What are patriarchal values? What is patriarchy? What are values themselves? What does the patriarchate, the real manifestation of psychically inherited patriarchy [that is, “internalized patriarchy” for you lefties] value? Have these values longevity beneficent to mankind? What are their consequences? Are there higher values, or earlier or later values that might steer us more true, or take us to another place, and enrich us further spiritually and materially? Here’s a try at answering these questions—an essay.
Value finds its root in valence, a sort of ‘net meaning’ or average. In electrical theory, an atom retains net positive or net negative charge after an interaction with another. If those atoms were Adams —and this is so, etymologically speaking— then each interaction amongst people is an exchange of energy both biophysically and psychically. The physical case, because of the materialism in which we moderns swim, is a foregone conclusion to the reader’s mind, so I will not discuss it here. The psychic case is more our interest and begins with the locus of the attribution of value —who ‘casts’ value; that is, who (or what) observes the material world as a place of objects with value? And, is that value inherent and emergent from an object’s physical properties, or does some agent, some locus of value and judgement ‘cast’ that value, metaphysically, onto (as in ‘onto-logy’) the object? A hammer, for instance, is good for pounding, but only to a pounder with a project for the pounding. But projects are distinctly things of those organic beings with —whether instinctual, conscious, or semi-conscious— desires to accomplish them. That is, the locus or ‘center’ of desire is inherent not in a given object itself, but in the desirous being who ‘sees’ the world as a place to act in and upon, and through the medium of the tool, abstractly speaking. This is why we call that broad category of objects, instrumentally used for our good (there’s a value judgement), ‘goods.’ There are also, presumably then, ‘bads,’ and these must be something like tools with unpredictable outcomes or things utterly lacking in utility as it relates to conscious beings tasked by necessity to act in a world through tools for their survival. In all cases, humans ‘assign’ value through perception, and perception is that locus I mean to take aim at here. This is the meaning of that old Latin phrase “Man is the measure of all things.”
“Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not”
Protagoras of Abdera (l.c. 485-415 BCE)
Patriarchy involves living under the ‘arch’ of the ‘pater,’ the protective, if tyrannical, societal structure of the father—and in accord with the father’s values; that is, ‘that which the father values.’ Drawing on the above ‘instrumental’ or utilitarian view of the world as ‘place to act’ and ‘by means of and through the tool,’ it would seem that what the father places value upon from his locus, his point of view, and thereby the patriarchal society’s, is something like the tool itself. This has led occidental western society to become utilitarian and to treat matter —and importantly, mater: the mother— in just such a manner.
Matter objectified is the whole, and arguably, from the perspective of the patriachate, holy pursuit of its favorite discipline, science. I even hesitated just now to decide whether that word, science, should be capitalized in some abstract reverence for the endeavor and its fruitfulness. We do call her mother Earth, and we do rape and pillage her for her ore of every kind, to be transformed by our tools—our hammers.
A demystification of matter by way of objective science has had some transmutation effect on the psyche of mankind. The manna —the collective mystical reverence— of early man, our grandparents ad infinitum, projected upon Mother Nature’s salvific secrets, for their great utility to our conscious minds, has been sapped, tapped, demystified, desacralized, and she has been sown asunder to the knife and hammer of man. This is not without psychic consequence to us.
When Nietzsche announced the death of G-d, the whole of us shook our heads, whether up in approval, or sideways in worried agreement. It was an announcement of the death of that which we held sacred—the mysteries which at that time had already hinted at her —the mother’s— utter Revelation. It is not a coincidence that the New Testament begins its eschatology by the book of that name. When all is revealed, the mystical man —which we moderns have proven we remain— will die wholly from his irreverence of the holy itself. As falls Wichita, so falls Wichita Falls.
And the sound of harpists and musicians and flue-players and trumpeters will not be heard in you any longer; and no craftsman [technitēs] (think: technologists, tool-wielders) of any craft [techenē] will be found [ehuriskō: to be found by inquiry, learning, attainment of knowledge] in you any longer […]. ;for your merchants [emporos: seekers, scientists, entrepreneurs, venturers] were the great men of the earth.
Revelation 18:22, Literal Word translation; Abbott-Smith Greek Lexicon
The patriarchate, moving ever toward its extreme, the development of matter, that old gnostic and alchemical pursuit, to free man’s own spirit (‘solve’) from matter’s bounds which are material death, ironically moves itself —and society with it— unto its own death by way of exhaustion of the objects all around it, the environment, not perhaps only of their material fecundity, but of their mystical value, and thereby his own spiritual fecundity. Should the spirit of man die, and at his own hand, that hand so keen to wield the tools of his own survival, then man himself shall die: from broken ore to broken spirit. If there is no mystery in our world, what reason have we for flute playing and trumpeting, for craft of any kind? And our pursuit, and the patriarchy’s, scientific knowledge; has it not brought upon us a crisis of meaning, of value by way of great prosperity?
If we end here then surely the story of humanity is a tragedy. Why even pursue everlasting life, a ‘re-coagulation’ in alchemical terms, of the spirit into a new body? Why survive in this spiritual and material exhaustion? Why pursue eternity if it has no mysteries?
I like the not knowing.
Marc Andreesen, technologist (and philosopher)
In 1950, Pope Pius XII announced a new dogma, the Assumptio Marie:
We proclaim and define it to be a dogma revealed by God that the immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever virgin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.
Pope Pius XII
This, alchemically —and therefore psychologically— speaking, is the reintegration of matter, the mother, into the world of the patriarchate, and thereby into the psyche of man. This is not a pronouncement of force (though granted, these things are typically done by papal bull) but rather by reflection. It was announced, effectively, that Mary, the mother of G-d, or more directly: that matter, the sub-stance upon which [patriarchal] consciousness has its stance, must be acknowledged as such. Acknowledgement thereof is to admit that matter [mater, mother] is to be “held high” (entered into heaven), and thereby given her proper place as co-constituent and co-creator of we acknowledgers, the children of these two—of matter and spirit. As it was told in Genesis:
“Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…”
Genesis 1:26
If man can manage to psychically reintegrate matter, to revere her mysteries, he might yet have the spirit to live. If he plows forward, through her fields, fields he did not create but transforms, he will exhaust himself, his spirit, as he does her soil. Too far a pursuit of patriarchy will have the king deposed and his kingdom ruined. Man will find himself needing to become G-d, but reverence for her, without a fertile counterpart. Even G-d needs a ‘Thou.’
What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun?
Nietzsche, The Madman, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
Perhaps Revelations eschatological view is one toward the end of the patriarchal extreme consciousness that loosens itself from Mother Earth, and not the ‘end of the world’ as the vulgare seemingly prefer to interpret. Here is Mary, Mother of G-d, sun above and moon below her—balance:
And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; and she was with child
Revelation 12:1-2