Good morning, afternoon, night, everybody. How privileged we are to be
able to be in contact around the world through this wonderful Internet
medium.

Kid at Heart, Jerry -- I think we should give childbirth a try, for the
sake of broadening our knowledge of the world, no?

Seriously....Andrea (Invisble) said: "What ever it is we are striving
for, we have to find it in our hearts first."

Yes. In our hopes of finding a way out of the political/military world
that we have created for ourselves we should not blind ourselves to some
of the realities. We are seeking female (characteristics that may be
more relevant to healing the world than those of male characteristics,
and we have found a wonderful range of examples that suggest this may be
possible.

But....women have also participated in the culture of war and killing.
There are few things more iconic than women seeing their men off to war
(who remembers that extraordinary scene in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA where the
tribal women ululate the warriors departing from the Oued/Wadi?), or
welcoming them home, heroes (the LIFE magazine of a woman kissing her
returning sailor in New York's Time Square), or mourning his death by
his graveside, (an image repeated a thousand times a few days ago in the
US?)

Who was the Greek playwright who had the women withhold sex from their
men until they stopped fighting?

What if a global movement began with women withholding moral approval
for those who fight? What if they turned away from those who advocate
war?

Might this povide the timeout that Lee suggests is needed?

In the Memorial Day threads here we saw some women endorsing the actions
of US troops in Iraq, despite a steady flood of news from there
suggesting that it is one of the dirtiest wars ever fought by American
troops. How many posts from women did we see that said, I support them,
right or wrong, God bless them, they are the only thing standing between
us and our freedom?

So, back to Andrea's key observation: "What ever it is we are striving
for, we have to find it in our hearts first."

Oceans

Rivame, I think you have just put your finger on what I saw in Victoria
Nasser....
She felt deeply and fully that we are all brothers and sisters. She saw
everyone as a friend, even in disagreement. She knew ('grokked', for you
children of the sixties and seventies) that we were all doing the best
we could, and building a world together.

I met her when I was first starting to study the Middle East, and now as
I talk about her I wonder whether her example might not have been one of
the things that attracted me to continue those studies. She didn't ever
speak of these things to me, but I could see it in the way she
approached people in a town square coffee house, or spoke to children,
or murmured her thoguhts to a man who was being recalcitrant, or the way
she brought the family heads together to settle what might have turned
into a feud, or the way she bought a man's olive oil on the spot so that
his family might have the means to pay for their daughter's education at
Bir Zeit college.

If that was 'female', Jerry -- and I think it was -- maybe while we can
be aware of the roles and needs for male characteristics to support the
whole, we should cede leadership and room to experiment to the women.

Thoughts?

Oceans

god bless bull ****T oceans thou shall not kill you think gods gunner
bless killers bullshiitt oceans its all this god blessen shiitt that
keeps this fighting going women deny men sex bull ****t do that and they
will just start raping . humans are basically the est creature on
the face of the planet at this point in time we have learned jack
shiitt.

for some strange reason when im getting lots of sex i never think about
fighting MAKE LOVE NOT WAR.

KariZ, hi.
I waver between deep optimism and deep pessimism. Why the optimism
belongs to another thread. In a nutshell, I think that the human species
is in its infancy, and like infants we break things to find out how they
work. And from the learning we slowly build a better world. The
pessimism arises from my concern that in the process of breaking things
we may break them irreparably.

A very small nutshell. I have a team of 28 people working on this and we
are all passionate and verbose

Oceans

I have randomly read through this thread which I find incredibly
interesting and the opinions posted very intelligent.

But, I will have to go to Alex's orginal question: "what weapons would
you use if there were no more guns?

I would use the weapon at hand, which would probably be my bare hands. I
have never owned a gun or any kind of weapon, well, save for a slingshot
when growing up. I was blessed to grow up in a very safe and secure
environment provided by ny parents, and weapons were never a necessity
in my home.

If the human being follows the same patterns of evolution we did before,
we will eventually come up with weapons.

If I recall correctly weapons did not started as such but as means
(tools) to survive: first, using them to catch bigger prey, or to defend
ourselves, being the prey. Eventually, in anger we turned against each
other and other feelings started taking over: greed, ambition, envy,
jealousy. Then these tools became weapons, and men started organizing
themselves, to defend their territories and started using the tools they
had.

In ancient cultures the Woman was revered. She was the Mother Earth.
Rites were done to bless the earth and have Mother Earth provide for us.

Then, it changed with the advent of the Church as an organized entity
and the love and reverence for Mother Earth and the Absolute Feminine
was vanquished.

But matriarchy is very much alive in our societies. No matter how much
the times have changed, the woman is still the nurturing force, the
protective force. She can be an employee in the lowest scale at a large
corporation. But once she comes home, she is Queen. Let's leave aside
the facts that there is domestic violence and everything else. She is
the head of that household. The absolute Empress of the Empire.

So, if there was a weapon for me to choose, it would be the Power of
being a Woman.

to all the great women here

Looking at the two Matriarchs in my family, I get a mixed feeling.
Both families, bereaved of the man due to the war, developed so very
differently.
On my fathers side: His mother married another man later, but shortly
after the war she was tied up earning a living to bring up 5 children.
When she married again, the family broke apart because her new husband
wasn't into her sons, they got dismissed, and the 2 daughters got
spoiled. Then they had another child and all the other children didn't
count anymore. If there was something to celebrate, everybody was
invited on different dates, so the family structure was broken.
On my mothers side: My granny (she was 95 last month) had to bring up 3
daughters and she ruled with a hard hand. My mother left home at the age
of 14 to work for a farmer in the west of Germany, while the rest of the
family stayed in the east. But there was, and still is a very tight
bond in this family, one looking out for each other, and the older they
become the closer they get.
So a Matriarchat is not necessarily a solution either, unless the Mother
really finds it in her heart to rule the family with love and keep it
together.

So I guess it would have to be the Power of being a Woman and Love.

Being a woman AND a good mother, all that mixed up with loving
authority.

Exactly! That's just too many words for my limited English but you got
the idea!!!

Your English is surely as good as mine,

will we go fishing for compliments together???

Are we killing this thread?

Alex won't mind I hope

Alex, I will never, ever do it again, promise

i'm partial to nerf bats myself.

Neither of you two ladies have any need to go fishing for compliments --
they flow to you naturally.

But please don't forget that in the midst of celebrating femalehood,
that we men have an oar in the waters too, and that it can be as
positive as any other oar!


Oceans

Oceans, we won't forget, never.
But it is us, the mothers, who should teach our sons where the oar is in
it's right place first.
If we can't do that, then there is little hope.

Agreed....

When my son was born, he gravitated naturally to my wife for the first
2-3 years, and then switched gradually to me. I don't know if this is
generally true of boys. If it is, we men need to learn how to guide
those oars, as well....

Wasn't it the mother's of the soldiers in the Peloponnesian War that
told their sons to come home with their shields or on it?

Could be, but I don't think they had that many guns at that time

I'm speaking to the earlier point of mother's teaching their children,
no offense intended.

This thread intrigues me and has wandered, but not completely strayed,
from alex's original question.