Due to fear of chaos -- and the unconsciousness of people Altemeyer has called "authoritarian followers" -- we, as persons and social systems, have been driven by the control paradigm for thousands of years.
One of the deepest, usually unconscious, worldviews by which we are possessed has been described by Riane Eisler as - "power-over": man over nature, men over women, and men over other men. Until we allow ourselves to become agents of transforming this worldview, progressive change will be blocked.
Award-winning teacher John Taylor Gatto writes the following about the messages schools emanate through their structure:
"I began to realize that the bells and confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, lack of privacy, and constant surveillance [not to mention the curriculum] is designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior."
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Domination has been our paradigm's driving issue for thousands of years; in this worldview it is assumed that top-down control and power-over-others is necessary for social order.
Two of the most virulent roots of these ideas are 1) the Biblical notion that humans are meant to have dominion over all other living creatures and 2) (from the same source) that humans committed "original sin," have fallen, and therefore cannot be trusted to guide themselves. (Original Blessing, Mattew Fox)
It is important to grasp that the premises underlying a dominator-based society extend to all levels of interrelationship --- from relationships involving two individuals (such as marriage) to ever-larger gatherings: the nuclear family, schools, businesses, religions, governments, and nations.
Similar ideas have been elaborated in the pioneering work being done at the Stone Center at Wellesley College. The writings of Janet Surrey, Judith Jordan, Jean Baker Miller and other feminist scholars clarify the salient differences between these two modes of being. Surrey writes:
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