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> What I really want, is women to show they can overpower a society of competitive values (which is typically male), with more values of mutual help, and I mean

• em-bee 3y ago
  the competitive mindset pits every individual against every other individual. this is different from a group of people combining their forces to push out an unwanted trait.
  • hosh 3y ago
    Characterizing competition as exclusively individualistic is I think, a very limiting and overly simplistic way to see this. There is such a thing as collectives and institutions being competitive. Both cooperation and competition is part of the human psyche, and there is a place for competition as well (such as the refinement of personal character and development of capabilities). More problematically are such things as, exploitation, rent-seeking, status-seeking, etc. There are also problems when people in cooperation are not mature or capable enough to take care of themselves and cannot then adequately contribute, and others who contribute to the point of undermining their own health and development.
    • em-bee 3y ago
      i agree, but that was not my point. this subthread started with a nitpick that overpowering competitive values would be self sabotaging as it would be employing the very thing it tries to get rid of. competition is if course not exclusively individualistic. but overpowering competitive values in my mind needs to mainly happen on the individual level. that is, individuals need to learn to be cooperative. there is still room for healthy competition, like in sports and what not, but only if competition is not permeating through every level of society can we benefit from cooperation to build greater things.
      • hosh 3y ago
        I don’t see it as nitpicking so much as fundamental flaws with this approach. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this.
        • em-bee 3y ago
          there is maybe one more aspect here: i see "overpowering" as a metaphor not meant to be taken literally. i mean how would that even work? i see only one way to get rid of a competitive mindset: to teach children to be cooperative. the "overpowering" aspect would simply be that more people do that than people who teach their children to be competitive, and that women convince their husbands that teaching children to be competitive is not a good idea. unless we then start scoring who got more kids and husbands to stop being competitive, how is this "overpowering" competitive in itself? it's just strength in numbers.
          • hosh 3y ago
            I see even a metaphor of “overpowering”, “strength in numbers” as deeply problematic because it is indicative of paradigm and world view. This goes beyond signaling and messaging. It’s difficult to be aware of one’s own paradigm, let alone to change it. It’s not as if I have a good solution to this. If I did, I would be writing about it. So far, the person who seems to be able to articulate and implement this I have seen is Carol Sanford. She does not talk about overpowering, or strength in numbers.
            • em-bee 3y ago
              what does she talk about? i am seriously interested, because i am more interested in achieving the desired result, not how we get there (unless there is a problem with the approach, like you seem to see here, so i would like to explore alternatives)
              • hosh 3y ago
                She talks about paradigms and world views, about how those can build on each other. This is important because often times, the really difficult problems are found outside of the current paradigm. It's when one can think in the other paradigm, that some things become possible ... but it also makes communication difficult because it takes a long time for someone's paradigm and world view to shift. Once that is in place, there are things like "nodal interventions" to help accelerate things. Most of her writings and podcasts are geared towards business, but she wrote one book called _Regenerative Life_. I don't know how exactly that applies to social structures, but "beat to fit, paint to match" is not it. I'm approaching my understanding of it from the ecology and permaculture side of things. It's really easy to think in terms of, kill all the weeds, kill all the pests, maximize yields, etc. because that is part of the normative, mainstream paradigm. It requires a big shift into becoming a part of the ecology and designing things in that way. But letting the ecology grow, live, die, and heal on its own without as much direct intervention is how you get to a place where the system is resilient and adaptive, and yields something for humans along with all the other participant of the ecology.