Actresses currently endlessly denouncing male power and its corresponding abusive behaviours in Hollywood... Big time international media moguls, high ranking media executives, media personalities being denounced as sexual predators... Predatory behaviours apparently being practised amongst male youngsters...
What on earth is going on??
The standard sociological definition of patriarchy states that "patriarchy is a social system in which males hold
primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral
authority, social privilege and control of property."
...Sounds like generic James Brown lyrics, had he chosen to express himself this way?
...Sounds like generic James Brown lyrics, had he chosen to express himself this way?
When establishing a dialogue about complex issues, we understand metaphors best, as comparative systems which enable the identification of similarities between ideas and concepts - as the comparison established within a metaphor aims to provide clarity on otherwise hard-to-grasp subjects.
The lion roars at its loudest and is at its most dangerous when mortally wounded and cornered.
This seems to be our current patriarchal predicament.
This is not a case of trying to appear sophisticated, nor trying to side with women at the right time. It is a case of genuinely believing that organisms evolve, and as such, global culture (in itself a metaphor for the way organisms cluster cohesively) is ´moving up a notch´, forcing a change on past -wrongly- tolerated behaviours, as these will simply not only not serve us in the coming future: the patriarchal archetypes of yesteryear will impede our individual happiness. They stomp on evolution.
They always did, as a matter of fact.
They always did, as a matter of fact.
If this is ´hard to grasp´ -pardon the, once again, metaphorical pun, but metaphors are where it´s at!- consider this: once upon a time in the not too distant past, ´popular´ music was understood to be publicly enjoyed in clubs and discos, where male bravado, trouble, and general shenanigans were the recipe of the day, any day - in and of itself, a very male way of spending an evening. Moreover, music-making was to be overseen, controlled and distributed very much within a patriarchal pattern, as it almost exclusively projected male dreams and defined reality within a male mentality of righteousness, aspirations, desires, fantasies, world views, romance, etc
From Bob Dylan to Lou Reed, James Brown to Oasis, ´popular´ music seemed to display the content of the male imagination - furthermore, it epitomised the male idea of success, and it stained the creative process with it.
'To quell the 'machoism', to quell the aggression in men': Orbital interview, Channel 4 News, July 2017.
(at 2 minutes 22 seconds, Phil Hartnoll pretty much resumes the core concept of this entire blog entry)
Yes, electronic music festivals have been described as ´tribal´ -as if this was a 'step back' in the wrong direction (??)-, but then again, the dynamics often established within these festivals and style of music observe a much more ´egalitarian´ community, distribution of roles, behaviours, male-female polarity, and cultural concepts.
In the video interview above, Paul Hartnoll states at 3 minutes 5 seconds: "Punk was always hitting against the wall, trying to hit against society, whereas 'rave culture' just turned away from the wall and walked away from it... and that's what truly frightens people in power, when people just say: 'we're just off to do our own thing, we're not going to try and fight you, we don't really care what you do'".
...Evolution, in action.
The prominent places women are increasingly occupying within occidental societies seems as strange a phenomenon to some, as electronic music is to 'rock traditionalists'. In the same sense that 'replicants' in Blade Runner are originally perceived as 'lesser forms of life' but they prove to be 'more human than human', the evolving aspects of modern life shock, at first, those who believe music is exclusively made by guitars, and women should carefully and perpetually make sandwiches.
And it is important to understand that the male-female polarity is just that: a polarity, not necessarily concordant with gender attributes - just as electrical polarities (+/-) are interchangeable.
Music, like everything else in this planet, evolves in seemingly strange ways, and what seems 'artificial', electronic, is not necessarily less natural than, say, Led Zeppelin's chauvinistic lyric narratives - that's right, the Zeppelins have a few things to answer for, including the theft of the music featured within, at least, their first album, and there is a lengthy lawsuit on course, due to this. Whereas electronic music, often lacking lyrics, allows for a concentration of pure harmonic power, and a sonic delivery untarnished by narrative projections of ideals, which are often, quite simply, male projections and masculine fantasies of 'authenticity' and what is 'natural'.
Could it be that occidental definitions of success have, at their core, long been defined by an 'everything goes' / 'the lion always eats the zebra lagging behind' etc etc paradigm? And could it be that we are now, finally, challenging this paradigm? Could it be that the feminine polarity within society is challenging society, as we have lately come to know it?
The -often overlooked- english philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, stated during a Harvard lecture in 1929: "when criticizing the philosophy of an epoch, do not chiefly direct your
In the video interview above, Paul Hartnoll states at 3 minutes 5 seconds: "Punk was always hitting against the wall, trying to hit against society, whereas 'rave culture' just turned away from the wall and walked away from it... and that's what truly frightens people in power, when people just say: 'we're just off to do our own thing, we're not going to try and fight you, we don't really care what you do'".
...Evolution, in action.
The prominent places women are increasingly occupying within occidental societies seems as strange a phenomenon to some, as electronic music is to 'rock traditionalists'. In the same sense that 'replicants' in Blade Runner are originally perceived as 'lesser forms of life' but they prove to be 'more human than human', the evolving aspects of modern life shock, at first, those who believe music is exclusively made by guitars, and women should carefully and perpetually make sandwiches.
And it is important to understand that the male-female polarity is just that: a polarity, not necessarily concordant with gender attributes - just as electrical polarities (+/-) are interchangeable.
Music, like everything else in this planet, evolves in seemingly strange ways, and what seems 'artificial', electronic, is not necessarily less natural than, say, Led Zeppelin's chauvinistic lyric narratives - that's right, the Zeppelins have a few things to answer for, including the theft of the music featured within, at least, their first album, and there is a lengthy lawsuit on course, due to this. Whereas electronic music, often lacking lyrics, allows for a concentration of pure harmonic power, and a sonic delivery untarnished by narrative projections of ideals, which are often, quite simply, male projections and masculine fantasies of 'authenticity' and what is 'natural'.
Could it be that occidental definitions of success have, at their core, long been defined by an 'everything goes' / 'the lion always eats the zebra lagging behind' etc etc paradigm? And could it be that we are now, finally, challenging this paradigm? Could it be that the feminine polarity within society is challenging society, as we have lately come to know it?
The -often overlooked- english philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, stated during a Harvard lecture in 1929: "when criticizing the philosophy of an epoch, do not chiefly direct your
attention to those intellectual positions which its exponents feel it necessary explicitly to
defend. There will be some fundamental assumptions which, adherents to all the variant
systems within the epoch, unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so
obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of
putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions, a certain limited
number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems
constitutes the philosophy of the epoch.”
In other words: a caveman would probably not understand that 'rights' are a worthwhile concept, or that women are, in fact, not 'the weaker sex'. Women are equipped to give birth - I'd say that's pretty tough.
M.I.T. lecturer William Irwin Thompson, building on Alfred North Whitehead’s ‘epoch theory’, has
stated that "to understand contemporary culture, you have to be willing to move beyond
stated that "to understand contemporary culture, you have to be willing to move beyond
intellectual
definitions and academic disciplines. You have to be willing to throw your net out widely and be willing to take in
science, politics, and art. To catch a sense of the whole in pattern
recognition, you have to leap across the synapse and follow the
rapid movement of
informational bits."
To put it simply, cultural conditioning exists, and it is something to be observed, and to very much keep an eye on, as it may feel comfortable to 'belong' to a socially condoned paradigm, but this may often be a collective misperception.
If it is true that everything evolves, then everything moves along. Music moves along, society moves along, the concept of success moves along, and women accordingly protest the 'balance of power' which a while ago seemed to be 'socially acceptable'.
...And patriarchy is, apparently, dying.
...Good riddance, too. For if it is true that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then the existing 'balance of power' between genders genuinely needed to be challenged... since long ago.
Physicist Stephen Hawkin allowed Orbital to sample his voice for the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, reciting '(it is time we) transform our perception of the universe'.
Couldn't agree more.
Physicist Stephen Hawkin allowed Orbital to sample his voice for the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, reciting '(it is time we) transform our perception of the universe'.
Couldn't agree more.
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Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster that began transmission on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) - the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) covered the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in London and is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) covered the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in London and is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees.
