Visionary social systems scholar Riane Eisler at her home in Carmel, Calif. Credit: Don Eddy
By Madhusree Mukerjee, Scientific American, September 28, 2023
Why are some societies warlike, and why are some peaceable? New scholarship suggests that societies can be arranged in a spectrum ranging from domination-based to partnership-based. Every relationship in a dominator society, whether between parent and child, husband and wife, political leader and citizen or citizen and noncitizen, is authoritarian and coercive, whereas in a partnership society, relationships are life-sustaining and egalitarian. Further, dominator societies—the canonical example of which is Nazi Germany—are warlike and propelled by trauma, whereas partnership societies are more caring and peaceable. And childhood experiences help explain how such societies arise and perpetuate themselves.
Social systems scientist Riane Eisler, one of the most original thinkers of our time, and anthropologist Douglas Fry pull together insights from psychology, social science, anthropology, neuroscience and history to make this case in the book Nurturing Our Humanity(Oxford University Press, 2019). “This whole-system approach,” Eisler says, “recognizes that families do not arise in a vacuum but are embedded in, affect and are affected by the larger culture or subculture of which they are part.”
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