Seven relationships that will change your life. . - The Power of Partnership - book review

WIN News, Spring, 2002 by Riane Eisler

PUBLISHED BY: NEW WORLD LIBRARY

14 Pamaron Way, Novato, CA 94949

CONTENTS:

"The Adventure of Change // Your Relationship with Yourself: Body, Mind, and Spirit // Your Intimate Relations: The Heart of the Matter // Your Work and Community Relationships: The Widening Circle of Caring // Your Relationship with Your National Community: Why Politics Matter // Your Relationship with the International Community: The World Around Us // Your Relationship with Nature: From Mother Earth to Biotechnology // Your Spiritual Relations: Putting Love into Action // Partnership Living: It Begins with You // More Partnership Tools // The Partnership/Domination Continuum // The Politics of Partnership // Useful Publications - Organizations // Endnotes // Acknowledgments."

WHY THIS BOOK

"The Power of Partnership is above all a practical book: a book to help us help ourselves, particularly at this time when so many of us feel helpless. It is a self-help book. But it is a self-help book that goes much deeper and further than the typical self-help book.

As the new reality of our lives demonstrates, the self can't be helped in isolation. All of us are always in relationship not just with the people in our immediate circle, in our families and at work. We are affected by a much wider web of relationships around us - impacting every aspect of our lives. . .

THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIP DEALS WITH the seven key relationships that make up our lives. First, our relationship with ourselves. Second, our intimate relationships. Third, our workplace and community relations. Fourth, our relationship with our national community. Fifth, international and multicultural relationships. Sixth, our relationship with nature and the living environment. And seventh, our spiritual relations.

In the next seven chapters, you will see that there are two fundamentally different models for all these relationships: the partnership model and the domination model. You will see how these two underlying models mold all our relationships - from relationships between parents and children and between women and men to the relations between governments and citizens and between us and nature. As you learn to recognize these two models, you will see both individually and collectively we can influence what happens to us and around us. . .

While the terms domination model and partnership model may not be familiar to you, you've probably already noticed the difference between these two ways of relating. . .

In the domination model, somebody has to be on top and somebody has to be on the bottom. Those on top control those below them. People learn, starting in early childhood, to obey orders without question. They learn to carry a harsh voice in their heads telling them they're no good, they don't deserve love, they need to be punished. Families and societies are based on control that is explicitly or implicitly backed up by guilt, fear, and force. The world is divided into in-groups and out-groups, with those who are different seen as enemies to be conquered or destroyed.

In contrast, the partnership model supports mutually respectful and caring relations. Because there is no need to maintain rigid rankings of control, there is also no built-in need for abuse or violence. Partnership relations free our innate capacity to feel joy, to play. They enable us to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This is true for individuals, families, and whole societies. Conflict is an opportunity to learn and to be creative, and power is exercised in ways that empower rather than disempower others.

If you look at the difference between people's lives in Norway and Saudi Arabia, you see how the partnership and domination models play out on the national level. In Saudi Arabia, where dominator habit patterns and the social structures that support them are still very strong, women don't even have the right to drive a car much less vote or hold office, and there is a huge economic gap between those on top and those on the bottom. By contrast, in the much more partnership-oriented Norway, a woman can be, and recently was, head of state, about 40 percent of the parliament is female, and there is a generally high living standard for all. . .

No organization, family, or country orients completely to the partnership model or the domination model: it is always a continuum, a mix more or less one way or the other. But the degree to which these two models for feeling, thinking, and acting influence us in one or the other directions affects everything in our lives - from our workplaces and communities to our schools and and universities, from our entertainment and health care system to our governments and our economic systems, from our intimate relations to our international relations.

"OUR HIDDEN HISTORICAL BAGGAGE

The Domination Model is unpleasant, painful, and counterproductive. Yet, we live with it and its consequences every day.

Why would anybody want to live like this? I don't think anybody really does, not even those on top if they stop to consider the huge price they're paying. But what happens is that when people relate to each other as 'superiors' and 'inferiors,' they develop beliefs justifying these kinds of relations. They build social structures that mold relationships to fit this top-down pattern. And as time rolls on, everbody gets trapped in them, as these ways of relating are passed on from generation to generation.