The Partnership Way
The cultural concept of a gender-equal ‘Partnership Way’ of being human is a big part of the inspiration behind Virtue.
The renowned social historian, Riane Eisler, has spent much of her life examining the patriarchy, a term that describes the ‘male dominant’ attitude; an attitude that boils down to men making the rules, men embracing tribalism and turf wars, men marginalizing women and denying them a cultural voice.
The patriarchy has defined the human culture the world over for at least 10,000 years, ever since stone age humans evolved away from a nomadic lifestyle as scavengers to living in permanent settlements and feeding themselves by growing food crops and raising livestock animals to eat.
Up until recently, there weren’t enough humans on Earth to impact nature in more than a limited way. All that has changed dramatically in just the past hundred years, as the human population has quadrupled in size from about two billion to more than eight billion early in the 21st century. The fact is our Earth has not gotten any larger. The simple reality is the collective demands of eight billion humans are pushing our planet’s finite store of resources rapidly toward exhaustion.
Since our beginnings as stone age scavengers, humans have taken what they needed from nature to survive, without consequence. As we expanded our influence and our numbers, what was once about survival has evolved into a deeply flawed human sense of entitlement where nature is concerned. We are now taking pretty much every resource our Earth has to offer for ourselves. As a consequence, a recent World Wildlife Fund study reports that the wild animal populations on our planet have collapsed by 73% in just the past fifty years.
Tribalism, self-interest, and cultural dominance are the root cause of our global-scale human dysfunction early in the 21st century.
The existential challenges that we humans are entirely responsible for unleashing are planetary wide. There are answers to these looming, existential threats. To work, these policy solutions must be applied cross-culturally, the world over.
The social historian Riane Eisler calls for humans to evolve away from patriarchy to a ‘Partnership Way’ of being that is defined by equal rights for all. It means male and female humans sharing power, all having a voice, all cooperating in shaping a transformative human culture; a culture that embraces responsible EarthCare as a core principle.
As a story, Virtue entertains readers with a vision of a world evolving toward a gender-equal, partnership culture; the kind of life-affirming culture that offers future generations the best chance of learning to co-exist and live sustainably in harmony with nature.