Last week I paid a visit to my optometrist and we got to talking about my work – writer, feminist and all. He told me that in the 60s, his wife said she was tired of wiping bums and counters and went back to school for a degree in occupational therapy. Then he turned to the present. He said that his daughter – a partner in a high-powered law firm with three kids and living on the west coast – had a breakdown last year. She could no longer keep up with it all and suffered a nervous, psychological and physical collapse. My response: “The goal of feminism is that women should live whole lives – not that they should kill themselves. The system is the problem – not women’s advancement.” And he agreed.

What has this anecdote got to do with this blog? which is about the feminine principle, women’s power and the dire problems that face us today, you ask. Everything. We have to create a new way to live on this planet, which means the entire system must change. And changing the system – how the “powers-that-be” operate – will be the biggest problem of all.

So what is the issue here? The issue is the patriarchal power structure.

How do we understand what is really going on in this world when only half of humanity has been involved in defining it? We can’t. All of our brains have been conditioned to think in the male paradigm – which is only yet half formed. As a species, everything we know, have done, and plan to happen is perceived from the male point-of-view. And herewithin we fantasize about solving the problems of planet and human survival!

We are all complicit in maintaining this distorted worldview and the male ego at its center. We all know it is inadequate. We all know that the patriarchy is flop when it comes to dealing with the consequences of its actions. And why wouldn’t it be? Such failure is in the nature of male power itself.

But we continue to buy in. We do what they do and we believe what they believe. We fret about economic growth, raising consumption (!), preservation of the status quo, the superiority of -isms – capitalism, socialism, conservatism, liberalism. We join them in striking out at the “enemy” – as if war were the answer to abject backwardness. Or not – as if tolerance and political correctness were the answer to murderous ignorance and failure. The cycle of life is collapsing and human survival is in question. Yet few of us seem to acknowledge our stake in the planet and what is really happening to us. This is no way for people to behave.