The Real Wealth of Nations
by Riane Eisler
At a time when it appears that we are truly in another Dark Age, a Renaissance woman has stepped forward—Riane Eisler, bringing with her her vision, wisdom, deep empathy and caring, intellect, experience, and an ability to connect the dots. In her recent book, The Real Wealth of Nations, she creates a “caring economics,” holding up a lens for us to view within a broader context our own experience of the dynamics of our world. The author’s goal is to help us find clarity, grounds for hope, direction, and empowerment.
Eisler offers a way of understanding and an all-encompassing positive vision that draws us away from the possibility of staying in a state of victimhood brought on by the symptoms of incomplete and dysfunctional economic systems. She believes it is possible to create a new economic model where caring and caregiving are valued, as are women, children, and the natural world. Some of you may remember her earlier, seminal book, The Chalice and the Blade, in which she first described the two paradigms of values and distribution of power that we as humans have historically lived within: the Dominator and the Partnership systems.
In her latest book, The True Wealth of Nations, she describes these two systems as they might manifest in the economic arena. She shows how an economic system and our beliefs, norms, values, cultures, institutions, and structures all interact to sustain each other. Each of these elements is an intervention point for changes in the system. Change one element, and the others are affected.
There is overwhelming evidence that we have severely regressed into the Dominator mode. To name a few symptoms: top-down economic control; hierarchies in the name of “efficiency”; lack of ethics; including war as part of the gross national product and using it to produce “scarcity”; the need to dominate or be dominated, to divide and conquer, to serve or be served; the subordination of women as a template for subordinating the “other”; the conquest of nature; the manipulation of our unmet needs; and the failure to recognize the importance of life-supporting activities.
That is not our choice of how we want to live. Riane Eisler’s research and analysis show us that another paradigm, the Partnership model, is also alive and vibrant if you only look for it. She says we can choose to build upon it to create an equitable and sustainable economic system that does not merely serve the few but meets the needs of all of us and of Mother Earth—a paradigm that reflects and enhances our enormous capacity for caring, creativity, and consciousness.
You are invited to read the book, to explore its ideas, to use it for information and encouragement, for perspective (to connect the dots between our daily lives). The book provides insight into economic and cultural values, norms, and existing structures, and can be a means to ground your intentions in a viable, comprehensive vision—a first step toward making essential changes and addressing the needs of the world today. |
