The Human Fault

September 30, 1993

In July, near the Mission Church of San Juan Bautista, I stood looking down the hillside at the ground under which the San Andreas fault was tracing its way North and South. Unpredictable earthquakes caused by this geological fault-line have resulted in terrible losses of lives and property. This week on another fault-line, the earthquake in India has caused the death of possibly 30,000 persons. No geologist has ever suggested that there is any possible way of taming the deep-lying tectonic plates, whose shiftings cause the devastations. Perhaps some day predictability may become somewhat accurate – but so far this is very much a “perhaps.”

In recent days, the events in Somalia and the Balkans add to a human history of hate, wars, power, corruption, and greed have led me to speculate that there may be a human fault-line which has killed more people than earthquakes. While I cannot accept the concept of Original Sin in its Christian theological framework, there are faults in our human motives and functioning that cannot be dismissed by any shallow affirmations of the 19th century principle: A belief “in the progress of Mankind onward and upward forever.”

Emil Ludwig (THE MEDITERRANEAN, p.85) quoted Goethe: “The Greeks were lovers of freedom, yes, but each one only of his own. Therefore in every Greek there was a tyrant who merely lacked the opportunity to develop.”

Recently, I have been re-reading Reinhold Niebuhr – MORAL MAN AND IMMORAL SOCIETY. While some of the topical issues he addressed are dated, (he wrote in the early 30s), his conclusions are formidable, even though I cannot share his Christian theological commitment. He wrote (p.9),

“As individuals men believe that they ought to love and serve each other. As racial, economic and national groups they take for themselves whatever their power can command.” I believe the truth of that observation is self-evident, historically and currently.

Why are we humans like that? Why do we tolerate, even advocate, actions and attitudes as members of a group acting collectively, actions that we would spurn as both unethical and inhumane in individual one-to-one situations?

Is it because Western Civilization has been and is male-dominated, patriarchal? Riane Eisler offers this theory in her book, THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE (HarperCollins, 1988). She rejects as over-simplified the prevailing view among archaeologists/anthropologists that pre-history was matriarchal and historical times, patriarchal. Eisler coined words to illustrate her position:

“gylany” and “androcracy”
Gylany = Gy (woman) An (man) L (linking)
Androcracy = man-ruled

Her theory is that pre-historic artifacts (the “Venus” figurines, cave-drawings, shards, shreds of oral traditions) point not to a matriarchy but to an equal partnership between women and men. This partnership created social milieus where war, violence, exploitation, and acquisitive greed were not the norms, but rather there prevailed peace, understanding, sharing, generosity.

I am not sufficiently informed to agree or disagree with her. She makes large inferences from limited evidence. But, so have the archeologists and anthropologists who would disagree with her. Whatever an “expert” would would pronounce about the nature of pre-historic authority, power and values would seem quite circumstantial when based on available artifacts, art, and imprecise or ambiguous oral traditions and folk-tales.

However, based on its written record, history plainly points to male-dominated civilizations. That patriarchal chronicle is a story of violent aggression, duels for power, treachery. The evidence is there no matter where one seeks knowledge, particularly in the three traditional religions of Western Civilizations, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Can it be only a minor co-incidence that these religious and secular cultures are and have been, male predominant and authoritarian; and the female subordinate and required to be obedient and subservient to authority?

A reputable scholar of world religions, Huston Smith, asserts, “the only large persecuting religions have been in the West.” (ESSAYS ON WORLD RELIGIONS, p,85). There is abundant evidence to support his observation. James A. Haught brings together the constant cruel excesses in his book, HOLY HORRORS (Prometheus Books, 1990).

The Crusades were expeditions of devastating mass cruelties. The Christian Crusaders killed as many, probably more Christians than they did Moslems. In the Rhineland, Christians who did not go on the crusades stayed home and slaughtered Jews. The Inquisition was authorized by Pope Innocent IV in 1252. Savage instruments of torture were applied to co-erce confessions of heresy – the rack, the thumbscrew, the “boot”. Plus of course, innumerable executions of innocent persons by burning them at the stake. Haught quotes Lord Acton (Edward Dalberg), a Roman Catholic, “The principle of the Inquisition was murderous.... The Popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.”

The list could be extended to agonizing length: The persecution and execution of thousands of women as “witches”; The Thirty Year War; Catholic Spain warring against Protestant England (and vice-versa), the slaughter of the Huguenots in 1572; in England, the savage deigns of Henry VIII and Queen Mary, just to name two of the many monarchs whose heritage was war, summary beheadings, suffering.

The Moslem culture was not much gentler. The Moslems conquered from India to North Africa and Spain. The “Assassins” were Moslem zealots and murderers. In the late 19th century, the Mahdi (self-proclaimed) led Moslems in a jihad and destroyed an Egyptian army of 10,000; massacred the defenders of Khartoum, among them the British General, “Chinese” Gordon. In recent years in Iran, members of Baha'i have been exiled and others tortured and executed.

In the last 2000 years, the followers of the Jewish religion have been persecuted and murdered, not persecuting and murdering. However, if one reads the Jewish Scripture (Old Testament), particularly, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, that patriarchal religion was no model of peace or generosity.

I believe Riane Eisler makes a sound historical case in portraying patriarchal religions and governments as warlike, cruel, and domineering. They have never achieved professed goals of peace or justice. No Utopia has been achieved; the world is still a most insecure planet for the human family. Would you argue with Shakespeare when he has King John say (Act IV Sc.2),

“There is no sure foundation set on blood,
No certain life achieved by others’ death.”

The sacred books have been foundations for patriarchal (“androcratic”) religions. Eisler comments: (p. 181) “Both traditional and modern totalitarian regimes require the constant study of holy or officially sanctioned scriptures – be it a Bible or a Koran, or a MEIN KAMPF, or QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN MAO. These provoke all the answers: the ultimate ‘truth’. And serving the same purpose as the rigid religious censorship of androcratic, prehistory, all the mass media are rigidly controlled in modern totalitarian regimes.”

But would the world be a better place if matriarchy (Gylany) had been the rule in the millenia of recorded history? We can never know if “chalice” civilizations had prevailed that the great dreams of justice, peace, and equality would have become realities.

In the absence of such knowledge, there can be references to legends and historical happenings that Riane Eisler seems to ignore or dismiss. We all have difficulties with data that does not mesh with a system, philosophy, or theory we are advocating.

Consider the legend of the Amazons, the warlike women of Greek legend. Governed by a Queen, the story is that female children were maimed by having their right breasts cut off in order to use the bow with greater dexterity. The Amazons invaded Attica. They entered the Trojan War to assist Priam. The legends also tell that their Queen Penthesilea was killed in combat by Achilles.

In Judges [5] we read of Jael, a courageous and tricky woman who dealt with Sisera, the enemy of the Hebrews:

“Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
of tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him milk,
she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.
She put her hand to the tent peg
and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet;
She struck Sisera a blow,
she crushed his head,
She shattered and pierced his temple.
He sank, he fell,
he lay still at her feet;
where he sank, there he fell dead.”

Quite a woman, huh? But hardly the “Chalice” type!

Do you remember the story of Boadicea (Boudicca), the warrior Queen of the Iceni during the Roman rule of Britain? In 50 A.D., the Iceni revolted when the Roman governor ruled that all “suspects” be disarmed. When King Prasutagas of the Iceni died, his spouse Boadicea succeeded him. Then Romans plundered the royal household, flogged Boadicea, and her two daughters were raped by Roman slaves.

Led by their Queen, the Iceni and some allied tribes revolted. They ravaged the homes and lands of Roman colonists; then attacked and burned Colchester, a Roman stronghold. After they took that city, the Iceni slaughtered all the inhabitants. Although the revolt persisted, soon the Roman talent for military organization and strategy prevailed. The Iceni were defeated. Tacitus reported that 80,000 Britons were killed. Queen Boadicea poisoned herself and her secret burial place has never been found. On the Thames Embankment there is an heroic statue of Queen Boadicea on a war chariot, lance in hand, controlling two rearing warhorses, symbolizing her strength, energy, beauty and power to command and lead.

There are many other woman leaders whose lives and actions do not seem to fit any “Chalice” theory, of a peaceful sharing culture. A short list would include:

Queen (Bloody) Mary
Queen Elizabeth I
Catherine de Medici
Catherine the Great
Margaret Thatcher

Perhaps if there had been an historic matriarchy or “gylany”, maybe around 1950, a fellow (Bernie Friedan?) might have published THE MASCULINE MYSTIQUE.

So, here we are in the waning years of the 20th century: a fragmented world, divided [into] “haves” and “have-nots”; hate and aggression still too prevalent for any of for any of us to take our ease in Zion. Neibuhr’s MORAL MAN AND IMMORAL SOCIETY is factually evident in too many political/social/economic situations to be easily dismissed by either bland optimism or apathetic neglect.

The human venture has muddled through the centuries enduring great agonies and “bearing a great burden of grief”. Perhaps that is the continuing lot: to suffer and persist. But there could be moral change if ethical behavior spread from individuals and small circles to larger and larger groups. Not only might one be a moral individual but one could attempt to teach by precept and example thereby making wider and more inclusive the circle of caring.

And much gratitude to Riane Eisler and Reinhold Niebuhr and the prophets of all centuries who lead us to think on these things.