“I wish that more people could fly into space. It would make for a lot better world.” Donald K. Slayton, Astronaut “We are developing something like a new organ of the mind. This development both causes and affects qualitative leaping through galaxies of mindspace.” Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology, 1978

I think it clicked for me when I heard Lierre Keith talk about life on earth. I can’t remember exactly what her words were, but the gist of it was this: Imagine for a second that the planet is a biosystem. Because it is. In a biosystem all parts of the whole are connected to each other in some way, because together, they form the whole. This means that they are relevant for each other, since they perform an important function for the whole. In nature, for example, plants work together to provide an environment in which they can thrive. No plant could do this alone, they need each other to create a system of relations that, as a whole, will provide them with the resources that every single plant needs in order to grow. So basically, they work together to make more life. Which will, in turn, make more life, which will make more life which will make…

This is when it hit me, the realization that this is actually the point of life. Of each and every living thing on earth. To make more life/energy possible. But not in the very narrow sense of the reproduction of each individual plant, or animal, or even species. No, the point is to contribute to the creation of an environment that nurtures a diversity of different life forms. Because even when those different life forms, say plants and animals, or animals and other animals don’t directly need each other to survive, all parts of the biosystem are still related, because together they form the biosystem. Without them, the biosystem would change as a whole. We don’t eat trees, but if we kill off all the trees, there will be no air to breathe. Just as the soil needs the trees to hold it securely to the ground. The earth needs all her life forms and her elements because all serve a necessary purpose for the functioning of the whole. This is why all life on earth has inherent value.

Men as a class, for some reason, seem to have a very hard time grasping the whole meaning of this. They have ruled the planet for several THOUSAND years, and all they have achieved, or ever strived for, was to separate themselves as much as possible from their environment. Rather than working with the other life forms on earth to make more life/transform life, they have made it their mission to selfishly exploit every single living being that was ever created on earth, in order to further their own imaginary goals and fetishistic obsessions. Like flying to the fucking moon. While there are pressing matters of life and death going on on earth, while men every day everywhere on the surface of the planet choose to rip our mother’s body apart, drill iron rods into her, and rip out her intestines, because they think it is their right, as men, as kings of the world, to just take whatever they need or want, from her. With absolutely not a shred of concern about her wellbeing, her life even. And with no regard for the fact that since men are, too, part of this biosystem, they are ultimately destroying their own environment and with it, their own living space. I know another life form on earth that behaves like that. Parasites. Oh, and cancer.

Men as a class seem not to be interested in working with their natural environment, and if they are, its on their terms and for their benefit. So instead of figuring out ever more elegant ways of communicating with our sister species and life forms, humans have shut ourselves out from the conversation and have resorted to commands. Humans men talk to the earth in demands: give me your oil! give me your meat! give me your vagina! give me your uterus! give me your children! give me your wood! give me your energy! give me your water! give me your power! And for what? So they can make nuclear bombs, pesticides, the fucking iPhone 5, gasoline, cosmetic products, wars, weapons, write and publish a book like “The haunted vagina” and on top of it all, fly to the fucking moon! I could go on indefinitely. But I’m sure you get the point.

Sure, some of those things are necessary for our civilization to work. But that’s exactly the problem. Because our civilization is designed in a way that makes all the other destructive shit necessary. We could have made an effort to evolve in a way that didn’t destroy our living space AND OTHER SPECIES’ living spaces. Not because we need those other species to eat them, but because the earth needs them or she wouldn’t have made them, damn it! Everything on this planet is not about us! We humans, could have found a different way to evolve, but then we all know it wasn’t us women who formed our society. Because men did.

Which makes me wonder. What would life on earth look like if women had been in charge of decision making on behalf of the human species for the past 6000 years? Which efforts would we have made to influence our environment in a way that helps us evolve? I don’t think we would have been interested in developing any technologies that are dependent on the reckless exploitation of our earth, of which we are a part. Because for some reason, women as a group know that we are not independent from our surroundings. Do we ever know it! But even without having to survive under patriarchy, we’d know. If we’re open enough, we can feel the voice of the whole inside of us, leading us, telling us what to do to grow and make more life, more energy. If we have not forgotten, we know that the forces outside of us and the forces inside of us are connected. The moon swells and ebbs, and so do our wombs, our breasts. So does all of nature.

So what then is the opposite of how patriarchy behaves? Ultimately it means to open ourselves up to the fact that all around us in this biosystem that is earth an intricate form of communication is taking place all the time. And we need to integrate ourselves into it. Sure, we need to take from the whole to survive, yes. I mean, the earth wants and needs us to live and to evolve or we wouldn’t be here. But we need to find a way of existence that also caters to the needs of the other inhabitants of this planet. We can’t just take and take and give nothing back. We need to find out what earth, as a whole, needs from us, and give it to her, so that she can provide us with the environment we need in order to grow, as species, as individuals, and I don’t mean grow in numbers. I mean evolve. As far as we know we are the only species with a consciousness that is capable of self-reflection. There is a reason for this. It means we are the self-reflective organ of the earth. If we are made in a way that makes it possible for us to consciously and stragically influence our own environment, then we are supposed to use this ability. But to the benefit of the whole and not, as humans under the leadership of men have done, to our (alleged) benefit, which is to the earth’s detriment and so in fact to our detriment as well.

Imagine what we humans with our potential for imagination could have been able to make happen in harmony with nature! I’m pretty damn sure we’d be talking to animals by now, and plants, and the elements, and the spirits of the earth. We’d not have day jobs, we’d have rituals, and practices of living, working, learning, growing, teaching, loving, sharing, dying… that intrinsically nurtured our surroundings and our Selves. No, we probably wouldn’t have travelled to the moon. We’d have found a way to transform life/energy at will. We’d have figured out how to work magic. And the way things are going, nothing short of magic is needed from us now that men have almost succeeded in killing the planet off entirely.

It’s time for radical feminism. Women, it’s time.

Tides.

Waves break on grey rock

Moon pulled I have tides also

Ebb and flow of life.

(poem by Ali Bee)