Many years ago I heard a story that stuck in my mind. To the best of my knowledge it was a true story which happened at the University of Edmonton in the 1970s. Apparently some engineering students spray painted some graffiti on their building that read, “Engineers rule the world.” Later a response was added by other students that read, “Nurses rule the engineers.” My memory is very unclear, but I think this incident made a story in the local newspaper.
During this coronavirus crisis I have had the urge to write, which has resulted in a number of essays. I am not a gifted writer but I do want to capture some of my thoughts. I am sending messages to my future self and perhaps someday I will experience retrospective coherence, a concept I learned about from reading Collective Presencing.
Unlike my previous essays, I do not clearly know why I am writing this one. I do not fully understand what I am trying to say. But I will record my thoughts so that I can revisit them a few years from now.
This month I want to write about women generally, as well as some specific women who have impacted my life. And there are three women in particular who I have recently begun to admire. But I am a sequential thinker, perhaps a weakness as much as a strength, so I will start this story at the beginning with something from the first important woman in my life.
My mother was typical of her generation. She was primarily a wife and a mother. She did her duty without much complaining. But in 2008, two years after my father died, she shared something with me that I had not known. She said that she was born at the wrong time, that she really had wanted to be a career woman, but she had kept this desire buried deep inside. In retirement I have met other such women, usually aged 80 or over. They were born at a time when many of them could only live a life far below their aspirations. How tragic!
At age eighteen I joined a benign Christian cult, thinking I had been called into the true Church of God. One aspect of that organization’s culture was male dominance. Men were God’s ministers and the man was the head of the house. As young men we were taught “true masculinity.” Much later I learned of abuse that this culture masked. Most women in the church were not abused, but many of them did not thrive. And some women were genuinely content living out their God given purpose as wives and mothers, or so they thought. I remember one woman that I knew in that church who struggled mightily in later life because she had developed no identity of her own other than that of wife and mother. Her marriage failed and her children rejected her. How tragic!
I married at a young age. My vision was that I would be the provider for my family, providing a good life for my wife and my children. I would be the leader and the others would willingly and lovingly follow. Things didn't work out that way, thankfully. Today I am grateful that I have no children who would have been victims of my lack of knowing how to give them a good upbringing. And in a world facing a metacrisis, I am grateful that I have no children or grandchildren to worry about as the future unfolds.
At midlife I made some big changes and exiting the cult was one. I also shifted my employment into the nonprofit sector, a female dominant part of the economy. I joined a small organization with a staff of 20, 18 females and 2 males. I had some reservations about how I would adjust to having a woman for a boss. I quickly learned that I generally work better with women than men, and better in small organizations than big ones.
In 1996 I joined Alpine Canada which managed the Canadian Alpine Ski Team, ironically known as CAST. There I worked with a different kind of woman. CAST was an organization full of macho males, as one would expect in a high performance sports organization. There is a certain kind of woman attracted to high testosterone males, ski bunnies I secretly thought of them. But they were not weak women; they were not blind or ignorant or oppressed. They were like the nurses who ruled the engineers.
My career lacked stability so I had many bosses in many organizations. Without question, my best boss was a woman. In 1999 I joined The YWCA of Calgary as Director of Finance, reporting to Eva Freisen, the CEO. When she interviewed me I knew within the first ten minutes that I wanted to work for her. And she was indeed amazing to work for. The Board of Directors was all female, also an amazing group. The organization was far from perfect and there was considerable organizational stress. But I experienced female leadership at its best.
At the YWCA I saw a document that I wish I still had a copy of. It was written by women, only women, a totally female perspective. It was a policy position statement defining the difference between erotica and pornography, beautifully and intelligently written with enlightening content. Also evident at the Y was a deep understanding of the impact of giving birth to children and of being primary caregivers in relation to being leaders. Eva Freisen was also an amazing mother, and she was also fortunate to have an exceptional husband, the kind of man who could cheerfully subordinate himself to a very successful female.
Before I turn my attention to the three women that currently intrigue me, I want to focus on men leading three very interesting organizations: Rebel Wisdom - led by David Fuller and Alexander Beiner; Perspectiva - led by Jonathan Rowson and Tomas Björkman; The Stoa - stewarded by Peter Limberg. What do these have in common? All are involved in some way with a Game A to Game B transition. And all are men, white men (as am I). There is something about this picture that does not feel right.
So, where are the women?
When it comes to men and women interacting, there is something special about The Stoa that feels refreshing. There is an absence of culture war. This is not surprising because Peter Limberg deeply understands those dynamics as evidenced by his article The Memetic Tribes Of Culture War 2.0.
Tribes doing battle create toxic environments. Particularly destructive at this time are the Woke and Anti-Woke battles and the Unhealthy Feminism and Unhealthy Masculinism battles. The warriors in these tribes are unlikely to be attracted to The Stoa.
A couple of months ago Peter Limberg wrote an insightful journal entry, Fuck Bodies, Holy Sluts, and the Horny Sage, which would be a battle cry in some environments, but not at The Stoa.
Daniel Görtz, in his excellent Metamodern Deep-Dives series at The Stoa, did a session on sexuality this Monday, and he mentioned a term that caught my attention: holy sluts. He views one of the “metamodern endpoints” as an emergence of a masculine surge, that leads to competent and attractive men, who can help release the holy slut.
The holy slut, according to Daniel, is when a "benevolent patriarchy” emerges, that does not shame women’s carnal sexuality, which is not always aligned with a monogamous lifestyle. Basically, this new metamodern man Daniel is talking about can “hold space” for the complete sexual reality of a woman, without shaming it nor trying to control it.
The current western civilization that began to rise after the Dark Ages was built by men, white European men. It is primarily men who are currently working feverishly to sustain this civilization. It seems to be primarily another group of men who have a deep understanding of why this modern civilization is at risk of failure. This latter group is attempting the most ambitious project ever conceived by human beings, a transition to a new civilization, a Game A to Game B transition.
So, where are the women?
Before naming the three women that I am now paying some attention to, I will comment on a group of four other women, The Squad - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. There is something different about them that I cannot adequately describe. What is clear is that they are warriors in the Game A world.
I also want to name another woman, Sara Keenan, my neighbor, from whom I have learned much. Before meeting her I did not know what being nonbinary meant. But now I have a wonderful, courageous warrior living across the street who vigorously campaigns for the understanding of her kind.
The three women that I have stumbled upon in the last couple of years are amongst those people making significant contributions to a Game A to Game B transition. But they are not leading organizations or movements, although they seem to have the skills to do so. They display no unhealthy ego, which is so often seen in men. I wonder if they are nurses ruling the engineers. They are Ria Baeck, Nora Bateson and Bonnitta Roy.
My favorite of the three is Ria Baeck, who wrote the remarkable book Collective Presencing. Her book had a big impact on me this year. I have written quite a bit about that already and I am currently attempting to launch a Collective Presencing project.
There is far more to Nora Bateson than what is immediately obvious from her contributions at The Stoa. She had a remarkable father, a pioneer, Gregory Bateson, who had a famous first wife, Margaret Mead. Nora paid tribute to her father by producing a film, An Ecology of Mind, but I have not watched it yet, but I would like to.
I found Nora Bateson’s personal website which has an archive with many articles going back to September 2015. I randomly (?) picked a few to read, all excellent. One in particular was powerful and shocking, #Metoo is Complex, and it has a wonderful picture of her with her husband.
In my life I have been harassed, abused, raped at gunpoint, ripped off and underestimated… The cells in my body that know the pain of abuse reach back to my mother, her mother, her mother before her, and countless generations. I have waited at least a thousand years for this moment to come.
Leadership Within the Paradox of Agency is an excerpt from Bateson’s book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing through other patterns.
I would like a moment to call bullshit… The very word ‘leadership’ has become cringe worthy… So I don’t want a leader. I am sick of heroes. I look back at how we got where we are now and I wonder what kind of systemic imbalances have been created by the thinking that longs to canonize leaders. What is a leader in a complex system anyway? What is the ecology of leadership?
Bonnitta Roy has written many excellent articles but I have read only a few, one of which is Doomed to Perish .. Destined to Rise Again, which has a foreboding passage.
Still, I know that I am not very much prepared at all for the task of surviving the human species. Those few pastoral tribes deep in the desert and the narwhale people and reindeer people far up in the arctic will out-survive us all. They will come together, these two so far apart, when the arctic becomes a desert, and the desert becomes a sea. They are beautiful expressions of the Dao — they make our species anti-fragile. We should be protecting them! They are our seeds, our beginnings.
In an article written in the early days of the coronavirus crisis, Inside-Outside, Bonnitta Roy wrote about a little discussed possibility.
We rely on deep, metaphysical mental models that operate below the radar of consciousness. These can be thought of as the very foundations of mind that make thought possible, or alternately as the architecture of mind. This particular architecture of mind that operates today has been around for approximately 3000 years. There is evidence that it is changing.
Why are Ria Baeck, Nora Bateson and Bonnitta Roy at The Stoa helping Peter Limberg? The Stoa only came into existence in March, 2020 and it is not at all clear what it is all about nor where it is going. It seems to me that these women could be playing bigger roles elsewhere. Do not misunderstand. I am very pleased that they are doing what they are doing, but I am puzzled. Are they at The Stoa to, ironically, steal the culture? Or are they content to cause many tiny ripples?
Peter Limberg and The Stoa are worthy of support and I make a small monthly financial contribution to the cause, whatever it is. Peter Limberg himself is impressive, producing dozens of times as much output as I would be capable of. The Stoa is impressive, different and puzzling.
On The Stoa YouTube channel is a video that I have listened to twice, Praxis to Collective Wisdom w/ Bonnitta Roy, Nora Bateson, and Ria Baeck. They discuss complexity with remarkable insight and warmth. They understand the potential of tiny ripples in complex systems.
In the Q&A part of the session a very good question is asked, by a male, about paradoxes and contradictions. And Bonnitta Roy gives a very good answer. It seems to me that these women have a different approach towards what the world needs now. One approach is to find new ways to build bridges from now to the desired future. Another way is to cause tiny ripples in complex systems. Which is better? Of course, this is the wrong question. As is often the case with either\or questions, the answer is both/and.
Go Ria. Go Nora. Go Bonnitta.
Go women.