Riane Eisler, whose iconic book The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, is now in 26 languages was interviewed on KCBX Central Coast Public Radio about her life, books, and activism. Eisler takes us back to her childhood flight with her parents from Nazi Europe, through changes in consciousness during the 1960s, to her thinking and work today. She opens up new vistas of how we can move forward by going beyond thinking in terms of religious vs. secular, right vs. left, and socialism vs. capitalism. She describes the new categories of the partnership system and the domination system, and how using them makes it possible to see otherwise invisible patterns in all aspects of our lives, from sexuality and spirituality (which she examines in her book Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body) to our hidden history of more egalitarian and peaceful societies (examined in The Chalice and the Blade) to education (the subject of her Tomorrow’s Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st Century), to her more recent work on transforming economic systems (the subject of her book The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics) and its applications through the Center for Partnership Studies’ Caring Economy Campaign. Eisler debunks popular notions, such as that we can bring back manufacturing jobs in a time when automation is replacing these jobs at an ever more rapid rate and algorithms are even replacing programming and other higher end jobs, or that violence and discrimination against women is “just a women’s issue,” and outlines what we can do to build better lives, economies, and societies.
Listen to the radio interview on KCBX Central Coast Public Radio, especially featuring the Caring Economy Campaign.
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