Does this look normal to you?
"Normal" is a relative term. As children we grow up and accept that whatever our society presents to us--we assume is normal. This article challenges you to look at something we take for granted as normal--and ask if its time to change it. (add comments below)
Riane Eisler, author of Chalice and the Blade and Real Wealth of Nations, creating a caring economics “Building a World of Partnership and Peace: Four Cornerstones”. wrote a paper in 2007 entitled
I was reading this while on a break during a day long conference that focused on “family driven care”–a discussion about how the helping professions and families who have children with significant mental health challenges can work more effectively together. Through much of this conference, attendees constantly mentioned the challenges on both sides of the equation–Helping professionals were constantly underfunded, under staff and over subscribed in caseloads. Families were constantly challenged to find the right services–and in some areas–any services at all to assist their children.
So, when I read the following paragraph from Eisler’s article “Building a World of Partnership and Peace”–it hit like a ton of bricks.
“We should encourage and reward economic and social inventions that give value to caring and caregiving work in both the market and non-market economic sectors. For example, we have national programs to train soldiers to effectively take life–and we have pensions for them. By contrast, we have no national programs for training women and men to effectively care for children–even though we have solid scientific knowledge about what is and is not effective and humane childcare.”
Look at that again–we have programs and pensions to train people to take life–we have nothing for those that raise our children…. What is wrong with a society and world that thinks there’s no problem with paying adults to learn how to kill each other, but doesn’t see the irony that it has no money to pay adults to learn how to raise whole and dynamic children?
And we get what we pay for.
You can grow up, go into the military and make a living. But if you grow up and become a stay at home mom–you can’t make a living. What’s wrong with this picture? Its our values. We pay for people to learn how to dominate others (and killing seems to be the ultimate domination over another) but we don’t pay people to learn how to care for each other.
But what if we changed our values? Isn’t it time? Couldn’t we–as a world of conscious people choose to change from a dominator value system to one of caring? Re-read that paragraph and really ask yourself “What’s wrong with that picture?”. And what world do you want to see?
