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The Gods of Our Fathers - documentary on the rise of patriarchy and civilization

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[Music]

we human beings have taken over the

whole planet but now we must learn to

share it or else we will lose it we have

to outgrow tribalism patriarchy all our

old ways and we have to move fast

because we're running out of time

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

I've always enjoyed a good revolution so

kitchens are an interesting place to be

these days this is where the basic power

balance between men and women is being

renegotiated at last and if we get it

right the whole human race will be the

winner most males behave quite decently

as individuals but when human beings get

together in large groups we behave very

badly wars tyranny the huge gulf between

rich and poor north and south and all

those things are directly connected with

the imbalance of power between men and

women male domination is right at the

heart of what's wrong with math

civilization or just one of the hundreds

of thousands of everyday people who want

to partake in this inaugural celebration

everybody and I mean everybody's gonna

get a great show today America is

inaugurating a new president and all the

old hopes for peace and justice and

equality are having an outing but

compared to its stated ideals the United

States is a grave disappointment

America's militarize up to its eyeballs

and it spent much of its history

fighting wars and other people's

territory native Indians Mexicans

Filipinos Vietnamese all classes of its

own citizens have spent generations in

the back of the bus and even now not one

of its 42 presidents has come from the

female majority of the population go

talk to congressman Broun Elizabeth

Curtis was just surprised herself by

being elected to Congress she doesn't

fit the mold and not just because she's

a woman she's also been a full time

peace activist for years and last year

she earned less than the minimum wage

house meets at 11

good bye lovie have fun you and Barbra

Streisand my another reception

[Music]

this reception is for all the women who

were elected to Congress in 1992 there

were almost twice as many of them as

ever before Elizabeth first glad hands

the crowd like any traditional

politician but she's not it is time for

those of us who have been disempowered

in many ways who felt that we are on the

outside of the mainstream to understand

that in fact we can be incredibly

powerful

okay I need my senator clementa I think

this is a very male institution here you

know when the hundred and third Congress

came in and we're we're we're of color

we're women

it's a marvelous group of people but

once we got into the whole of the

Congress I suddenly realized how few of

us they really were less than 10 percent

is female you look at those portraits in

the rotunda and somebody from outer

space would say this is a country made

up of white men there's no women old

people of color in their statute it's

manifest destiny writ large we just wipe

out parts of our history the founders of

the American Republic were trying to

escape from the evils of the past they

thought all they had to do was create a

democracy they didn't realize that the

pattern of violence and oppression was

part of civilization itself now we do

and we even have a name for it the

patriarchal

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

some king or Emperor gives the orders

those who enforce them have lots of

power and privileges people at the

bottom have no rights at all the poor

slaves almost all women and Outsiders

can just be killed if they get in the

way in fact American warplanes were

bombing Iraq on inauguration day

what I think about now is we play this

terrible game of cat-and-mouse is there

are thousands of children dying in

Baghdad from the last time we were

bombing what are we doing when do we

begin to say that an Iraqi child's life

is the same as the life of a white

America until we do that we'll go on

having wars Americans have been trying

to break out of the old pattern for over

two centuries and there has been

progress

there's no king now and no slaves and

women have the vote but hierarchy and

violence still rule the world

men still rule the world this has been

the pattern of our history for so long

that many people think it's just human

nature and there's no point in asking a

pig to fly but before we abandon hope we

should be sure whether the patriarchal

order is natural or not and the key

evidence for that is not here it's

deeply buried in a different

you

thousand years ago the options began to

grow narrower it was probably women who

invented agriculture since gathering

plants was traditionally a woman's job

but farming changed everybody's roles

and created a new way of doing things

all over the world the village way

[Applause]

people have probably lived on this spot

for about 8,000 years and at the start

it would have been what's called an

autonomous village there were no cities

yet no kings no soldiers just hundreds

of independent villages each living its

own quiet life and decisions probably

still got me the old hunter-gatherer way

everybody came together and talked

things over

until they reached a consensus panitch

alchemy is an anthropologist and the

villages she studies are in 20th century

Egypt but the economic realities in a

village like this have not changed much

in thousands of years but I would dare

say anywhere the social fabric would

completely collapse without the input of

women in economics everything to do with

the essential day-to-day life of

villages must be processed through women

if men cultivate the wheat it has to be

picked over and put through a mill to

become flour and then to be processed

into bread which is the lifeline of

everyone

[Music]

the main investment of any rule of

household

besides the land is the cattle that they

own this is the woman's domain before so

means women are so central to the home

but sometimes they hardly ever leave it

[Music]

it's the fact that there is so much live

capital

[Music]

unlike hunter-gatherers villagers owned

things and to make sure this valuable

property stayed in the family almost all

the earliest cultures passed it down

through women babies have fathers too

and the villagers knew it once obtained

animals it's obvious that making babies

requires a male input but you can't

really be sure which male is the father

while you always know who the mother is

so men's property went to their sisters

children when they died not to their own

[Music]

the status of men dropped steeply when

human being settled in villages once

their value to society had come from

their ability as hunters but the wild

game was quickly hunted out near the

villages and when hunting lost its

importance so did the people who used to

do it we don't actually know who sat at

the head of the table in the autonomous

villages but we do know that in some

places women were buried in the center

of the house with the valuable household

goods and men were buried out at the

corners with the children

archeologists find up to a hundred

female fertility figures for every male

symbol fertility was the key to whether

the villages lived or died and fertility

was traditionally female magic men were

never actually oppressed there was never

a matriarchy in that sense but you can

see how men might have felt marginalized

in the early village cultures so what's

that got to do with us well first of all

the huge changes that happen when

hunter-gatherers settled down in the

autonomous villages show just how

flexible this thing called human nature

is male domination is natural and

neither is equality of the sexes it all

depends same goes for whether we're

warlike or peaceful democratic or

authoritarian change the way we live and

you may also change the way we behave

towards each other

[Music]

men were just not very important in the

autonomous villages and people who don't

feel important tend to feel resentful

instead you realize of course that we're

talking about the raw material for a

revolution here and the revolution

dually happened so long ago that it

isn't in the history books but thousands

of years later we can see the results of

it all around us

[Music]

now women are at the bottom of the

pecking order

men run practically everything and

there's military all over the place what

happened the Middle East is the best

place to look for answers because over

half the people on earth live in

cultures that stem from here there are

various kinds of histories and the one

that got recorded is not the only one

but more importantly it is the history

of the dominant to us it's the dominant

group it is it is male history it is the

state's history the archive isn't I see

and the documents I consult in the

Egyptian National Archives down there on

the Nile is they are documents of stated

fashion whether they are police records

prison accounts medical treatises now

for important purposes these are all

written by men women are excluded and

when they appear they appear in a very

marginal way call it funny studies the

history of militarism in Egypt today

he's celebrating his doctorate with

French mostly young scholars who spend

their working days trying to piece

together researches the live women in

medieval Islam she's a history professor

at the American University of Cairo

women have always been neglected in

history so not just as a woman but also

as a historian I'd like to bring out

what has been neglected invisible

silence I learn a lot from it because it

explodes myths

unfortunately the sources that I used

have been written by men expressing the

patriarchal view of what is important

the army the state the bureaucracy what

my students call boring history the

women hooda studies left no written

records so she looks for clues in the

writings of medieval Islamic scholars

who to figures out what women were

really doing from the demands of the

male scholars that they stopped doing it

first of all a woman should go out only

for an assessment if she does she should

go in long an unattractive garment

sounds to me a woman should work close

to the walls of houses in order to make

way for men men should make the road

difficult and narrow for women as

religious scholars they viewed the

female body as threatening to the order

of the main world the nudity of the

female bodies is frowned upon and this

is a very sensitive subject on the part

of our religious scholar because he

hates women prancing in the public bath

you know walking around nude because

they exchanged domestic news about

themselves about their husbands and they

competed among themselves in terms of

you know like clothes and jewelry and

what did my husband get it was trouble

for the man at home I always encountered

this in my research you know about women

that the female body in public space

caused chaos and again I'm wondering

whether this is not also a male

retention of the past you know when

material power was expressed through the

years sexuality of the female

when the male revolted against that

sexual dominance he started taming it

[Music]

women's fertility made them powerful in

the village times but those times did

not last

[Music]

around 5,000 years ago a great change

swept across the world the era of the

autonomous villages came to an end

nobody really knows why but in half a

dozen places around the world a new way

of living arose it was the point where

human beings stopped just fitting into

the world and began to subjugate it

[Music]

in Egypt in Mesopotamia in China in

Central America

great numbers of villages were united

under single rulers human beings

invented the state and patriarchy was

born at the same moment all the early

States were pyramids of power and

privilege with a single man at the top a

fairy a god-king a sacred person and how

could a single man get so much power

only by terror

[Music]

the tombs around here belonged to the

kings and Nobles of Egypt's first

dynasty they died about 5000 years ago

so there's not much left of the tombs

now except the outside walls of

mud-brick but once the interiors were

lined with inlaid cedar and filled with

gold and ivory in all manner of precious

things and some of the kings may have

been quite decent men when they were

alive but this is what happened when

they died

they strangled scores are hundreds of

the people who've worked for the King

concubines bodyguards minor officials

servant girls and buried them nearby to

serve Him in the next world around the

tomb of Jer the third king of unified

Egypt are the graves of 317 other people

the great majority of them young women

and these were not the Kings enemies

there were people he knew but murdering

hundreds of people and burying them with

the king is almost normal in the

earliest kingdoms Egypt Mesopotamia

China they all did it absolute power

corrupts absolutely welcome to

civilization but the terrible things

they did had a purpose terror is a

primitive form of mass communication put

up enough images like this and you don't

have to station so

you

one quarter of early Mesopotamian laws

were about controlling women the man

wants to make sure that the the children

are his and one way of doing it is to

regulate you know marriage and to say to

the woman you know I have to control

your movement the legacy of Mesopotamia

is still visible today in all parts of

Cairo the wealthier houses contain

harems where women were segregated in

order to prevent social contact with men

who were not part of the family you have

this ideology in architectural form the

house is enclosed by high walls the male

space is on the ground floor so that

there's easy access for the male

visitors and the female spaces are on

the upper floors where they could

overlook these male spaces

[Music]

I'd served the purposes of secluding the

women from strange Maine eyes at the

same time it allowed women privacy to

socialize without interference from

females

[Music]

segregating women and making them wear

veils were just part of the process of

turning women into private property

women had to wear veils in Mesopotamia

4000 years ago

so did respectable women in classical

Greece and Rome women in medieval Europe

were still veiling their hair and even

in our grandmother's time women still

wore veils on special occasions today

almost everybody has forgotten that the

veil comes from an ancient upheaval that

also brought us tyranny endless war but

he does

[Music]

every state echos the first state

hierarchy militarism male domination

[Applause]

the meeting place

[Music]

please

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

like anybody trying to run a mouse

civilization Bill Clinton must get

millions of people to pay taxes work

together obey orders from a distant

Capitol that's so hard to do that until

recently all math societies hadn't be

dictatorships but Bill Clinton doesn't

have to be a dictator

[Music]

he can actually try to talk people into

cooperating because he has all the

technology of mass communication is

available to party or persons but the

common ground we call America but what

was it like before mass media go all the

way back to ancient Egypt 5,000 years

ago no human being has ever lived in

anything bigger than a village and

suddenly here we are in the world's

first unified state and we have a little

problem how to rocket think of the

number of people involved 50 thousand a

hundred thousand half a million and

remember that the ancient Egyptians

stitch and everybody lived in a world

with no mass communications no radio no

television no books no newspapers hardly

anybody could even read and write so

they had no way to talk things over as a

mass society no way to reach a consensus

no way to agree voluntarily and what

ought to be done so somebody had to give

the orders and everybody else had to

obey

when we left the villages we had to

leave equality behind to a mass society

without mass communications has to be a

dictatorship

but he doesn't have to go in for

militarism and it doesn't have to

destroy women's rights

[Music]

Egypt was one of the few ancient

kingdoms where all the elements of

patriarchy did not arrive at the same

time in fact the early Egyptians at

least accepted no more the patriarchal

order than they absolutely had to the

very first Kings behaved quite badly but

my society in Egypt did not become a

permanent nightmare of exploitation and

depression as soon as they could the

Egyptians moved away from the terror of

the founding times they even gave up

building pyramids eventually and

satisfied themselves with more modest

temples in fact Egypt became the great

exception a mass society that managed to

keep a lot of the old village values

you

[Music]

before the coming of Judaism

Christianity and Islam

patriarchy was dominant but it tolerated

the presence of goddesses so he received

goddesses juxtaposed to gods in the

religious ideologies the early early

period the more dominant the female

figures

[Music]

you

[Music]

beneath the sands lies the city of La

who briefly Egypt's capital over 3,000

years ago Nick Miller the curator of

Egyptology at the Royal Ontario Museum

is overseeing the dig the sharp contrast

that has always impressed me there's

this difference between the status of

women in Egypt and that in shall we say

classical Greece the ancient Greeks were

a very peculiar Bunch indeed and they

were basically terrified of their women

folk I don't say that lightly I really

believe this if you will go over Greek

mythology you will find that almost all

the monsters are female and that must

surely mean something this did not

happen in Egypt a man had his women folk

around him

this gives the whole court life a kind

of a feminine quality the art shows

extremely fine linen garments on the

women through which the bodies show very

clearly

[Music]

women's clothing particularly which I

have kind of an interest in at this time

it does develop new styles appeared in

many cases you can date a picture on a

tomb wall by the fashions of the moment

it was not a misfortune to be born a

girl in ancient Egypt nobody'd even

heard of the veil why this huge

difference between Egypt and other

places ancient Egypt lived along a river

in a desert so wide that early armies

couldn't cross it to the north was open

sea so for almost 2,000 years

ancient Egypt was safe from attack by

other civilized States but Egypt's luck

eventually ran out around 1600 BC the

first invaders arrived it was the end of

Egypt as the great exception first came

the Hyksos and then came the Hittites an

even more aggressive law and in the

course of organizing itself to fight

them off

Egypt became like everywhere else this

temple was built over 3,000 years ago by

Ramses the third one of the first

Pharaohs to glory in being a conqueror

and a killer there's the great Pharaoh

in his war chariot pulled by horses that

look like New Kingdom harley-davidsons

trampling the foe underfoot

there's the Pharaoh ten times larger

than life holding a bunch of doomed

captives by the hair and there are the

Pharaoh scribes counting the severed

hands and various other severed bits of

his slaughtered enemies this was when

Egypt finally accepted the full

patriarchal package once other

civilizations can reach out and hurt you

you have to militarize that's what

happened in 19th dynasty Egypt and it

had an immediate impact on women with

the exception of the 19th dynasty which

was a military dynasty under Ramses the

first you have the beginning of a new

approach a new presentation of the

kingship they saw themselves as

reforming the increasingly effeminate

and ineffectual ways of the latter part

of the 18th dynasty we're not like those

guys who Miss ruled you before we are

men we are warriors

we are the new conquering kings of the

Empire and they represent their sons in

a way that the earlier Kings had not

representations of the royal princes in

the 18th dynasty even the ones who

ultimately become King are very rare

indeed under the 19th dynasty you have

the boys rows of them ramses ii brags of

having had 108 sons and those presumably

were only the legitimate ones

[Music]

the picture in the 19th time students

wanted an increasingly masculine

presentation nice guys finish last the

Chinese the Incas Mesopotamians Millions

Aztecs even Egyptians they all went the

same way in the end first a reasonably

Pleasant and tolerant culture and then

smash along comes the local version of

the patriarchal revolution and its

tyranny slaughter and depression

forevermore which still leaves one big

question maybe the most important one

why was it necessary in every

patriarchal culture to destroy the

status of women

[Applause]

poverty babies with the average woman

have if nobody was pushing her around it

would certainly not be the six children

that were the norm in our grandmother's

generation in cultures that let women

make their own choices small families

are the norm because women know the

children are a lot of work big families

are a legacy of militarized societies

military power requires lots of people

especially soldiers that means lots of

babies especially boys but you can't get

a high birthrate of women are really

free to choose so you have to reduce

them to a state where their best hope of

security and respect is their children

or more precisely their boy children

[Music]

truly niala see the passing down of

possessions and property and name from

father to son means that you must have a

son if you're so unlucky as not to have

a boy this is big trouble one recourse

is to try to attain a boy by for example

giving your inheritance

to a nephew that obliges him to take

care of you and respect you

women who don't produce sons wind up

being destitute for that very reason you

can't afford to alienate your brothers

or uncle's or any milk in the source of

weakness for women is the fact that they

are replaceable that a man can take

another woman instead of his wife it's

not that their functions are replaceable

it's the fact that they are personally

there are so many other women to choose

from the McNish is exhilarating women

try to overcome this oppression by

practicing maximum freedom within the

space that is allowed to them

they just know the boundaries they know

where not to go and within that they

have because of woman's intelligence

women have created a stake in patriarchy

and have tried to play by the rules and

get the most out of it

you're not going to upturn the culture

what people write in newspapers or how

the country is ruled you're not going to

change that anyway I'm talking about

making the most out of scarce resources

in a culture of poverty that is devalued

and doesn't have a voice the rulers had

to destroy women's freedom to get the

birthrate

they needed men support do that but most

men love their mothers and their wives

and their daughters why would they

collaborate and hurting them besides a

fully militarized patriarchy was not

good news for the average male for every

general there are thousands of foot

soldiers and being a foot soldier is not

good for your health

a few men ended up on top but most men

were less free less rich and maybe even

less safe than before so why did men go

along with the patriarchal revolution I

suspected in most places there was an

unspoken deal made right at the dawn of

civilization the patriarchs had to buy

men's support and what they had to offer

was status here was a way to reverse the

huge loss of status men had suffered

back when we all moved into the villages

any competent tyrant would spot the raw

material for a deal here

so here's an offer you can't refuse

throw your lot in with us back

patriarchy and we'll make you superior

to all women you'll have to obey us but

from now on you'll have control over

your women and you can be certain well

pretty certain that they're your kids

what's more your kids will belong to you

not your wife and your property will go

to your sons not your sister's kids oh

and we'll change the religion - from now

on God will be male and so will all his

priests and they'll all back your new

male privileges

[Music]

around 2,000 years ago

new religions swept away the old pagan

beliefs in almost all the mass

civilizations of the old world the new

religions of the Middle East turned the

universe into a perfect hierarchy with a

single male sky God at the top and the

goddesses who always play the major role

in earlier religions were demoted to

mere Saints or at best the mother of the

god

[Music]

early Christianity and Islam all

segregated worshippers by sects their

rules for women were patriarchy these

rules

[Music]

[Applause]

and those who interpret God's will of

course are exclusively made

[Music]

in Islam God becomes much more abstract

as an idea as a concept

[Music]

linguistically speaking is referred to

as a male God however it's really a very

abstract concept of divinity and

definitely there's no tolerance of any

female divinity there in their structure

and rules Christianity and Islam

represent the final triumph of

patriarchy

[Music]

yet the new religions were a paradox for

at the same time they were actually a

revolt against inequality the very core

of patriarchy they proclaimed that all

human beings were basically equal and

that's probably why they spread so fast

however little the new religions changed

things in practice they were a sign that

people would break with patriarchy if

they had the chance maybe not oh we have

[Music]

[Laughter]

[Music]

the veil has made a comeback in Egypt

recently and fundamentalism is on the

rise but looks can be deceiving

even though there is no law that says

women should wear the veil in Egypt we

see it all over the Muslim world you

know why are women wearing the veil and

why they willingly wearing the veil we

know that some are pressured to wear it

and I think that it's panicking the

insecurities of patriarchy and its need

to say to women you should be more

controlled patriarchy is right to panic

because these young women behave in ways

unimaginable to their grandmothers and

they put on the veil it's not in

submission to some 4000 year old law off

and it's just a tactic to move outside

the house you know still our to meet me

but I get that

Ali Anakin's event can finish be able to

go still mushiya mark say ok thou fat

about tobacco jumbo I mean an alarm

listen up together

[Music]

fidelity table inaudible vistas a slay

me man if my Malaysian ilaha darkest

Nina McDonald de la ley of la savate

Murdock are the marks in elected are we

are we early

Lee Miller had have enough left so pack

it in the sector

[Music]

the modern economy pulls women into the

workforce and education gives them new

ideas such rapid change has provoked a

fundamentalist backlash

it's the same struggle that started

centuries ago in the West and it isn't

over there yet either

if you put it in perspective we can say

that the new right has become a

universal phenomena it takes the

manifestation of women veiling in this

culture it takes other forms and in

other cultures there are fascist

movements in other countries that demand

certain forms of behavior I'm sure there

are similarities I think the world

economy is going through a crisis and

people always turn to religion or

conservatism to what they know

all across the globe a communications

revolution is undermining the old ways

televisions bringing the images and

ideas of an emerging global culture to

traditional societies and that's already

having an impact on the power balance

between sexes everywhere

people see a very alien world much of it

is foreign it's about places people have

never been and will never go to but

people are avid to learn just how on

Islamic the stories can be one incident

was caused by television for young girls

decided to escape from the village and

go through Cairo and become TV stars

they were of course brought back some

early and they didn't get very far

but this had a great impact on the

village that television can be

subversive not this year not this decade

but patriarchy is slowly collapsing

even though male hierarchy and privilege

still predominate everywhere even though

every country in the world is still

militarized

[Music]

after 5,000 years patriarchy is not just

in our institutions it's in our heads

but it is not in our genes

the problem is not human nature

it's that math societies are still

trapped inside the ancient machine they

know thousands of years ago to deal with

the problems of thousands of years ago

the machine called patriarchy was the

only way to run an early mass society it

was refined to both the killing machine

and a breeding machine as the early

civilization started fighting one

another and we conquered the whole

planet with thousands of years ago

[Music]

but now our weapons have become so

destructive that we can no longer afford

to type major Wars and we don't actually

have to live in patriarchal

dictatorships anymore

mass communications mean that we can be

democratic

patriarchy no longer makes sense as an

institution

[Music]

I think we have built enormous monuments

to man's domination there was a

photograph of all the new members of

Congress we were all lined up on the

steps and I was on the top step and

ready to have this photograph taken and

two of the new members two white males

just on the photograph with a student

and I am lost as if I'm not there it's

sort of symbolic there's no me and I

think I have to learn somehow to be able

to move that aside and say I'm here to

photographs like this may one day seem

as bizarre as those old pictures of the

Soviet leaders lined up on top of

Lenin's tomb and it will be as normal

for women to hold power as it is for men

to do the dishes somebody that bought

something dinner with you at an auction

that's right I don't have to take them

to do that so we stand amongst tonight

basically what you do is you eat and

drink in this job that's a no-no you try

to avoid both the drinking but you look

like you're eating at drinking

there's no golden age coming no happy

ever afters but patriarchy is in retreat

in every front and the vital front is

right here where men and women are

changing the most fundamental human

partnership the process is often

confusing and painful but we are

changing it and that's a good reason to

be hopeful about the human race if we

can achieve equality between the sexes

then the other big problems like war and

nationalism and north/south are not

insoluble either and a century from now

people may have to explain to their kids

about patriarchy the way we have to

explain about slavery and wouldn't that

be nice

[Music]

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YouTube Transcript:The Gods of Our Fathers - documentary on the rise of patriarchy and civilization

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The Gods of Our Fathers - documentary on the rise of patriarchy and civilization