The inclination to bring disadvantage to women in order to look relatively good, and to gain power over women has always been a key part of patriarchy and how it functions. Consider the female genital mutilation that has been practiced in extreme versions of Islam over the centuries, and you will get an acute picture of what I mean. As I say in the post below:
It is regrettable that this strategy of patriarchal power has not been well enough understood or analysed until now. Those who rise to the top on this basis are not the most well deserving and the best but the most craven and dishonest in terms of acknowledging what their power is actually based upon -- the deprivation of liberty of the Other, along with a false self representation that one has achieved success on the basis of one's own effort.
Under the rules of patriarchy, one has merely stolen the success of another to pass it off as if it were one's own. Her deprivation becomes your source of power -- but what sort of power is that? It is temporarily dazzling, but insubstantial and ultimately unsatisfactory. The ongoing descent towards greater and greater brutality and criminal oppression of women is the only thing that will satisfy one who has become addicted to patriarchal mores. Since his achievements are objectively of no worth, he must continue to convince himelf of his superiority at a purely subjective level, by taking more and more from women.
I have just glanced at something written by Herr Nietzsche, who is, of course, wrong that avoiding pity will allow for a natural order or hierarchy of human values to take the place that had been left by the ostensibly Christian morality of pity. Since patriarchal mores offer such a dazzling array of strategies for extremely decadent people to take control of those who are by no means their inferiors, there is no reason to think that Darwin offers a better ideology to advance humanity than does the most regressive type of Christianity. Both approaches in fact guarantee that decadents come to the top.
Who, in social Darwinistic circles, can resist the opportunity to beat up a woman and to take from her that which is hers? Who can pass by that opportunity for animal superiority, when nobody else is looking? It seems to be so ready for the taking by those who delude themselves that regressing to the level of raping and pillaging marks them as the fittest.
Is this decent into bronze age morality, this brutal, but automatic outcome of a social Darwinistic creed equivalent to the level of intellectuality that Nietzsche proclaims as being the opposite of Christianity and its values? The two approaches are at root the same thing -- self deception dressed up as higher values, the demeaning of humanity and its prospects dressed up as its salvation.
Instead of people looking to the nearest woman and thinking, "If I take away your peace, your pleasure, your ability to achieve, I will make myself very masculine," what if there were males who thought, "Let me see what I can make of myself, and let me have the guts and the confidence to do it on my own."
It is regrettable that this strategy of patriarchal power has not been well enough understood or analysed until now. Those who rise to the top on this basis are not the most well deserving and the best but the most craven and dishonest in terms of acknowledging what their power is actually based upon -- the deprivation of liberty of the Other, along with a false self representation that one has achieved success on the basis of one's own effort.
Under the rules of patriarchy, one has merely stolen the success of another to pass it off as if it were one's own. Her deprivation becomes your source of power -- but what sort of power is that? It is temporarily dazzling, but insubstantial and ultimately unsatisfactory. The ongoing descent towards greater and greater brutality and criminal oppression of women is the only thing that will satisfy one who has become addicted to patriarchal mores. Since his achievements are objectively of no worth, he must continue to convince himelf of his superiority at a purely subjective level, by taking more and more from women.
I have just glanced at something written by Herr Nietzsche, who is, of course, wrong that avoiding pity will allow for a natural order or hierarchy of human values to take the place that had been left by the ostensibly Christian morality of pity. Since patriarchal mores offer such a dazzling array of strategies for extremely decadent people to take control of those who are by no means their inferiors, there is no reason to think that Darwin offers a better ideology to advance humanity than does the most regressive type of Christianity. Both approaches in fact guarantee that decadents come to the top.
Who, in social Darwinistic circles, can resist the opportunity to beat up a woman and to take from her that which is hers? Who can pass by that opportunity for animal superiority, when nobody else is looking? It seems to be so ready for the taking by those who delude themselves that regressing to the level of raping and pillaging marks them as the fittest.
Is this decent into bronze age morality, this brutal, but automatic outcome of a social Darwinistic creed equivalent to the level of intellectuality that Nietzsche proclaims as being the opposite of Christianity and its values? The two approaches are at root the same thing -- self deception dressed up as higher values, the demeaning of humanity and its prospects dressed up as its salvation.
1 comment:
I doubt that Neitzsche held any of the positions ascribed to him by both the Nazis and their opponents.
And social darwinisn was a terrible scred on Darwin.
Many lesser minds lacking the clarity and discipline of the masters chose to wrap their intellectual fantasies with their credibility.
Ignorant men and women will suppress anyone they can using any excuse.
Turning that abuse of power into a conflict merely perpetuates the abuse.
arclein
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