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I've been looking for a while for somebody who could talk credibly about money. Of course, this podcast isn’t really about that. This podcast is about focusing on processes and ideas that build common ground and complex systems. However, I’ve always believed that one of the things you need to look at is money. 

I'm so excited to have found Stephanie Savell and The Cost of War project. There are three women who are doing an amazing job documenting what has been spent by the United States and to some extent, other countries, on what they call the post 9/11 wars. 

Stephanie Savell is an anthropologist of militarism, security and political culture and has studied these topics in the United States and in Brazil. She co-directs Brown University’s Cost of War project. She was one of the younger members and I thought it was appropriate that one of the younger members of The Cost of War project speak because it sounds like we are really mortgaging our children’s future in the United States with the amount that is being spent on the military. 

Let’s hear Stephanie talk about this more as she has done a lot of research and talks credibly and clearly about what exactly is going on.

Ep. 039: Stephanie Savell:The Costs of War

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I like to think of myself as fairly courageous. In fact, one of my mottos (adopted from Barbara Stanny (Huson — an earlier guest on the show) is to “do something scary every day”. So, I readily take work assignments in war zones in Afghanistan, South Sudan and most recently the Central African Republic; I go backcountry skiing on glaciers in remote parts of Alaska; I try to be courageous with my own inner evolution — to keep growing as a human; to be honest with myself and others, speak truth to power and to keep doing what I can to create a more peaceful and sustainable planet.

But whatever courage I may have doesn't hold a candle to my current podcast guest, Saba Ismail, who grew up in Northwestern Pakistan, the most dangerous place on earth to be a woman. Saba and her sister, Gululai, and the well-known Malala, who comes from the same region (and was shot in the head simply for advocating for girls’ education), are speaking up in the face of many forces that would like to silence them and which would terrify me if I was confronted with the same. I'm glad I can give a platform on this podcast to young women like Saba, who now is 32.
Here are some of my favorite "frames” of the episode:

She couldn't even talk -- First of all, a few months back when I first reached out to Saba, she didn't even feel she could talk to me because her sister was in hiding from the Pakistani military and things were just too dangerous to bring any more attention to the situation.

The Critical Role of Fathers -- Saba grew up in jihad, the influences were everywhere and as a young person she believed them. But when her father, a human rights activist, realized what she was bringing home from school, he intervened to make sure that all of his kids, especially his girls, were given information and education to counter the indoctrination. The critical role fathers play in the empowerment of their daughters is well-documented and I have experienced it personally:
- when I was working with two factions of Kurds in northern Iraq and i suggested it might be good to have some women among the representatives, it was a father who insisted that his daughter join us even though her mother and grandmother were dead set against it;
- when I had the privilege of working with the senior women leaders in the Afghan government, many of them shared with me that they would never be where they are without their father's support;
- in Saba’s story, a father who really paved the way for her sister Gululai and her to make a real difference to their community and world;
- and finally, in my own life, my father who loved me a lot but was ambivalent about my professional success -- how much effort it has taken me to transcend his messages.

Advocating nonviolence in Madrassas -- Saba and Aware Girls going into the madrassas to convince young people that the Koran doesn’t support violence and jihad;

Pakistani Military -- the Pakistani military seem so hell bent on oppressing young women like Saba and her sister rather than recognizing them as the global peacebuilders that they are. I mean really!! What the heck!!

What Saba calls the #Metoo Movement of Pakistan -- the delegations of women, many illiterate, that traveled to the northwest of Pakistan in spite of great difficulty, to show solidarity with other women that were being harassed and defiled;

U.S. Supporting Military Solutions, not Aware Girls -- that my country so often supports authoritarian regimes like what currently exists in Pakistan rather than the development of young women and men like Saba. How our ‘war on terror”, rather than making the world safer, has led to way too many kids like Saba growing up in cultures of extremism, jihad and violence. Shame on us.

Ep 40: Saba Ismail: From Northwestern Pakistan to Global Leadership

Riane Eisler is well into her later years and is still generating unsurpassed insight and contribution into how we can live well together on this planet. I interviewed her first in Episode 28 (please give a listen), and said then and repeat now that she is one of the brightest lights and most innovative social thinkers out there.

What I have always liked the most is that she transcends the polarities of right v. left, capitalist v. socialist, religious v. secular, north v. south, -- “it’s useless”, she says, “because there have been repressive violent regimes in every one of these categories.”

Instead, her frame is models of partnership v. domination and a special emphasis on how gender shows up in both.

In my 20’s, when I first read her book, The Chalice and the Blade, it was such eureka moment that was then reinforced by Harvard social anthropologist William Ury in his book, Getting to Peace to learn that humans have not always been in a state of war and violence -- that, in fact, the vast majority of human existence on earth is characterized much more by what Riane calls models of partnership v. domination, or what Ury articulated as  2,500,000 years of possible coexistence to 10,000 years of coercion.

So many smart people that I talk to believe humans have always been violent, and that there has always been war. But, there’s a lot of evidence that this is just not true. And there is also plenty of evidence that during those times, men and women lived together as equals and that, in many societies, the Divine was often a revered goddess, and maybe even a super sexy one.

What Riane so clearly adds to this discussion is that all domination systems, whether they are left or right, are always characterized by rigid gender stereotypes.  

“It's not coincidental”, she says, “that whether it was Hitler in Germany, or ISIS in the Middle East today, secular Western, religious Eastern, or the rightist fundamentalist alliance in the US, that a top priority is always getting back to this quote, ‘traditional family’. It's a code isn't it?” she says, “for authoritarian, rigidly male dominated, and highly punitive family.”  

Impetus for this current episode is Riane’s new book, Nurturing our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape our Brains, Lives and Future which she has written with Douglas Fry. It’s a delight to get to know Doug through this episode. I knew of his work as an anthropologist, documenting earlier partnership societies and the gender balance within them. 

Doug has a very special voice and perspective and I found his calm demeanor made me feel better and more hopeful about the world.

A couple of ideas they share that I especially like. . . 

* That gender is a key component to domination systems and is connected to the ranking of any human being over other groups whether it’s about race, religion, sexual orientation. . . In other words, you get rid of gender ranking and you get rid of a lot of “isms”,

* That as the status of women rises, men no longer find it such a threat to their status, masculinity or role to also embrace caring values like universal health care, generous paid parental leave and have the freedom to be more fully themselves . . 

* That in the partnership societies that Riane and Doug explore in the book:

        - there are the narrowest gender gaps
        - there is an investment in people starting from early childhood
        - there’s no homelessness
        - no violence (although certainly people lose is from time to time)
        - military budgets are just a few percentages of government spending (compared to $.57 on the dollar in the US)
        - they are always in the highest ranks of the global competitiveness indices
        - AND, perhaps the most important of all, people are the happiest!!

Go figure.

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Ep 041:  Riane Eisler And Doug Fry: Nurturing Our Humanity

Join Global Consultant Susan Coleman, Host of the Peacebuilding Podcast- and today’s most innovative, courageous and inspired practitioners as we explore strategies to intervene in complex systems to build consensus and common ground across divides of worldview, culture and difference.