Sex, Time and Prophecy: why women evolved to envision and how that learned ability can lead us toward a livable future.
Prophecy is the ability to learn from time.
Social scientists and anthropologists Leonard Shlain, Helen Fisher and Marija Gimbutas have reconstructed the importance of women in how the human species has evolved to this moment.
Men who have been raised by feminist mothers to be nurturing are sharing the work of living equally with their female partners.
Evidence shows that before the sky gods installed their patriarchies starting about 6000 years ago, which despise women and people of color, we were matrilineal people with both genders sharing power and responsibilities, often with different roles. We live beside the Haudenosaunee and Lenape who have lived a matrilineal way-of-life–where men and women are equal–for time past remembering. In a matrilineal community, Mother Earth, the co-equal of Father Sun, is revered as a source of power and human communities reflect this reverence and respect.
Now that we find ourselves in a cul de sac, with petroleum products poisoning everything that is alive, and Earth herself being seen as dead, her resources objects for exploitation, it is our privilege and solemn responsibility to take the lessons of deep time as building blocks for a livable future.
Those of us who CAN see, see that we must focus, not on dystopian prophecy, but on restoration and return to a positive and sustainable life. People despair: everything is made of plastic, we are engaged in perpetual war, women are still despised and people of color persecuted. But we evolved in the past 12000 years in small, agricultural, craft-based communities. Surely this is our comfort zone. Quite possibly the elements of reconstruction can be found in the way we evolved recently to marry with the best of modernity to construct a livable future for all species.
We are surrounded by farmland and our region—the Twin Tiers of NY and PA and Finger Lakes abutting the Great Lakes, a region that neatly fits inside the Longhouse Bioregion defined by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—is rich with craftspeople.
But our communities are riven, no longer operating fully as communities. The history of industrialization and rampant consumerism, together with other factors have resulted in a poverty line that includes almost half of the population.
There is repair work to be done. The role of indigenous neighbors who have lived on this continent for millennia will be important.