Message given by Rosalie Paul (Brunswick Friends Meeting) at Durham Friends Meeting, October 11, 2026
Looking for Root Causes
It was the 1990’s, a time leading up to a new millennium.
Working with Peace Action Maine, the focus of our every day was the push for treaties and diplomacy and humane vision in our effort to end the era of nuclear threats and counter threats; of one war after another; one missile system after another, no end in sight. More and more frustrated, I began to search for root causes. It feels fair to blame patriarchy and capitalism, but where and when did they come from? Are violence and dominance simple matters of human nature? Does that ring true? More likely it’s one of our choices and a terrible one!
I wanted to know what had been valued long ago and how we got to this cruel and chaotic place in our history? And, beyond that, how can we free ourselves to find a peaceful, even loving path forward? I had begun to read Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics.
I see myself standing in front of a large audience in a Portland Church, introducing Jonathan Schell who would speak on Nuclear Abolition.
I found myself saying that I felt a new hopefulness as I’m learning, from Capra, that science is proving what our intuitions have known all along.
That thread is one I’ve continued to explore with increasing excitement.
The following is a very brief overview of what I’ve been discovering.
I hope it may spark your curiosity and enthusiasm.
Prehistory
The Feminist Movement had led me to reading Riane Eisler’s “The Chalice and The Blade” which looks at the dominator culture we’re living in and the partnership culture she believes is achievable and necessary to our future. She begins with a fascinating account of prehistory, from 25,000 BCE – 2500 BCE.
The exhaustive digs of archeologist, Marija Gimbutas, brought long overdue attention to “Old Europe” (Turkey and Greece and as far west as Ireland) that speak to 20,000 years of cultures based chiefly on the value of “nurturance” and the worship of the Goddess. Studies of grave sites showed men and women honored equally, decorations on pottery shards were studied as a kind of language which spoke to that partnership. Most startling was that she could find no evidence of fortifications!
These were not Patriarchal societies, not Matriarchal either. She used the word “Gylany”, referring to the equality of the sexes.
It wasn’t until 2,500 BCE that Gimbutas saw what she calls disruptions in this evolution. Other tribes from north and south, from climates that may have been less comfortable, came with tamed horses and bronze weapons and set out to crush the Goddess. It took about fifteen hundred years to replace nurturance with dominance. Patriarchy, assuming the priority of male power, was now in charge.
The Mechanical Universe
Four hundred years ago, when the recently invented telescope offered new views of distant searches, Rene Descartes claimed that space was dead, the natural world, the senses and women were of interest only in as much as they were useful to men. The brilliance and potential of the rational human mind was what he valued solely. He saw men as perfect machines in a mechanical universe, a model ready for technological exploration.
Four hundred years later, the Cartesian mechanical model remains at the heart of our own western society. His discoveries gave rise to a culture of individualism and competition, hierarchy and dominance. “Cogito Ergo Sum” I think therefore I am”, was Descartes’ statement to the world. The rules and assumptions of patriarchy remained in place.
My questions were finding answers.
The discoveries made of the Goddess Cultures of Old Europe is evidence enough for me that dominance and violence are not inevitable attributes of our human nature.
The science of the 16th century led us to what, with our destructive technologies, has brought us to the edge of the proverbial abyss.
What hope lies ahead?
The development of what would come to be called quantum physics or systems theory, has been evolving since the late 1800’s and offers us a whole new and very welcome sense of the universe and our place in it.
At the start of it, physicists began asking new questions that didn’t get straight answers. Always their questions produced paradoxes: maybe this, maybe that. Struggling along through a very frustrating period, they came to realize that their questions could not be answered in Cartesian physics. Gradually they were led to new ways of asking questions, to using the newly invented electron microscope, and found themselves at the start of a new physics.
What does the electron microscope see that is so revolutionary, so rooting in teaching us that relationship is what is real and basic to life. Inside the atom (try to imagine this) is a vast space!! And in that space are two particles. One of them, I’ll refer to in layman’s language as “just-a-particle”, I see as waiting and listening. The other one is called a wave and the wave responds to stimuli and goes into a huddle with just-a-particle and from their relationship an action is taken! And electrons are everywhere. 7 to 10 octillion atoms (\(7 \times 10^{27}\) to \(10^{28}\) in an adult human body, according to Google.
Since I have space for only a paragraph here, let me offer a few short statements in the hope that you’ll head to your local library for a copy of Capra’s “Tao of Physics” or his later book “The Turning Point”.
“An elementary particle is not an independently existing unanalyzable entity …it is a set of relationships that reach outward to other things.” Henry Stapp
” In quantum theory you never end up with “things” you end up with “interconnections”. Capra
“As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated basic building blocks, but rather she appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of a unified whole.” Capra
And our work?
It becomes more and more usual that people speak of sensing changes in traditional assumptions and of being aware of a gradual shift toward a new awareness of community and the value of indigenous cultural values.
How much time will it take for new ideas to filter into our institutions (Churches, Universities, Governments)? I hear estimates of 200 years.
How much time will our climate crisis grant us?
As we continue to sense the shift and find ways to urge it forward, how will it change the work of our activism?
Does this new set of understandings lead to a new kind of activism? More, I think, it holds hope that gives us new energy for the work!
The Environmental and Peace Movements will need to work more closely together as flip sides of our most urgent questions.
We’ll still need to move larger and larger numbers of people to face the dangers of a corrupt leadership with its corporate narrative, what we call mainstream media. It is intended to silence us. It is widely believed that the silent German bourgeoisie enabled the Nazi Holocaust.
We’ll need to talk and talk together in small groups and large.
We’ll need to write and sing and paint about it, hold rallies and vigils with the message of the shift, the message of love. The shift is toward connection, the inter-relationship of all things, toward love.
Epilogue
There have been periods in history when the feminine showed herself to be not fully crushed. Risings, they’re called. Feminist Risings. Most notable was the Rising when Jesus of Nazareth spoke out to the Roman Empire of the power of love and was killed cruelly for it.
Other risings, closer to our own time, include the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 and the Women’s Movement in the 1960’s. Interestingly the Patriarchal response to the hippie uprising took, in part, a psychological approach that manipulated the message of the feminists rather than crushing it by force. Was that a sign? Did they see that we meant not to be dominated? Had we become a threat?
By 1974 women could seek political power, could have bank accounts without a man’s signature, could be recruited into the military. But the definition of power didn’t change. Women could seek “success” by climbing the ladder of patriarchal values….an example might be Hilary Clinton.
Now, more and more, words like love and connection, compassion and cooperation come into our conversations. Often we realize that this is a conversation we couldn’t have had, wouldn’t thought to have, just 40 years ago.
We are leading ourselves toward the next rising. May we meet the moment with courage and humility.
Recommended Reading
- The Chalice and the Blade – Riane Eisler – published 1987
- The Tao of Physics – Fritjof Capra – published 1975
- The Turning Point – Fritjof Capra – published 1987
- The Language of the Goddess – Marija Gimbutas – published 1989
- World as Lover World as Self – Joanna Macy – published 1991
Recommended independent media
- ChrisHedges@substack.com
- TheGrayzone.com – Max Blumenthal
- ConsortiumNews.com – Joe Lauria and others
- Jeffrey Sachs – Interviews on YouTube
- DemocracyNow.com – Amy Goodman – daily on YouTube and radio.
Rosalie Paul, gaia4all@proton.me www.peaceworksbrunswickme.org