What A New World Might Look Like

Things look bad right now.

The worst of the high school bullies are destroying as much as they can and they are doing it with a sadistic grin on their faces.

There comes a point—and I have reached it—when it is pointless to lose sleep over trying to save things that are already gone. Even if scattered structures remain standing when this is all over, they will have lost whatever supporting context they had and will have to be rebuilt, along with everything else, to a new rhythm. So what might that look like? It’s not too early to talk about that. A friend of mine once claimed that within every war are the seeds of peace. There have to be, or nothing would grow from the rubble.

The first thing to do is to notice patterns. These aren’t separate disasters. We aren’t facing a host of foes, attacking us on multiple fronts and waking us up at 3am. It is one foe in the bodies of multiple desperate bullies. It is one way of thinking, one worldview, one system—and it’s dying. It might look like it is taking over, a catastrophic threat certain to engulf us, but it isn’t. What we see is the death throes of a way of life that has nowhere to go and nothing left to give.

We call that old system “patriarchy,” a system in which, on the most pedantic level, men hold power and exclude women. We have been trying that system for millenia now, so it seems logical that if that system has run its course, what comes next would be matriarchy. There are men crashing out on the internet and in politics and on the street because they are afraid, whether they have articulated it or not, that women will do to men what men have done to women. To be honest, a certain segment of the female population wouldn’t mind doing just that and on a bad day I agree with them. On a good day, though, I want something better. Not just for women. For all of us. And now, while everything is loudly falling apart, is the best time to imagine what that might be.

We have to begin by agreeing on terms. “Matriarchy” and “patriarchy,” while etymologically connected to women and men, don’t actually refer to who is in charge but to communal values. In patriarchy, best represented by a triangle pointing up, those at the top exploit the weak to make their system work. The system requires the domestic labor of women, for example, to free the men for … whatever. Pre-Civil War Southern economy required the exploitation of enslaved people. Thomas Jefferson knew that he would go bankrupt if he freed his own slaves, so he didn’t. Modern economy only works by considering certain groups of people expendable—teachers, farm workers, maintenance people, for example.

Matriarchy, on the other hand, is a circle of the strong protecting the vulnerable in the middle. In this system, no one is exploited, no one is sacrificed. Those inside the circle move to the outside when they are able. Those on the outside move to the inside if injured, ill, aging, or otherwise impaired. Elephants do this. They circle a female giving birth with the strong facing out until the mother and newborn are able to walk with the herd. A matriarchal system is fluid, with members moving in and out of roles as conditions require.

To be clear, many (generally white) women support and drive patriarchy. By the same token, men have key, and not subordinate, roles in a matriarchy. This isn’t about gender (except in the way that it is—more on that later in the discussion). It is about values. It is about worldview, a sense of one’s own position in time and space and on the earth.

How could this work out on a practical level? What factors have to be taken into account? How much buy-in is needed to make it work? What sanctions are appropriate for transgressors? What does law look like? Property rights? Wealth management? What would it take to institute such a system? Do we have to invent this system out of whole cloth? (Spoiler: no, we don’t.) Would our existing Constitution still be viable? How would change take place? What support systems would be needed in the transition? Would we dare to do it?

What choice do we have?

—
Bouquet of flowers presented to me on International Women’s Day on my first day in Saigon, 2018