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Sex, Time and Power › Art & Physics › |
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3,000,000 - 2,900,000 years ago
- Hominids differentiate away from other primates by becoming meat-eaters instead of vegetarians.
- Extended childhood's of hominid babies require prolonged
attention from hominid mothers.
- Males of the species predominately engage in hunting and killing.
- Females primarily engage in nurturing and gathering.
- Hominids become the first species of social predators in which the females do not participate in hunting and killing.
200,000 - 90,000 years ago
- Language develops.
- Homo Sapiens differentiate away from hominids.
- Language requires complete rewiring of human brains.
- Over 90% of language modules placed in the left hemisphere of right handed humans who comprise 92% of the population.
- Split Brain phenomenon becomes highly exaggerated only in humans.
- Most hunting and killing strategies placed in left hemisphere.
- Most nurturing and gathering strategies placed in the right side.
40,000 - 10,000 years ago
- Homosapiens organize into highly effective hunter/gatherer societies.
- Division of labor between sexes diverges more than in any other species.
- Males hunt and females nurture.
- Each sex develops predominate modes of perception and survival strategies to deal with the exigencies of life.
- Left hemispheric specialization leads to an increased appreciation of time.
- Humans become first animals to realize they will personally die.
- Awareness of death leads to formation of supernatural beliefs.
- Societies in which hunting is a more reliable source of protein than gathering elevate hunting gods over vegetative goddesses.
- Societies in which gathering is a more reliable source of protein than hunting elevate vegetative goddesses over hunting gods.
- In general, hunter/gatherer tribes worship a mixture of both spirits.
10,000 - 5,000 years ago
- Agriculture discovered/ Domestication of animals discovered.
- Crops need to be tended / flocks need to be nurtured.
- Female survival strategy of gathering and nurturing supersedes male hunting killing one.
- All early agrarian peoples begin to pray to an Earth Goddess responsible for the bountifulness of the land and fertility of the herds.
- She awakens the land in springtime and metaphorically resurrects Her weaker, smaller dead son/lover.
5,000 - 3,000 years ago
- Writing invented.
- Left hemispheric modes of perception, the hunting/killing side, reinforced.
- Literacy depends on linear, sequential, abstract and reductionist ways of thinking - the same as hunting and killing.
- Early forms of cuneiform and hieroglyphics difficult to master.
- Less than 2% literate.
- Scribes become priests and new religions emerge in which the god begins to supercede the goddess.
45,000 - 3,000 years ago
- Alphabet invented.
- Extremely easy to use.
- Near universal literacy possible.
- Semites - Canaanites, Phoenicians, and Israelites - become first peoples to become substantially literate.
- First alphabetic book is the Hebrew bible.
- Goddess harshly rejected from Israelite belief system.
- God loses His image.
- To know Him, a worshipper must read what He wrote.
- Images of any kind proscribed in first culture to worship written words.
3,000 - 2,500 years ago
- Greeks become the second literate culture.
- While not rejecting images, they suppress women's rights.
- Athens and Sparta were two societies that shared the same language, gods, and culture and were in close proximity.
- Women had few rights in Athens: Women wielded considerable power in Sparta.
- Athenians glorified the written word: Spartan cared little about literacy.
- Socrates disdained writing and wrote nothing down. He held egalitarian views.
- Plato wrote extensively of what Socrates said. Not as generous toward women as Socrates.
- Aristotle represents Greek passage from an oral society to a literate one. He taught that women were an inferior subspecies of man.
2,500 years ago
- Buddha becomes enlightened in India.
- Buddha, though literate, writes nothing down.
- Teaches love, equality, kindness, and compassion.
- His words are canonized in an alphabetic book 500 years later.
- Book purports to show the Buddha had negative opinions about women, sexuality, and birth.
- Taoism and Confucianism arise in China.
- Taoism embodies feminine values: no attempt to control others, promotes Mother Nature as a guide.
- Confucianism touts masculine values: structures patriarchal society, touts Father Culture.
- Two systems of belief coexist in relative equilibrium until the Chinese invent the printing press in 923 AD Literacy rates soar.
- Soon after, Taoism declines and Confucianism becomes China's dominant belief system.
- Women's foot binding begins in 970 AD and becomes a common practice.
- Taoism transmutes into a hierarchy with sacred texts and temple priests.
- Taoist priests expected to be celibate Women's rights plummet.
- In nearby Asian cultures that do not embrace literacy, women's rights remain high.
2,000 - 1,500 years ago
- Roman Empire achieves near universal alphabetic literacy rates due to the stability of Pax Romana, tutors from Greece, papyrus from Egypt and an easy to use Greek and Latin alphabet.
- New religion emerges based on the sayings of a gentle prophet named Jesus.
- His oral teachings embody feminine values of Free Will, love, compassion, non-violence, and equality.
- Jesus writes nothing down.
- Women play prominent role in new religion.
- Paul commits to writing what he interprets to be the meaning of the Christ event.
- Subsequent Gospel writers detail Christ's crucifixion, death and resurrection.
- Creed that evolves increasingly emphasizes masculine values of obedience, suffering, pain, death, and hierarchy.
- Alphabetic text becomes canonized in 367 AD Women banned from baptizing or conducting sacraments.
- Ordered to back of the church and ejected from the choir.
- Christians destroy Roman images.
1,500 - 1,000 years ago
- Rome falls to barbarian invasions.
- Literacy lost in secular society.
- Dark Ages begin.
- When stage of history re-illuminated in the 10th century, women enjoy high status.
- Age suffused with love of Mary.
- People know her through her image not her written words.
- Women mystics revered.
- Women Cathars and Waldensians baptize.
- Abbesses lead major monasteries.
- Chivalric code instructs men to honor and protect women.
- Courtly love becomes all the fashion.
- Cathedrals dedicated to Notre Dame.
- Religious art flourishes.
- Few outside the Church can read and write.
1000 - 1453
- High Middle Ages characterized by a renewed interest in literacy.
- Commerce demands literate clerks. Literacy rates climb.
- Masculine values begin to reassert dominance over feminine ones.
- Renaissance begins. Cult of the individual encourages male artists, male thinkers, and macho themes in art.
1454 -1820
- Gutenberg's printing press makes available alphabet literacy to the masses.
- Books become affordable.
- Literacy rates soar in those countries affected by the printing press.
- Tremendous surge in science, art, philosophy, logic, and imperialism.
- Women's rights suffer decline.
- Women mystics now called witches.
1517 - 1820
- Protestant Reformation breaks out fueled by many who can now read scripture.
- Protestants demand the repudiation of the veneration of Mary, the destruction of images.
- Protestant movement becomes very patriarchal.
- Ferocious religious wars break out fought over minor doctrinal disputes.
- Torture and burning at the stake become commonplace.
- Hunter/killer values in steep ascendance only in those countries impacted by rapidly rising alphabetic literacy rates.
1465 - 1820
- After the Bible, the next best selling book is the Witch's Hammer; a how-to book for the rooting out, torture, and burning of witches.
- Witch craze breaks out only in those countries impacted by the printing press.
- Germany, Switzerland, France, and England have severe witch-hunts. All boast steadily rising literacy rates.
- Russia, Norway, Iceland, and the Islamic countries bordering Europe do not experience witch-hunts. The printing press has a negligible impact on these societies.
- Estimates range that between 100,000 women to the millions were murdered during the witch-hunts.
- There is no parallel in any other culture in the world in which the men of the culture suffered a psychosis so extreme that they believed that their wise women were so dangerous that they had to be eliminated.
1820 - 1900
- Invention of photography and the discovery of the electromagnetic field combine to bring about the return of the image.
- Photography does for images what the printing press had accomplished for written words: it made reproduction of images inexpensive, easy, and ubiquitous.
- Right hemisphere called upon to decipher images more than the left.
- Egalitarianism becomes a motif in philosophy.
- Protestantism softens its stance toward women.
- Mary declared born of Immaculate Conception by the Church elevating her status.
- Nietzsche declares "god is dead."
- Suffragette movement coalesces in 1848.
1900 - 1950
- Photography and electromagnetism combine to introduce many new technologies of information transfer.
- Telegraph, radio, film, and telephone reconfigure the world.
- Communists demand redistribution of wealth.
- Capitalists demand less government interference.
- Natives restless, servants surly; everywhere paternalism is in retreat.
- Women receive the vote in 1920 in the U.S. and 1936 in England.
- Russia, an oral society recently becomes literate in the 19th century.
- Great burst of male creativity.
- Outbreak of religious intolerance against the Jews.
- Russian Communism repeats all the madness of Europe's first brush with alphabet literacy.
- Hitler, armed with a microphone and radio, hypnotizes Germany, one of the most literate countries of the world.
- Mother Russia, an oral society, is bedeviled by literacy.
- Germany, the Fatherland, becomes susceptible to madness by oral technology.
1950 - 2000
- Popularity of television explodes after the end of WWII.
- Television requires different mode of perception than reading.
- Iconic information begins to supersede text information.
- Image of the atomic bomb blast and earth beamed back from space change
the consciousness of the world more than any written books.
- Society begins to elevate feminine values of childcare, welfare, healthcare,
and concern for the environment.
- Feminist movement of the 60s occurs in the first television generation.
- World wars abate among the literate countries affected by television
image.
- Invention of personal computer greatly changes the way people interact.
Graphic icons increasingly replace text commands.
- Internet and WorldWideWeb based on feminine images of nets and webs.
Iconic Revolution begins.
- Everywhere alphabets come into usage religions based on sacred alphabetic
books come into being.
- These all share certain characteristics.
- Women banned from conducting religious ceremonies.
- Goddesses declared abominations.
- Representative art in the form of images declared "idolatry."
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