Thursday, March 02, 2006

ORIGINS OF patriarchy II


[PART TWO, continued from the previous post]

Starving in the Desert

Virginia: “Okay, Auntie A, what’s next in the story bout how the first violent people were born.”

Athana: “Well, we're getting to the crunchy part, Ginny. But sit down on the couch, cause it’s also kinda gruesome. “

Ginny: [Kicks off her shoes and plops onto Auntie’s A’s couch]

Athana: “Mr. DeMeo shows that before around 4000 BCE humans were non-violent, pleasure-loving, democratic, egalitarian sorts. He calls them “matrists” because he also believes they worshiped Goddesses.

“Next Mr. D. carts in new facts from psychology, anthropology and medicine to paint a picture of the changes a group of people goes through when they begin starving to death. From there he paints gruesome but mesmerizing scenarios about how some of the peaceful matrists got trapped when all the land around them began dying, and how they began starving – and what they tried to do about it.

“Anyway, grab that world atlas off the bookshelf….

“… Now look at THIS...

“...See here? You can still see Saharasia on the map today. It’s the desert that stretches all the way from the Sahara desert in North Africa, across the Middle East, and across Asia to the Pacific Ocean. Mr. D. uses top-notch geographical data to show that before 4000 BCE this land was friendly farmland, thick with green growing things.

“Now Ginny, Mr. D. ranked over 1,200 world cultures on 63 variables to see which were matrist and which were patrist. And guess what? “

Ginny: “What? “

Athana: ”The most violent patrist people in the world live in Saharasia. And the matrists live as far away from it as you can get.”

Ginny: “Whoa, Auntie A! Get out!”

Athana: “No joke, Ginnie. Okay that’s all for today. Tomorrow we’ll go talk about what changes starving people go through.”

Virginia: “Uh…. I think I have something to do tomorrow, Auntie A. I think I hafta scrub out the toilets, the garbage cans and the garbage disposal. It’ll probably take me all day….”

[To be continued. Next: A taste of DeMeo’s gripping scenarios about how peaceful matrists began turning into violent patrists.]
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Thnx to kadrip 55 for the foto

4 comments:

Anne Johnson said...

The advance of the patrists sent the faeries to Sidhe. Before that they lived out in the open. So did leprechauns, gnomes, and even trolls.

The patrists also killed off Big Foot (Yeti), although it's marginally likely we may find a colony of Yetis somewhere when we start drilling for oil in Alaska.

Athana said...

Anne, Wikipedia is looking for someone to expand their article on Sidhe.

Morgaine said...

Anne- do you specialize in Sidhe? I could use someone with expertise in the field.

Auntie Athana, when your story is done, I hope you'll put it on the new site. You should be able to create and edit documents now.

Anne Johnson said...

I don't generally look at Wicked Pedia, and right now I'm becoming an expert on the Scopes trial, so I don't have time to do Sidhe justice. From what I hear tell, it's the heaven that the ancient Gentry fled to when the patrists arrived, and it has a different space-time continuum, so if you go there as a mortal, you wind up like Rip Van Winkle, living 100 earth years in a day.

The Delphic Oracle tells me that soon I'll be blogging quite a bit on faeries. Then maybe they'll give me my favorite shirt back!