We have all been duped. And by WE, I mean the entirety of humanity. All of humanity has been fooled, duped, deceived and even tricked! Yes, I realize these words all mean the same thing. But to drive the point home I think this is important repetition. We the humans who make up the entirety of our species have been fooled. And we have been fooled by ourselves. Please, allow me to explain.
Now if you happened upon this website expecting some red pill / ‘men’s rights’ fringe content, please find the exits at your convenience, our show will be starting without you.
Like any good mechanism of self deception (eg.- addiction, morbid obesity or enjoying the music of Nickelback) it involves a single logical malapropism extrapolated over time. An idea that seems cool at the time, but has disastrous long term ramifications. Whether it is “Its just one beer” or “this poundcake isn’t going to eat itself” or “Canadian rock is seriously underrated”; those singular logical mistakes made in the moment, make for massive operating errors when time and repetition comes calling.
Humanity made a singular developmental mistake which has been compounded over time.
The gross and reinforced human error is this:
Women are something other.
An incomplete organism inferior to the male.
You may agree with this statement. In one way or another more than half of humanity agrees with this as well.
However, if you continue to tune in, subscribe, buy the (eventual) book, or listen to the (eventual) podcast; I will hopefully change your mind about that. The philosophical and social roots behind this are deep and broad. A single webpage or book will never suffice to diagnose what has taken multiple millennia to create. But over time perhaps I and others might demonstrate how the idea of female as other lives at the core of humanity and has subverted and corrupted our essential social fabric.
Let us pause here and fly away to analogy-land. Bear with me, please, so that I might demonstrate how this naturalistic fallacy about women could cause all manner of dysfunction and still not be seen as a fault at all.
Individuals aren't built in a day and neither are societies.
Individuals, like societies, are built layer upon layer. Every day, every moment is a new experience which adds to the collective whole of that individual. Societies composed of individuals are no different. Time adds, subtracts, refines and hones the collective experience. The process is best described by Hegel’s dialectic (which we will visit later). Eventually societies synthesize and saddle themselves with a set of values, religions, traditions and traits. Upon these layers of social convention a society builds itself.
Now imagine a great rolling plain of green hills. On each hill is a small village. Each village represents a particular society. If we could see beneath the ground we would see that each layer of earth under the hills is distinct but common to all until we get to the rise of the hills themselves. This foundational ground can be thought of as the commonly shared social constructs of all three societies. These would be things like definition of the self, views of women and men, familial constructs, cosmology and religion. These are shared by all three of the hilltop societies.
The individual hills upon which these societies rest are composed of layers of convention unique to those societies. These are things like rituals, language and work customs (to name just a few).
Now in our totally imagined villages imagine that when the earth shifts and a building in the village falls, it represents a breakdown in society.
We see a building fall on the first hilltop because a disproportionate number of people are dying due to heart attacks from too much work. That society recognizes the easily identifiable layer of social ground on their hilltop has a flaw. So, they look to fill in the holes of their “work customs” layer so that the society might be put on firmer ground. Everyone works a little less, fewer people die.
So what happens when there is a flaw in the deepest of firmaments that makes up the foundation for EVERY hilltop? Down so deep beneath the surface it seems as though ALL the layers of the hilltops have flaws and the buildings of the village are falling constantly?
I would argue that often the fissures in the surface get filled and patched over with enough earth that eventually they filter down and appear to firm up the foundation of that society. For example, cosmology can be changed or simply ignored when it can no longer support large changes in a more modern social construct. But sometimes the flaws are in deep and unseen layers of the social construct.
When it comes to humanity’s view of itself, of its two primary halves of male and female, there is no easy fix. This is one of the deepest layer of ground. It cannot simply be filled from above to a point that would stabilize the layer. When a flaw is this deep our hilltop societies could shift and shake but will blame the problem on something near the surface. Something seeable. Something easily fixed. Something that doesn’t require too much upheaval to fix. But the reality is that when a problem is in the very GROUND of a society it must be excavated and rebuilt.
This is not convenient and it is not easy. And in my opinion, in our civilization, it has not truly been attempted.
Now let us leave analogy-land behind.
I welcome you to the idea and the process of building something I call egaliarchism.
Egaliarchy (E-gal-E-ARKEE) and egaliarchism (E-gal-E-arkism) are an idea and a philosophical school where cultural mores and their underlying philosophies are deconstructed and re-examined with a view to be inclusive of all sexes. In short, a reworking of the world where our view of women’s humanity comes before their sex.
My place and my goal is not to rework society. That is the work of generations and time. My goal is to point out the pernicious lie upon which we have predicated all of human society.
I realize this is no small task.
This endeavor is not to seek out some utopia. This endeavor is also not meant to simply tear down the “patriarchy”. An idea that has become quite popular recently. I will digress here by pointing out that the construct of the patriarchy and its anti-thesis were both constructed within a construct of male superiority and female inferiority in mind. The construct in and of itself is invalid. To seek its downfall is to buy into its validity to begin with.
Additionally, what I propose isn’t a call for a new feminism. Feminist writing and thought comes from a distinct and vital perspective. That of the feminine. All varieties of the feminine. It has its own voice and point of view. It is vital. It serves an indispensable role in helping us all understanding human sociology, human progress and human rights. And yes, how to pursue a mode of thinking based around egaliarchism.
As I, or rather all of us move along in the development of this idea, we will reimagine the development of philosophy (and history) as if women had been fully integrated within it and not pushed to history’s margins. The future is not female, as goes a popular saying these days. The future is human.
There will be more. So much more. Thanks for tuning in.