Synergy is the ground for partnership
Our world will not survive if we continue our dominating practices. Thriving life needs partnership.
Riane Eisler has spent her life dedicated to education around partnership and domination. Her most famous work, The Chalice and the Blade, provides the context for a transformation to partnership.
The seed generators of domination live in everyday life.
Picture this: You are conversing with someone, and they take all the oxygen. They dominate the narrative, refusing others the opportunity to express their opinions or perspectives. They impose their beliefs, perspectives and stories on everyone else, without invitation.
And if the others do manage to find air to speak, they are criticised, shamed, blamed or made wrong.
It sounds fairly innocuous. Yet this type of behaviour is the ground for amplification of domination. Get away with domination at the micro level, and we agree to domination at the macro level.
Covert manipulators work to get what they want, without the other being aware that they are being manipulated. Gaslighters will convince you you are the person in the wrong. They want you to feel small and inadequate.
If you are in a conversation where the other person is imposing their narrative and beliefs on you without invitation, absent the opportunity for response, then either exit the conversation as quickly as possible, naming it for what it is—a one-sided monologue, lecture or sermon—or find a way to invite a higher level of awareness about the relational dynamic.
If the dominator cannot hear this type of feedback, then refuse to engage in any further communication unless the ground is set for all parties to be heard.
If the dominator refuses to listen and accept another perspective, even when everyone can speak, ramming their opinions through, then it is best to exit the relationship.
One-sidedness removes the possibility for synergy, where we are better together.
And synergy is the ground for partnership.
Photo Taken March 25th 2024
