shaman or patriarch?: rethinking Nietzsche

For a long time, I have been very clear in my mind that a shamanistic approach to life is completely at odds with a patriarchal one. Consider how patriarchy obstructs one's vision of the world, by compelling the patriarch to believe that life is simpler than it is.

A patriarch has adopted an emotional outlook, which has become formulised in an ideology of some sort. The key purpose of the patriarchal strategy is to flatten out the landscape so that nothing novel can enter within range. The only configurations of life that approach the patriarchal throne will be those that have already been anticipated.

Clearly, the problem with this strategy is that life is full of novel elements, and because of this, one could encounter all sorts of things that one had not anticipated. This is a problem indeed -- but as I said, patriarchal thinking deals with this problem of novelty by flattening the environment.

"Flattening the environment" is a strange expression, which needs explaining. For how does one flatten that which is intrinsically abroil with novelty and strangeness?

Even the ocean has its currents and its unpredictability, after all.

The way that patriarchy flattens, then, is by refusing to see what it actually there. More accurately, patriarchal thinking oversimplifies the world, so that what was peculiar, rare, and ornate, appears to be instead, austere, common-place and rather simple.

Extremely patriarchal cultures protect themselves from complex reality with the hijab, but most patriarchal cultures practice some form of reality simplification and intellectual asceticism.

"Thinking", such as it is permitted to take place within a patriarchal culture, still happens at a very low level, but it is rigid, predictable, unengaged, and uninspired.

A shaman, by contrast with our reality-undaunted patriarch, is one who lives in order to encounter what is novel. He specifically unblinkers his vision for this purpose of catching life in its strangeness and variations. Keeping things at a distance with an ideology that commands, "You must be severely flattened, conceptually, (if not always entirely in actuality, before you can enter my presence!" is not shamanistic.

Rather, it is cowardly (a characteristic that the shaman can never be accused of having).

The patriarch, however, believes that his attitudinal stance is fearsome.

He's right -- if cowardliness can be considered fearsome. (As an entrenched character trait, this can be frightening to behold.)

To have to rely upon someone who regularly expresses this character trait could be terrifying indeed.

Imagine having to rely upon a pilot who does not have the maturity to fly the plane after all, and you will understand why women sometimes consider that they must make every effort to improve the state of mind of their resident patriarch.

My tendency -- being a skydiver by nature -- is simply to abandon 'ship'.