It is very difficult to comprehend how an institution like marriage works outside of the mechanics of the rest of the cultural institutions and the basic underlying human dynamics. This is primariy a discussion of absolutism and blame and how these memes effect our relationships and persist in our culture.
Here is an arbitrary starting point for the examination. I take this statement from page 87 in the book titled "It’s a Guy Thing" by David Deida.
"Men have blamed women for virtually every negative circumstance on Earth, including lack of spiritual growth...
This attitude is not unique to your relationship. Men resent women as distractions universally."
I do this creitique sort of out of context without regard for the whole of his text. I plan to go back and review the rest of his work later, but I find these statements so vivid and provocative on there own that I want to explore them in their own light.
Let me also caveat what is to follow with the concession that I have seen many people fall prey to this kind of trap, but I think it has much less to do with the feminine / masculine duality than it has to do with the cultural violence endemic to western civilization cloaked in terms like blame and nurtured by Absolutisms.
First, the title itself drips with the kind of egotism that is dividing us (remember the old divide and conquer colloquialism). "It is a learned Human Thing" would be a more accurate title as relates to the quoted material. Blame is not something we are born with and it is not exclusive to the male gender, it is a learned behavior promulgated by our cultural intuitions.
Blame is primarily an excuse to use violence on those you disagree with. It is generally employed by those that are in a more dominant position within a social group so that it is difficult for the blamed to resist without loss of social status or even life and limb itself. Emotional Tyranny is the term that I think helps give the act of blaming a more accurate title. From the universal institutions like the Church, actions like this flow into the fractal or distributed institutions like the family. Turning into a meme as the rest of the societal institution accept this as the normal mode of action.
Other euphemisms for this meme include:
The ends justify the means
Tough love
This will hurt me more than it hurts you
However I think blame is a derivative flowing from the more fundament mind set that is behind Absolutism.
The statements contains the words EVERY and UNIVERSAL which tells more about the beliefs system of the author than the subject he is attempting to address.
This Reveals that the author believes someplace deep in his psyche that he is finished with his learning because he knows EVERYthing already. What makes it even more ridiculous is that he is trying to say he knows everything about history (this is simply not possible). This is a sign of the poison that can cloud beginners mind. Without childlike curiosity, the main ingredient that can lead to human development is absent.
It saddens me when I see these, for lack of a better metaphor, ALPHA MALE displays of absolutism finding so much cultural support. We can see the potential for the extreme damage that can flow from this kind of absolutism when we look at the wars around the world. I think the war of the sexes has its roots in this same ideological absoluteness.
In order to examine the meme of Absolutism I will skip the history of war that everyone has some familiarity with, and instead attempt to peer into the human conditions which are the motors of that history.
First there is a basic personal aspect of the human condition that is intricately involved with the memes I am attempting to bring to the surface. Uncertainty can lead to confusion which can produce pain. You can see when some people are asked a question they habitually "furl the brow", sort of wincing at the pain. It is natural for people to find a way to stop this pain.
There are two main stories I want to focus on that show up in the writing of man that attemp to mitigate the pain of this confusion. One is in telling oneself that there is nothing else to learn which I think is the most common. The other is telling oneself that there are mysteries in the universe beyond human comprehension and an infinite world to explore and play in. Both of these stories help the mind to overcome the confusion, and at the same time are complete opposites when looked at logically.
The next aspect of the human condition is a cultural phenomena that involves the need for acceptance or the herd mentality feedback loop. This creates sort of a center of gravity for a culture that satisfies this need to have similarity with your neighbor. Sort of the mutual admiration society feedback loop. This tendency can be seen in the historical fact that it took 500 or so years to let Galileo back in the church after he tried to distribute his outlandish ideas about the universe. This meme is alive and well in our culture today almost any place you look.
My country right or wrong
You are with us or against us
My way or the highway
While this meme is alive and well today, it is under great duress because of so many of the worlds cultures colliding. Its not just the problem of a Southern Baptist Bell becoming hormonally connected to a Northern Yankee and having to story a way through that.
There is much more confusion today because of mobility. I believe that the pain of this great mashing of the gears, together with our innate need to connect with each other is the great hope for tremendous human development in our time. Western civilization has evolved its sciences to the point that killing those you disagree with has become so efficient that it has essentially become unthinkable for most.
The failure of religious absolutism in Europe is spreading west and tearing at the center of gravity of western civilization. It is exiting and palpable, and at the same time dangerous and destructive.
The third aspect of the human condition that is a pathological response to the first two elements described above combined with the fact that each of us comes into the world:
Naked - Needy and Innocent
Vanity
This is the shield of our ego. This is where the person forgets all the mistakes he has had to endure along his long, bumpy, developmental path. With the help of this gauze of forgetfulness mixed with the haze of denial woven into a story of great successes and omnipotence. Vanity delivers a sense of well being and cock sureness to the hungry ego. Along with a not so perfect absolute story.
The more complete and accurate a persons world view is, the better it works in nature. The obverse being true too. There are major un-natural distortions in our culture today which are leading us down a path that is further and further from nature.
One expression of these distortions can be seen in the economic bubbles that the new world civilization is beginning to go through. I say new, but it is probably really the same Colonial civilization going at least back to the renaissance in Europe extending into china and the rest of Asia. I have great hopes that Asia will find its Non - Violent roots this time and have that feed back through there ever tightening connections that are becoming evident.
