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The Spanking Gene
Or
The Autistic and the Blade One
Jeff’s Introduction
The Chalice and the Blade
First of all, if you tried to read this introduction before Sept. 8th., 2024, I’m sorry. It was the last thing I wrote, an afterthought, and for some reason I was emotionally finished and already running away from this book. I finally noticed yesterday, it looked like I died and someone posted my notes, the stream of thought simply ends, I declare I’d done a thing I absolutely had not and then wish you well as though you were going to read on, Good Lord, I mean Lady, why would you?
I am sorry, and this can only be better.
Jeff
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The project. It’s to reinterpret the iconic The Chalice and the Blade, by Dr. Riane Eisler in terms of genetics rather than social models, to say that their dominant social model is less of a model and more of a gene, more of a Neurotype matter (I am a self diagnosed, late hatched Autistic). I’m framing it as an attack on the species by an aggressive and ultimately unworkable genetic adaptation – the Spanking Gene, like the warrior gene.
I hope you’ll know what was in the Chalice and what I am trying to update about it when I’m done.
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Riane Eisler’s book is a terrific description of prehistory, history, and the human world today, it was one of the truest things I ever read in terms of its clear eyed view of what has been happening and where we are headed. I want to read it to everyone, and that’s what this project is, me reading the Chalice to you, but of course if that’s all it was you could just read her, you wouldn’t need me, and where the Chalice offers the world a choice, I think I offer it a prescription.
That will be something like gene therapy, becoming the creature that makes a better choice, because Eisler’s toxic social model is more than that, it’s a genetic matter, a matter of evolution. People really haven’t got as much choice as we like to say, rather, the choices aren’t what we think they are.
The human genome has been under attack, suffering invasion from a new, violent usurper, this is the story of the Chalice and the Blade, and I expect Eisler too, has already caught up to all this biology, apparently their latest book, Nurturing Our Humanity, focuses on neuroscience, and that sounds great. I’m ordering that.
Having said that, I’m not waiting for it. I hope they agree with me, but I need to think through everything myself anyway.
The Chalice describes a neolithic disaster, when the first known, “Dominator society,” first arrives in the Near East and Old Europe and there is a violent societal collapse, followed by a slow regrowth of “civilization,” in a new direction, and it documents the long ideological defeat of the Old World and its knowledge with new gods and new myths.
None of it has to be altered or refuted to be seen also as the drift of an irresistible gene.
It seems obvious that we’d be talking about a warrior gene, but there’s a problem with that, the idea has been . . . moved away from, and despite that we search for a genetic connection for pretty much everything and even everything in neuroscience the narrative seems to be that that’s not what that was, and the one they found needs a series of unfortunate events to activate it, and stop talking about it, of course there’s no gene for anything so complex, and, and . . .
. . . and ha ha ha, shut up, of course there are warrior genes.
Next you’ll tell me there aren’t walking genes or breeding genes and genes aren’t real, but anyway that’s not really the crux of the matter so they can have the point for a minute. I’m going to call it the Spanking Gene, that’s the point. We are abused children first and warriors second, this is the hierarchy of time and causality and genetics.
Spanking is your series of unfortunate events.
I’m not saying that first famous “warrior allele,” that took the initial social rejection was the one or anything, but maybe it’s one and there are some, let’s be serious. Surely you don’t think war is humanity reaching the stars, beyond its genes or anything like that, of course you don’t. I think in 2024, what you probably think is we are still suffering under chimpanzee aggression, as though we aren’t better at it than they are by an order of magnitude. There’s no “warrior gene,” it’s a whole bunch of chimpanzee genes, is all, I think this is the current public view?
It is the current view inasmuch as the current view completely missed the Chalice and the Blade and history generally where humanity isn’t slowly “getting better,” at least not anymore.
The story of the Chalice and the Blade is the story of the growth of a monster, not the slow taming of one. The drift of a gene, the genetic invasion, this has echoes in a thousand sci-fi and horror stories, doesn’t it, in tales of spiritual or demonic possession, zombie films, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, they were perfectly normal, peaceful people until . . . until something got into them, and they started frothing at the mouth and going on rampages, and spreading the pathogen.
I feel like we have a brain path for describing this phenomenon.
The nasty gene does make for different sorts of people, and we don’t talk about human subtypes or subspecies, but we have begun to talk about Neurotype, and that’s what it is, a different mix of within-species genes, apparently affecting the neuro parts, clearly affecting social matters.
Eisler does say that the world is largely full of people living according to the Dominator social model, so I’m afraid that translates to the Allistic Neurotype, what we call the Neurotypical, or basically the modern normal person, blessed and cursed with what we call “Human Nature,” – but there’s a caveat, today, in the world of this Allistic dominance, of ideas of Human Nature, “types,” sound like fixed states, permanent things.
This is not the case and this view is problematic as can be.
Inasmuch as we think they are, then to criticize a type is to simply declare war upon it, or to complain while being sure there is no solution, but it’s a biology matter, the victims pose a problem, but the victims are not the problem per se, the victims are not the plague. It’s not simply that they exist – it’s something they’re doing, something they think, and it’s evolution, nothing simply exists, the problem is not that something merely exists, but that something keeps growing.
It’s something that knows how to fight, it’s the warrior gene – so I don’t think we want to declare war on it, anyway that’s quite redundant, it brings the war to us, that’s the problem, not the solution – I think we need to go the other direction and stop trying to hurt anyone, we’re feeding the thing, the Spanking Gene is your Bad Wolf, stop it. I suppose the hippies got it right, it’s love that’s required – but I need to pile some technical caveats onto that too.
It’s just not love if it spanks, or it’s not good enough to be the answer if it does.
It doesn’t matter how much love and good will you pile on after the fact of child abuse, because spanking is an environmental stressor that sets an epigenetic option to “warrior mode,” so spanking and love, this is first switch them into warrior mode, and then it’s heap love upon your new warrior – this is not solving the problem. It’s less, “Love is all you need,” and more, “Love is all you need.”
Like, cut the crap. You need all love, otherwise you’re feeding the Bad Wolf.
The Spanking Gene, the Bad Wolf is an abuse detector, is there abuse or not. It doesn’t make excuses about only a little bit of abuse that “shouldn’t matter.” It sees what is real and does what it can to protect you whether you like it or not and whether or not it’s to the detriment of everybody else. That’s why it’s the Bad one. So, not a choice, a prescription.
I’m not asking, I’m telling you: it’s evolution. Stop abusing your species, stop spanking, it’s working too well. You do not have the “choice,” to keep abusing yourself and still change anything any more than you have the “choice,” to keep smoking through your emphysema and not require supplemental oxygen. The choice was earlier, you missed it, no-one told you, and it was “normal,” you have lots of good reasons and/or excuses – but we’re forever setting the next generation up for the same mistake.
We needs to know this, that the Spanking Gene is the Bad Wolf. People act as though it were the Good one – this is what the Spanking Gene makes you think, perhaps.
You know, I’m not sure there is a Good Wolf inside of you, that’s the same error I just shot down, like people think it’s OK to feed the Bad one if there’s a Good one too, no. And if we extend the metaphor to humanity, the Chalice and the Blade is the story of the growth of the Bad Wolf, while the Good Wolf is on hunger strike for the last seven to ten thousand years, fading away, being replaced.
The Bad Wolf is a gene, an allele, several, some genetic . . . entity – this is the social, colloquial meaning for, “a gene,” right? We’d best say that once, get it out of the way. I am not speaking from the microscope, this is a bird’s eye view. Like all philosophy, I try not to deal in what appears to be true, but in what must be true, the kids with the microscopes can catch up later if I’m right.
As such, as a gene, as a real biological thing and not an ideological one, the Bad Wolf isn’t necessarily in everyone. Also, the inverse, the other side of the gene, the Good Wolf may still be alive in some people, who knows? I’m not trying to cherry pick this bit of Turtle Island wisdom, if I think they’re so right about the Bad one, then I think they probably know what they’re talking about regarding the Good one too, maybe some people really do have a Good Wolf still, or less of a Bad one, again, these perhaps are two sides of a gene.
I think if we step through the Chalice and history with our genes, and perhaps with some bit of knowledge regarding neurodiversity in mind, all this will get clearer, but it’s not simple, sharing the “world as one neurotype sees it,” with the rest, language isn’t really adequate, each type has its own truths and its own language, it’s always a long story and I’m afraid you do need all of it and you need to do half the work yourself, you have to accept the premise and be trying to get it.
Nothing in the world is easier than critiquing across neurotype, of course it’s not what you already think, it never will be, it’s like sympathy versus empathy, you have to volunteer to find the hurt when it’s not automatic for you, you have to immerse yourself. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ll do everything I can, I’m just warning you, across types, it’s never enough.
So the Chalice traces the situation from prehistory through history; they’re a social scientist, so they’ve identified a “social model,” they have suggestions, and this has provided the perfect framework for just about any theory about just what is humanity’s problem anyway – except the “forever,” ones.
It’s pretty clear about it and the fact is humanity hasn’t been on this bad trip forever, and not even longer than we remember. I’m clear that it’s still not all of humanity either, and that’s not to blame, or start any pogroms, that’s just where the hope is for us all.
We are all humanity and none of us will be saved without all of us being saved, it just happens that types are involved, part of this fantastically complex puzzle. Mostly, this project is my proof, it ought to be a third title: Why We Shouldn’t Spank.
So after that prescription, when your symptoms are a little more under control, come back and maybe we can start to talk about choices.
Jeff
Sept. 9th., 2024
The Spanking Gene 