a marvelous amount of knowledge and expertise. So I invited him to be a co-author of the book. But in terms of the reason, basically, to do it, having given you a little background, I think that the information in this book is essential, especially at this critical point in our history, when we're seeing regressions to domination. And the information that it provides shows, that this is not inevitable. And Doug has a big piece of that. And also the information that it provides about how our brains really develop, debunking, well, you mentioned Pinker, and that whole story of evolutionary imperatives that drive us to rape and to war. You know, it's absolutely untrue. We have alternatives. So I feel very passionate about this new book.

Susan: Let me slow you down. Because just to remind, I think what's so interesting about domination and partnership and of course, that is not news to you, not news to me, but some people might be hearing that that dichotomy for the first time. And I think in this age, when we are so polarized, thanks to Fox News, I guess. Maybe I can blame it on a lot of places. But you know, capitalist, communist, or socialist, right, left, I mean, this country, Republican, Democrat, and you've changed the whole paradigm to partnership and domination. So could either one of you say something just for the audience at the beginning to make sure they understand what you're talking about?

Riane: Well, should I, Doug? Do you want to take...

Doug: It is your model, Riane. Please go for it. I'll jump in in a minute.

Riane: Well, my research is really, as both of you know, grounded, and my passion for it. It is grounded in my childhood, as a child refugee from Nazi Europe with my parents, and the questions that came up out of all the traumas that this involved, questions like “does it have to be in this way? Does there have to be so much cruelty, so much insensitivity, so much violence? Or are there alternatives? Because we're often told there are not, right? It's just quote “human nature”. And I immediately understood when I started to do this research, trying to do this through the lenses of old social categories, like right-left, religious-secular, Eastern-Western, Northern-Southern was useless because there have been repressive, violent regimes in every one of these categories. Moreover, if you really think about it, and this is really fundamental, these categories, and also unfortunately most studies of society, and sociology, they pay scant, if any attention to the majority of humanity: women and children. But if you are drawing from a database that includes, this huge segment of humanity, you begin to see patterns. And it was these configurations that keep repeating themselves cross-culturally, historically. There were no names for them. So I called one, the partnership system, and the other one, the dominator or domination system. And it's really a matter of degree. In Nurturing our Humanity, Doug and I introduce the bio-cultural partnership domination lens. And that is so fundamental for research, and for studies now, and for thinking and I’m going to stop here.

Susan: So, we're probably going to cycle around some of these ideas. But, Doug, I want to get you in here. And I mean, this may not be the piece that I associate with you, again, we don't know each other very well is, it's something I've actually wanted to ask somebody for a long time. Because out there in the world that I travel in, people are always, you know, many people are saying, 5000 years of patriarchy, 10,000 years of patriarchy, William Ury and Getting To Peace, you know, with that, that along with The Chalice and the Blade, those two books long ago, really impacted me and got me on the course I’ve been on, but he says in Getting to Peace, you know, 2,500,000 years of possible coexistence as in contrast to 10,000 years of coercion. And, and I think I'm right in coming to you to say, what is it?

Doug: Okay.

Susan: What's accurate here, you know? Has it hasn't really been different in human existence than the brutal, warlike existence that so many people, very educated people constantly tell me that it has been?

Doug: Well, it's interesting you mentioned Bill Ury, his name is spelled URY. And my name is, of course, spelled FRY. And I've never met Bill Ury personally. But of course, I know his books and admire his work very much. But, you know, I have a strange sense of humor. And when I meet him, eventually, someday, I'm going to reach out my hand to shake his hand and say, Billy Ury, the difference between you and me is u (you). That's my fantasy line. But Bill Ury and I share certain things. We're both anthropologists, trained as anthropologists. And obviously, we're both very interested in conflict resolution, conflict management, or in peace, these types of questions. So it really is sort of an odd quirk of fate that our last names are three-letter last names, two out of three letters, the same. So that said, I think I can come at your question, because I am an anthropologist, on the one hand, and I've devoted quite a lot of my years on the planet, to addressing the question that Riane started with and the question that you're posing and that really is a series of questions really about human nature, war and peace. So it was back in the 90s. And I was believing like, I think the majority of Americans that there always has been war. There always will be war because that's just what we learned in our culture. It is just part of our human nature. And one of my colleagues, now retired from University of Hawaii, Les Sponsel, wrote an article, which was very interesting overview of this topic. And he said, you know, for most of the human existence, there's not been war. And I read that, and I remember thinking, I think Les Sponsel has just gone off the deep end, oh, my God, oh Les, how can you write something so ridiculous? And it took me a couple of weeks really, is I just occasionally, you know, reflected on Les and this really crazy idea he had, and so on, and then all of a sudden, could he be right? And that was a key event, mid 90s, late 90s, I'm not sure exactly what year was, it just focused me to start investigating myself as to how old is warfare, and when did war really come in. And what we find, very interestingly, as often happens, you get cultural beliefs and cultural narratives that just evolve and, and people like Riane have written about, and I've written about separately, and also together in Nurturing our Humanity, that these narratives are just incredibly important in shaping how we will view the world. And I think a real message of Nurturing our Humanity is we need to question the domination type of narratives. And understand, on the other hand, that there are partnership narratives that actually are lived out that are in existence that reflect another reality an alternative reality to the domination narratives that we take for granted. So your question, basically, as I see, it, is posing this narrative we have in the West, that humans are nasty and brutal, in short, they're greedy by nature, and that they're violent and unequal. Inegalitarianism as part of just the way it is to be human. So if you look actually, as I've done and others, my anthropological colleagues, at the archaeological evidence, and if you look at the nomadic foragers, which go back, of course, many, many millennia to the past, and how do these types of these societies live, they're really oriented towards partnership. And the archaeological record clearly shows that war is not very old on the one hand, that's one message that's important. But the second message number two message from archaeology is that we can see the various origins of war in different places very recently, with what I would call using Riane's wonderful terminology and model, the rise of domination. So archaeologically, these types of domination societies come in very late, or another way to put it, very recently. And we'll probably want to talk a bit about the nomadic foragers because one aspect of partnership in general and certainly lived out in foragers is that men and women are equals and the women are not dominated. And both sexes respect each other, and they go about their business. There is division of labor, we would say, but there's not this type of domination society of one sex over the other.

Susan: So okay. I mean, I don't how, for how many years there was there possible coexistence? and of course, in that era, as well, I think there were many societies where goddess religions reigned and much more respect for the feminine. I think my understanding, but isn't that because there was enough to go around, and there was enough space to go around so that people weren't concentrated on each other, and there weren't limited resources, and they could just move on if there was a fight?

Doug: Oh, that's certainly part of it. Absolutely. What seems to be emerging, and there are a lot of details to be filled in. Absolutely, you know, science continues in steps. But what seems to be clear is that there is what I like to call it complexity complex, meaning social complexity. And it involves a very, you know, various features sort of working on each other's energetically through time. Once people start to settle down, they need to extract more resources from the environment to support a larger population in one place. So you've got settling down rising population, more intensive resource use. And that means that when you're talking about foragers, not agriculture, right, We're talking foragers, there probably needs to be an aquatic resource nearby, whether it's an ocean, a river with a salmon run, or just, you know, lush fish resources or lakes or what have you. So that the archaeology shows this pattern, that the complexity tends to come in, in aquatic environments. So there's an ecological factor for you back to your question.

But you also mentioned space to go around, very famous archaeologist talked about a packing threshold. And as these nomadic foragers, which are moving across the landscape , foraging, not warring, engaging in egalitarianism behaviors, once they start getting too crowded, the traditional over millennial pattern was will separate move somewhere else. But when the environment in an area becomes packed, if there's a resource base, like I say, like a salmon run on a river or some other marine resources, to support a larger population, then some groups start to settle down. And this is sort of the beginning of the bad stuff, if you put it that way. Because you can get these complex foragers societies that then have larger population basis, inequality amongst people, women's status tends to start to go down, you get warfare coming in, which is very significant. So these are huge changes. And I'm not implying that this happens, or has happened everywhere, certainly not. But when you see it happening, the overall pattern is interestingly, very similar.

Riane: Because this is an area that I think is a little murky. Yes, what Doug says actually is true. But at the same time, you still find our complex societies and settled societies that are more partnership oriented. And you find them not only in pre history, like for example, Catal Huyuk, where there are, no traces of warfare for a thousand years, a settled community, where women and men, as the archaeologists Ian Hodder writes in the Scientific American, really, there's no difference in terms of their life opportunities. There's Minoan Crete, some controversy, but usually it's from scholars who start with the premise that war is inevitable and then set out to prove it. But you'll also find it in complex societies today. You find movement very much towards the partnership side in the northern European nations, Sweden, Finland, Norway, which really are much closer to the partnership configuration. And there are a number of theories and who knows, prehistory is very much a matter of interpretation. And the archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas did propose that , at least in Europe, around the Mediterranean, it was the invasions of so-called Kurgan, nomadic pastoralists that really dramatically brought about the change. But the point for me is that it is not . . I'm not an environmental or technological determinist is what I'm really trying to say. And I think it's very important for us to know that the configuration of the Northern European nations, which are extremely successful in terms of low poverty, low crime, high standard of living for everyone, is the partnership configuration.

And as Doug started by saying, gender is one of the major pieces there. And it shouldn't really surprise us, by the way, that in all of these categories, and in all of these studies, gender is not considered when you really think about it, out of 1600 years of so-called modern science in the West, it's only 50 years ago, 50 years ago, that women’s studies and then men’s studies, gender studies, queer studies, even entered the academy. And they're still completely marginalized, whereas that should be part of sociology, it should be part of everything. And as for child development, which is another major issue because one of the characteristics of contemporary foraging societies, and you can speak more to this, Doug than I can, is that they really don't use coercion and violence in child rearing, which is essential to habituate people to domination systems. So it's not coincidentally that whether it was Hitler in Germany, or whether it is ISIS in the Middle East today, secular Western, religious Eastern, or the rightist fundamentalist alliance in the US, a top priority is always getting back to this quote, “traditional family”, it's a code isn't it? Authoritarian, rigidly male dominated, and highly punitive family.

Susan: Let me jump to something that has been really... gender, of course, is super interesting to me, and a niche of this podcast is not just processes to build common ground, but also that I think getting gender right is absolutely key to building peace on the planet from my own experience and conversations. But I've been super interested recently in watching the millennial generation and lower, I mean, sometimes down to preschool, it's a lot of conversation among parents of younger people about gender fluidity. And so I'm looking at it, I also have a gay daughter and I'm looking at it and thinking, wow, you know, it really feels like this movement towards gender fluidity in many respects, is a peace movement. And it's very connected to actually creating a more peaceful planet. And I have more to say about that. But I wonder what either of you think about that?

Riane: Well, I will say something very brief, the movement towards talking about gender like the #metoo movement, the movement towards recognizing gender fluidity and roles, this is a major part of the partnership movement, although many progressives still marginalize it because we've been trained to do that.

Susan: They don't see the connection.

Riane: They give it less importance. I remember waking up one day, as if from a long drugged sleep realizing that in all my years of so-called higher education, there was hardly anything by, about or for people like me, women? I mean, it's amazing. But in domination systems, you have to have rigid gender stereotypes because how else are you going to say that one form of humanity, the male form, is superior to the female form, that they should dominate and the other be dominated that they should be served, that the other half should serve, which is a template, isn't it? For equating difference, whether it's based on race, religion, sexual orientation, with all of these rankings of domination. So that's why I mean, you've put your finger on it. Gender is a key piece. It's not the only piece. But it's a key piece of domination systems.

Susan: So I want to go one step further and get a little racy with you both. But I have just was listening to this whole conversation about circumcision. And oh my god that interests me, in that this person was saying, I guess it was a documentary about male circumcision. That pretty the fundamentals of where circumcision comes from is about undermining pleasure, whether it's male or female, there are a lot of arguments for circumcision about cleanliness and religion but fundamentally, it's about making sure that the race can continue, but to make sure that pleasure is contained. And then the person went on to say about, I mean, female circumcision, of course, you know, in this country, everybody thinks it's absolutely outrageous. And you know, it's not practiced very much. But male circumcision is, of course, practiced all over the place without people even batting an eye. But fundamentally, they were saying, you know, what those movements are all about is trying to create a more fundamental binary system between male and female. So like, you know, when you circumcise a woman, you basically are taking away the part of her that is more male-like the clitoris which acts more like a penis. And when you circumcise a man, you're taking the foreskin, which is the most sensitive part of the penis, and you're and it's a tissue that's very much like female genitalia. So you're making this person was saying you're making the man more of a “pure” man and a woman more of a “pure” woman, and you're taking away any of the sort of the gender fluidity that's in the middle, which is really what our bodies are... I guess what I'm saying is, I think our bodies, a lot of the real truth about humanity comes from how our bodies are. And sometimes we defy what our bodies are telling us about what truth is. So I don't know if you have any reaction to that. And I hope it's okay to talk about this. But I think it's super interesting and connected.

Doug: I could say, as the anthropologist, I’ll try to take a bio social views, that's the view we take in the book, I think that's really the way to go. In terms of you know, what causes behavior, but thinking in terms of social-cultural anthropology, there is such a variation that you see out there. And these practices, some societies circumcise and others don't. This interesting group from Australia, they do what they call sub-incision, it's actually kind of straight line along the base of the penis. So the semen and I imagine the urine comes out earlier, closer to the body of the male put it that way. So there's these various practices. But big caveat here, this is not something that I've systematically investigated, or researched. But that having said as a big caveat, my interpretation is with female genital mutilation, it's definitely a way that males as a culturally stronger group, are dominating women. And that this does tend, I would speculate, I'd love to see a study on this one occur in more domination-oriented context. So in the book, Riane and I write on this. We specifically talked a bit about the Maasai, and also consider how the values are changing. So again, as an anthropologist, it's just, it's in our face all the time, about how important culture is, culture in terms of determining whether there's two genders, or multiple genders, or whether it's okay to engage in homosexual sex as well as heterosexual sex, or not. And right on down the line, same thing with genital mutilation. Do we do this? Or do we not? So I really think the different cultural traditions play a huge role in these types of questions and gender roles, gender determination, and so forth. I guess I don't have too much more to say about that one.

Susan: Well, my daughter claims, and she's done a lot of research on race, but that in Africa, what I call patriarchal institutions, you might not use that phraseology, but that the people that were more queer, you know, were often revered, and brought into society in ways that you know, just was not shunned, and no one was afraid of.

Doug: Well I think, this is a generalization. And of course, we remember all generalizations are false. But nonetheless, I think in most of the smaller scale societies, where there's a community where people know each other face to face, they tend to accept people's members of the community and value people's being members of the community. Unless, of course, in that rare case, where you get people who are just, you know, recidivist troublemakers, deviants, etc. So with that in mind, I think there's a lot of just sort of natural tolerance in these societies, where people with different orientations and different likes, I think of one specific anthropological example, that stuck in my head. And this involved the Waorani group of Ecuador. And there were two men both married to women, and one couple came from somewhere else. And the two guys became absolutely in lust with each other, and their wives are sitting in church of all things, is this community had been Christianized, giggling and watching their husbands fondle with each other in church. And it just struck me, of course, the openness and not saying this is something to get all up in arms about it somewhere, cause huge fights, but just sort of, Well, isn't that funny? Look at those two. And so I mean, that's just one example of the extent of the variation. And of course, from North America, some of the Plains Indian groups had a third gender, which were males that were sometimes quite revered, as your daughter was saying, where their talents and weaving and other arts, sometimes with a special spiritual connection, and so forth. So yes, you get this type of thing. Again, big caveat. I'm sorry, I didn't expect this type of question. But I'll do the best I can as an answer.

Susan: I know. You're doing great.

Riane: Let me chime in here. Because I think with all due respect to whoever compared male circumcision with female genital mutilation, there is a world of difference. I mean, the amount of pain and lack of sexual pleasure that is caused to girls and women and the trauma that is caused to them, when you consider not only cutting off the clitoris but in many places, like in Egypt, for example, Pharaonic, so called, which I don't think had anything to do with the pharaohs, but a lot to do with later domination, you know, really strict domination culture. You sew the labia together, you have to cut them open for intercourse, you then have to cut them open again, for childbirth. The fistulas, if you talk about taking away pleasure, frankly, a lot of men who have been circumcised, still have sexual pleasure, whereas these women simply have pain. So I really think that we need to emphasize that. I am not an anthropologist, but I have studied genital mutilation. And it is a form of torture, of traumatizing girls into accepting that subordination, pain and possession by a male is their destined lot, Whereas that's not the case hardly, with male circumcision. So I think that we really have to be careful in equating these two practices. The second thing I want to say is that it really depends to a very large extent, on whether, as Doug mentioned the culture orients to domination because that's the purpose of female genital mutilation. Period.

Doug: So I agree with everything Riane said, if I could just loop back for a minute, because this may have been implicitly obvious, but I want to make it explicit. In the book Nurturing our Humanity, you know, just out with Riane being the lead author. And I tried to contribute as best I could, we discuss about most of these topics we've been considering, and one that to emphasize, which Riane mentioned, was that partnership societies exist across different levels and different types of societies. So we really do in the book, we consider the Nordic nations quite a bit and pull them in. As an example of a modern state society where there are high levels of gender equality, there's low levels of internal aggression. And often these societies are not inclined towards war either. But at the other extreme, we have a chapter in the book on the nomadic foragers, and how you see the same type of pattern and sets with a very different type of society. I like to think of the foragers as the original partnership societies just because they go back across millennia. And this is really I would argue, and I have argued, in fact, that we're more inclined towards this type of egalitarian thinking, and you can play the thought experiment on yourself, it'll work for almost everybody, not on an extreme narcissist, perhaps, or sociopath, but we all get upset when we see inequality. And it bothers us. And in the book, Riane has done some looking at it even harms people with the higher end of the social strata when they see and experienced domination or their privileged position affects their health negatively as well. So in short, I think we can make a bio-cultural, evolutionary type of argument, that it's totally the opposite of this dominant male, just being inbred. And we have to climb the corporate ladder because we're so naturally nasty and an extreme we go to war, because it's just in our nature. No, I would argue just the opposite, that we're actually living where we're the living products, a millennia of evolution, where we lived in small bands that needed to help each other, cooperate, and share, nurture the kids together, take care of each other. And I you know, it’s not, oh, yeah. la dee da dee da. Well, actually, this is what the evidence shows if you look towards anthropology. And so one thing that both Riane and I do, we try to make a very readable, but yet evidence-based type of arguments. And Riane can say it better than I think I've heard her say it sounded beautiful. But all the different disciplines and knowledge that we bring into the book, because I'd seen, I think, to be modest, but it's quite remarkable...

Susan: It's amazing.

Doug: Yeah, and this is Riane's type of thinking, so holistic and interdisciplinary.

Susan: You started something good Doug that I would love you both to fill out. And that's, that, you know, I'm an organization development consultant and one of the things I do is help systems change and move forward. And I think one of the things that's most important is having a very compelling vision of what that change looks like. And I wanted you just to, you started to fully describe a partnership model, but what does it look like, feel like, to live in something like that? What do you see?

Riane: Well, Doug, did. I mean, he lived in Finland and he can pick up some of his own experiences, and does in the book, by the way, in Nurturing Our Humanity, which I really have to say, and this is very important. Yes, it is a scholarly book. And it certainly should be adapted in classes. At the same time, thank goodness it's also such a wonderfully readable book. And, you know, people, the feedback is, at first we thought, wow, this is going to be really heavy. But it isn't.

Susan: Yeah, no, it's...

Doug: back in my part to my grandmother, who brought me up me up saying, tell him a story, tell him a story. So I do this all the time in classrooms, and I know Riane does as well. But what does it feel like to be in a partnership society like Finland, I lived there almost two decades, 19 years to be precise. And my first very, very first perceptions was, oh, this is just a modern nation pretty similar to the United States. And of course, beyond the first curtain, and you start finding out that the gender equality and the sex roles are really interesting. Women there just are confident, and reliable, or they have the, you know, the sense of self-reliance is what I mean. And so the men for their part, actually, I think both genders would perceive the typical Finish woman to have more social responsibility, be more mature, in certain ways, more socially capable than the average Finish man. And it's very interesting. It's, of course, the contrast to the United States with the not so subtle patriarchy. So I've looked at this egalitarianism, a variety of different ways informally, and a little bit more formally in my research there. And just the sex roles shake you up a bit. Women have no problem with being romantically or sexually assertive or taking the lead. And in fact, the Finnish men may be sort of shy and may need that to happen sometimes. So that's just one interesting difference. But in terms of social equality, in Eastern Finland, the women were in charge of the cows, which required to twice a day milking and you needed to be responsible. And sometimes the men would get paid or get some money or get coerced buddies to go off drinking, and the women were there taking care of things. So this is, I think, off the farm the Finnish farm, a sex difference, it's been sort of evolving there for a while, one friend of mine, a sociologist explained that the woman always had the key to the food cupboard on her waist, wrapped around her waist. And the husband were not going to get in there and, and wreak havoc and eat too much, or eat the food that was being saved for Sunday or something like this. And it's just numerous examples historically and recently, well, recently, they have a part of their government is the Bureau of Social Equality, to make sure that in government and in private corporations, men and women, and in fact, anybody in anybody are being treated equally under the law. And I thought, it's pretty neat, a whole bureau of social equality to monitor this, they put out one publication in English, which I happen to pick up, when I visited their office, that was the gender barometer. And I'd read some studies from long ago as an undergrad or grad student about comparing in the United States how women now are in this horrible position. We've all heard this, of course of having to do all the housework and at the same time, try to hold down a job and take care of the kids. Well, Finns looked at this very systematically as to husbands and wives and who does what in the household. And they found that yeah, in fact, for some of these cleaning, jobs, ironing, you know, for instance, less so doing the dishes, going grocery shopping, the women did tend to do a bit more than the men. But what the Finns did was they also looked at some things that I've never seen considered in the United States, such as who transports children to sporting events, who does car maintenance, who does home repairs. And in fact, the and this was largely Finnish, women do women writing report where women ended up with a balanced conclusion that men and women put in virtually the same amount of time into the household, considered holistically, whereas sometimes they realize that one sex might be by experience or sex role, a bit more trend towards changing the oil in the car, and the other one might not iron better. But this is no big deal to the traditional Finnish family, they feel that equality, they want to be equal. So I might be just slightly overselling it but not really. So this is, you know, I just found it intriguing to live there in this type of partnership society, I was told by several Finns that a boyfriend and a girlfriend, husband and wife should be best friends. I just thought that was so refreshing. Not that this doesn't happen in the States, of course, you know, everything is relative, it's a matter of degree and percentages and, and attitudes. I once used the phrase the battle of the sexes, and they just looked at me. I said, Yeah, you know, and they said, no we don't know what he's talking about.

Riane: I want to add something and then ask you to talk about it, Doug. Because the higher status of women has a huge effect on the social fiscal priorities. And this is something that we bring out in Nurturing Our Humanity again, and again, and that Doug actually experienced: as the status of women rises, it isn't just that women in places like Finland, Norway, Sweden, are half of the national legislature. It's the dynamics of partnership and domination systems connected with gender. As the status of women rises, men no longer find it such a threat to their status to their, quote, “masculinity,” to also embrace caring values. So these nations pioneered universal health care, generous paid parental leave, for both mothers and fathers, or same sex couples, or whatever. Elder care with dignity, high quality, early childhood education, parenting education. And I think that this is really the point: we tend to think of gender as sort of isolated, in terms of our individual relations, when in fact, men can be very sensitive. And women can be mean. But what we miss is it's the socialization and it's the value system. And at this point in our history, it is essential that we start thinking about what kind of fiscal policies do we need, not only in human terms, in environmental terms, caring for people caring for nature, which are devalued, but also because we're moving into the post Industrial Age. And we are told here that human capacity development is a major, major factor in whether we do or don't have that “high quality human capital.” So it's not coincidental that we developed measures called Social Wealth Economic Indicators, showing that the United States has the highest child poverty rate, the highest infant mortality rate, the highest maternal mortality rate of any OECD nation. And it invests less than half, less than half the OECD average in family support, and in caring policies. And Doug if you can talk about what happened to you when you got there about health care, because it's so typical of the kind of culture shock, isn't it?

Doug: Yes, absolutely, I mean, I'm coming from the States. So I know we have this thing called health insurance. And here I am just arrived to be there initially, for one year as a visiting professor. And I think to ask the immigration woman, what happens if I should get sick or have an accident? I mean, should I buy some health insurance? Or what? And she said, what do you mean? So you know, if I have an accident, or I get sick, and in the hospital, I would need some coverage? How can I arrange that? And she says, no no no, we take care of you, it would be inhumane not to.

Susan: It's fabulous.

Doug: It will be inhumane not to. So they're countless examples. I think Riane said it very well, what she just said. But just to highlight when you have a parliament that is more 40-60 women tend not to be the majority there. It's an interesting phenomenon as well. I think perhaps this is just my own thinking that there's still a little bit more ambition, perhaps than the males to be politicians or something like this going on. Good question for research, right. I always love research questions. But the women have a really powerful role. They've served as the highest ministers, before I left there, they had equaled out exactly all the ministries, which has analogous to our cabinet members, right. So it was equal male and female. Also, when I was there, for two terms, we had the first Finnish woman president Tarja Halonen, and it was wonderful in all ways, I think, and so it creates a different way of looking at things, the woman's perspective, if I dare say that, of caring about kids, caring more easily, of course, Riane is right, you know, men can be socialized and learn to care too. And in fact, arching back to the foragers, the nomadic foragers, men are caring for children quite a lot in these types of partnership societies. But in the Nordic lands, it's just very typical, the young husbands and wives with young children share the childhood responsibilities you all the time see fathers, walking the babies, the whole family together, not just mothers, and, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Riane: And they have social support. And this is really the point that we keep coming back to, in Nurturing Our Humanity, connecting the dots. Because if you analyze society and leave out the majority, or marginalize the majority, you cannot connect the dots, because you're missing some huge dots. And, of course, our universities are so siloed as, Doug, who is the head of a more multidisciplinary Peace Studies knows. But that's an anomaly in the university, unfortunately, where everything is still we're going to look at this little dot and that little dot, and gender is way off here. It needs to be brought together, that's what Nurturing Our Humanity does. And once we think differently, we can make changes, which is why we end the book with four cornerstones, practical steps.

Susan: Before you go there, because I'd like you to say that, but this is The Peacebuilding Podcast. And once and of course, this is all very connected. But one thing that I think what you're talking about is so critical for is that the last guest that was will actually to two shows before, has been tracking the military budget of the United States. And I'm kind of on a campaign myself to wake up women in the global north, and specifically American women, to just know how our money is being spent, because of course, we The United States has boots on the ground in 80 countries, we spend more than the next seven to 10 countries combined on the planet, and the military. I think that's even under a lowball number. And because everything you're saying, like if we didn't do that, we would actually have money to be spending on a lot of the kinds of social support that you're talking about. And I think that women as a group, are still so codependent I mean, it's just like.... and really are not paying attention to how our money is being spent...

Riane: Oh, go ahead, Doug. I have something to say.

Doug: Hold the thought. Don't forget the thought, Riane. A couple of thoughts here that came immediately to my mind. And you're absolutely right, Susan, it's just appalling the amount of money that we spend in America on military. My first thought is what people really want. If you look cross culturally and across history, they want security, they want safety and security. And somehow we have been led down this narrative in the States that military might bring us safety and security. And that's absolutely absurd, for so many reasons. Now, one being climate change. How in god's name is that big military, gonna make us, you know, prevent climate disaster, just as one example. So what we really need to do, in my view, is perceive security much more holistically for all humans, because we're all on the same planet. And we need to pull together and solve some of these serious ecological pollution problems. And just give up war, just to say it straight, it makes no sense for us to still continue the institution of war, under some idea that this is contributing to security of national security or what have you. It's ludicrous. We are in a real state of disaster. And we just need to act. And the other one is, my second thought is just to mention real quickly back to Finland, that depending on how you count, they, spend 1.5 to 3% of their money on their defense forces. And so that's part of the puzzle as to how they've had all the wonderful things we've been talking about in terms of being able to support people. There's no slums in Finland, there's no homeless. The older are all being taken care of. Children get free lunch throughout their whole schools. That's just given their kids are at school, of course, they get lunch, not to pay for it, it's just there. So when you don't spend half of your tax dollars, that's what we do. And half of our tax dollars go to the military more. Okay, my statistics are old, you're right on top.

Susan: 57 cents on the dollar.

Doug: There we go. Precisely. 57. That's, that's appalling. And we walk around and we say, look at the state of this country? And somehow we accept it? Or we're number one?

Susan: Well, and if you listen to Stephanie, who's the guest who's been tracking it, this is at Brown University Center that's been tracking it. It's all been paid for in a credit card. So there's all this interest that is going to come due. So it's, it's um, yeah, making some very rich ...

Riane: The point that I was going to make, and I speak now as somebody who was a child refugee from the holocaust. I want to emphasize that we do need a military. The issue is, how much are we going to invest in it? Because look, unless this shift to partnership is global. And that includes places like Iran, like North Korea, etc, cetera. We do need a military because if people are very much in the domination system, they see only in-group versus out-group thinking, whether it's Shia versus Sunni or Sunni versus Shia, or it's the United States versus Iran or Iran against the United States, it doesn't matter. It starts really with their gender template, doesn't it? One form of humanity is going to dominate. But I absolutely agree that our military budget is obscene, really, but at the same time, from a practical standpoint, I want to emphasize this. Now, the good news is that there are people in all of these societies who want change. I mean, the struggle for our future, as we bring out in Nurturing Our Humanity is not between right and left, religious, vs, secular, Eastern vs. Western, capitalist vs, socialist. The northern European nations are not socialist, they have a very healthy market economy. They're caring societies. But the struggle is within all of these societies, including the societies that are much more domination oriented than we are in at this point in our history. And that's where these four cornerstones come in. Because if we only pay attention to dismantling the top of the domination pyramid, like most progressive social movements have, and leave the foundation of parent-child and gender relations intact, we can’t change.

Because one of the things we haven't touched upon, and I really think is so vital to touch on, is what we today know from neuroscience, you know, it’s called hard science, which is that our brains are not fully formed when we are born. They develop in interaction with our environments, which for humans, of course, are primarily our cultural environments. This is why we call it the bio-cultural partnership domination lens. If you orient to the domination side, it doesn't matter whether you're Communist or whether you're socialist or whether you're capitalist. I mean, it isn't capitalism, by the way, feudalism was domination economics, empires were domination sheikdoms are domination economics. We need to start thinking in these terms.

We need to understand that our brains develop in interaction with our environments. And therefore, as neuroscience shows, what children experience and observe, especially in their early years, impacts nothing less than how our brains develop. Now, that is fundamental. And we have a lot of studies from neuroscience, showing this, showing, for example, we have one study, that there is a gene that is associated with violence in men, but not all men with that gene have turned out to be violent, only those that have what we today call adverse childhood experiences. Now, that is fundamental.

And if we are going to really change, we have to do it globally. And we have to start with the four cornerstones of childhood, gender, economics, but moving to a caring economics, that gives value to caring for people starting in early childhood and caring for nature, and of course narratives, stories.

Nurturing Our Humanity tells a story that is based on evidence, and that we so need right now.

Susan: So I know we're pushing our time. But I do want to ask you both a question that always comes up around, I can feel it inside of myself, as long as I've been doing the work I've been doing. The whole thing about peace, collaboration, partnership, is it boring? Is it not as exciting and dynamic as competition? And you know, like, there's a reason why newspapers are like, using competition and violence and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's a question, you know, when I think about creating a kind of world that is way more pleasurable, way more focused on meeting people's needs. Is there room for innovation for competition for that kind of tension, which actually many people enjoy?

Riane: Well, I think that there is, that partnership systems are hardly conflict-free. But the question is, how do you resolve conflict? In domination systems it is suppressed or erupts in violence. But that's a very important question you bring up because the adrenaline rush is really a substitute for the pleasure that we are deprived of. You know, in my book, Sacred Pleasure I write about that, that domination systems are really based more on avoiding pain, rather than seeking pleasure. That is, pain is built into domination systems. And I'm going to let you have a word about this too Doug, because I think it's really basic. In communication school, people are taught that it doesn't lead unless it bleeds. I mean, right there we’re socialized.

Doug: Yes. And you're actually asking, as I see it, you know, various questions are dealing with various elements, there's cooperation versus competition, for instance. In United States culture, comparatively, is extremely competitive. So many Americans who just grow up in this type of culture, of course, they take on that this is natural in the way it is. But if you even go some place like Finland, yes, they're competitive also. But they're also bit more cooperative or easily cooperative. Now, every society needs people cooperating. That's sort of like a baseline. So then becomes how much competition is allowed. And, again, so many anthropological cases speak to this, you have societies where it's just considered abhorrent to be putting others down and being competitive and trying to do some one upmanship. These would force fall towards the partnership end of the continuum. A little anecdote to sort of try to illustrate what I'm getting at here. I once watched a group of four Finnish teams about 20 years old, you know, 19-20 years old, whatever, compete with each other to see who could climb up the side of this rock wall, just with their hands. And finally, one succeeded, and all the others. “Good job, man”. Good job. And I thought, I've never seen that reaction in America. You have four young men like that, one succeeds. Now there's a yeah, right. We know this. So it's subtle. Its cultural. It's interesting. But violence and aggression, peacefulness, excitement, I would say excitement is another factor here. I mean, again, what is exciting is, again, culturally shaped to a large degree. The peaceful societies that I've read quite a bit about, they don't seem to be wanting for excitement. They get joy, I think is what people are getting in all sorts of other ways. It's exciting to climb a tree, many meters up to get honey in the middle of the night, try to smoke out the bees, while your companions are down below trying to catch the honey, you're lowering down. That seemed pretty exciting to me. But it has nothing to do with competition, it certainly has to do with risk. So you're raising as I see it, a multi-faceted question.

Susan: So many people in this country will argue about innovation and the need for you know, competition to create innovation and creativity. I wonder what you...

Doug: Interestingly, Finland is has been ranked repeatedly at the highest level of this international competitive score, I forget what it's called.

Riane: It's a World Economic Forum's global competitiveness reports. And interestingly, these northern more partnership-oriented European nations not only had the lowest gender gaps, they invest much more in caring for their people starting in childhood, caring for their environment. And they're always in the highest ranks of the World Economic Forum's global competitiveness reports. And also, as we bring out in Nurturing Our Humanity, because we really want people to read this book, they rank high in the happiness reports. My goodness, I mean, you know, we have all this evidence. A more partnership-oriented society is not ideal, not completely violence-free, people lose it. But better, much, much better and it actually makes people happier. And the studies show one reason why. There was one study we have in Nurturing Our Humanity that I particularly love. The so-called pleasure centers in our brains light up more when we share than when we win.

Susan: So interesting.

Doug: Very interesting.

Riane: The evidence is there, empirical evidence. But we have to be able to see it because, you know, a colleague of mine has called our old social categories weapons of mass distraction, because they so fragment our consciousness, and distract us from what we have to focus on.

Susan: So we probably need to end and I'm hoping that the two of you could end like this. Things are feeling pretty bleak to many of us out there. And, you know, I think your book is a very hopeful book. And I'm wondering if you could end with maybe not everything that gives you hope, but something that you feel like is giving you hope, both of you?

Riane: Well, it gives me hope. And I'll just make it very brief, that we have all this evidence that if anything, as Doug puts it the default, for our species, it is not violence,it is not rape and war, and all of this stuff that was drilled into us, whether its as original sin or selfish genes. They’re the same story, you know, we're bad, we have to be controlled, right? But it’s wrong. We have all this evidence showing that human nature is inclined to care and share, given half the chance, and that half a chance is moving more towards partnership, starting with childhood, gender, economics, getting rid of this gendered system of values, narratives and language; then we can move forward. And this is so urgent right now. So that's why I am so passionate about all of this and about Nurturing Our Humanity.

Doug: Well, I think I totally agree with everything Riane said. I would have said it slightly differently. But I totally agree. I guess elaborating a little bit, I've been, as I mentioned earlier, working on the human nature, war and peace question for a very long time. And what I've really come to conclude based on my studies is that yes, we are inclined towards needing security, and there are dangers that arise as Riane was pointing out earlier. And we need to have mechanisms to deal with these, whether it's law, or conflict resolution mechanisms, social control mechanisms. You know, every society needs a police in some way. If you're in a society without a formalized police force, the people join together as these bands to protect themselves against any person who just loses it. So with our long history of being humans, we have solved so many problems collectively. And we have survived. And we've come this far. And we really are a creative, gifted species, I'm looking at the technological feats and modern medicine and understanding the universe. And, in fact, conquering nature is a huge feat. No other species has done it to the extent that we have, not that that's good in this case. But my point is, we tend to just look around and see things how they are right now, and see that it's dire times, but we have faced all types of problems in the past, which we have overcome and surmounted. So that gives me a bit of hope here too that will also be able to address some of the important issues such as warfare and climate change, and inequalities amongst the genders, and all this stuff that we have to work on. Again, if you think back to the nomadic forager band, it's really based in our heritage to think in terms of equality and cooperation and sharing. So if we can draw on to steal Steven Pinker, notice I said Steven Pinker this time, his better angels of our nature, and a few others that Riane and I add in there, there's hope. Absolutely, there's hope.

Susan: Well, really, thank you both so much. You know, this is such, I think, this book is a gift, and it provides... it's kind of a roadmap really, for how to move forward, I think. Um, so I agree, I hope people read it. And, and I really thank you for both of your time and energy and putting it together and you know, all of the wisdom that's gone into that. And Riane, you're just amazing. And, Doug, you are too, and I'm just really appreciative to you both.

Riane: Thank you both so much. And onwards.