{"id":2561,"date":"2013-09-19T06:30:36","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T11:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=2561"},"modified":"2014-09-23T11:33:49","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T16:33:49","slug":"a-hestian-map-of-the-hearth-not-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/a-hestian-map-of-the-hearth-not-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"A Hestian Map – the sacred hearth not at home in an authoritarian world"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been having a very exciting time discovering and building on the many connections between my scientific method for studying the development and organization of Natural Systems<\/a>, and the wonderfully radical scientific feminism of Pat Thompson’s “Hestian Home Economics” (1,2,3). \u00a0 They both center on what is at the heart of the liveliness of natural systems, the living culture and the home it makes for itself in its environment. \u00a0The protector of that home and hearth fire for the families of pre-ancient Greece was Hestia, the first of foremost of their personal archetypes of divinity, charged with protecting the **SACRED FIRE of HEARTH AND HOME**. \u00a0From a physical science of natural systems much the same can be said for the continuity any systems “seed of self-organization” around which it has developed its way of using the energy resources of its environment. \u00a0 Same statements, two different wonderfully interconnected languages! \u00a0 ;-)<\/em><\/p>\n

To pre-Aristotelian Greek culture HESTIA was the first of the\u00a0children\u00a0of\u00a0Cronus, charged with the first\u00a0duty of civilization, protecting the sacred flame of hearth and home. \u00a0 In how families still work today, that’s the\u00a0<\/em><\/em>continuity of their living culture, their ability to exercise their family\u00a0traditions and practices,\u00a0inheriting\u00a0and passing on it’s joys and forms of knowing,\u00a0adapting to their changing world as a bridge between their generations. \u00a0 It’s that \u00a0CONTINUITY, then, that IS the living flame of a family home and the animating heart of any living culture, the *cont-in-uity* it develops and follows as it branches out, forming new expressions, that hav always been, and clearly still are today, the center of human life, the foundation of all our cultures. They are today also *quite threatened*, by our devotion to rules for demanding ever more productivity from these living cells that make our\u00a0lives\u00a0lively, driving everything sacred to us toward “make bricks\u00a0without\u00a0straw”, as it were, for the sake of misunderstood authoritarian rules…!<\/em><\/p>\n

1) for her books look up “Patricia Thompson, Hestia” on Amazon. 2) PDF of Pat’s simpl<\/a>e scientific systems thinking<\/a>, that unlike virtually all other systems theories other than mine has living things and their archetypal living roles,<\/em><\/span> included<\/em><\/span>\u00a0not excluded 3) How she\u00a0deconstructs Roman historian Fustel’s history<\/a> of Greek culture, that replaced the original (Hestian) cultural language with a commercial (Hermian) dialectic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at the territory,<\/h3>\n

and the basic maps of home economics and political economics<\/span><\/h4>\n
<\/div>\n

\"montserratnature\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The basic map of home economics is a work of caring for the home culture.\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

For political economics it\u2019s the battle in the public sphere to gain advantage over others.<\/i>\u00a0 Pat Thompson calls them \u201cHestian\u201d and \u201cHermian\u201d systems, after the representative Greek gods, and we need to understand the action principles defining them.<\/p>\n

The primary duty of the home maker, considering a family as a link on a chain of living culture, is to be the guardian of its flame of life and continuity as a culture.\u00a0 Its living culture illuminates the home with its light and life, as the home serves as the commons within which the family culture inherits and passes on its traditions as family members live for each other, sustaining an \u201call for one\u201d life of a true commons (Hestian culture).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keeping the home light alive has historically been the primary role of the women of the family, whether they got credit for it or not, as 1) \u201cthey are there\u201d, 2) have in abundance the particular talents and interests needed and 3) the men generally have duties elsewhere, serving the authoritarian business cultures of the society\u2019s public space, working their ability to extract wealth from others as \u201cthe rulers rule\u201d for serving their authoritarian systems, organized around an \u201cevery part in opposition\u201d, way life (Hermian culture), a boom and bust machine.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s a split between the free sharing of \u201cprofits\u201d that one naturally finds wherever there is \u201cprivate space\u201d and the invasive cultures using profits to claw more profits, that came to dominate the \u201cpublic space\u201d of our society.\u00a0 The \u201cdomus-centered\u201d (domestic) life evolved first, and \u201cpolis-centered\u201d (political) life second, exhibiting starkly different principles of economics.\u00a0 One naturally balances resources in the interest of its whole culture; the other maximizes inequities for an invasive culture.<\/p>\n

As an authoritarian organization, a business rewards employees who are good at helping the business owners succeed in exploiting others, for serving the greater greed of others, defined clearly in \u201cthe rules of the business\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0The business sets its goals according to how it determines its \u201cprofits\u201d measured as a one-way taking from its environment.\u00a0\u00a0 In modern business it\u2019s not just the % rate of profit that matters.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s often more important to the investors who determine which are the most exploitative businesses to invest in, is the % rate of growing profit<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0 That comparison of profit options is what\u2019s colloquially called, \u201cthe bottom line\u201d, and is now programmed directly into business computers since the 1970\u2019s. \u00a0\u00a0It automates how businesses play one competitor off another, to maximize their growing domination of the living cultures around them, with ever growing demands for increasing performance from those serving the rules, and becoming unmanageable as it remains the only available work.<\/p>\n

The key is how the two cultures display opposite principles for using the profit<\/span><\/i>, living cultures \u201ccaring for themselves\u201d and the invasive cultures \u201ctaking for themselves\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It defines a sharp and clear difference between \u201chome economics\u201d (caring for the home culture) as a principle, and \u201cpolitical economics\u201d(winning battles in the polis), using family cultures to sustain the people serving the authoritarian rules of the polis cultures, for becoming ever more invasive for the home cultures.<\/p>\n

As all invasive cultures they use what they take to multiply what they take, exploiting the family cultures caring for themselves that actually hold society together.\u00a0 \u00a0It leads to violating the home culture\u2019s essentially spiritual purpose of \u201ckeeping the light within\u201d as \u201cthe sacred flame\u201d shining through the continuity of their loves and living traditions.<\/p>\n

Here then is the problem for us<\/i> and our remarkable little groups of transformational change agents that our \u201ccommons movement\u201d is a part of.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Our \u201cmovements for change\u201d<\/i> started springing up all over the place in the 60\u2019s, in the midst of a culture heavily dominated by ideas of profiting in opposition to others, and some ways \u201cended up doing the same\u201d.<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0 Not understanding the difference, the transformational communities based some \u201caction principles\u201d on \u201cus v. them\u201d economic approach (exploitive\/Hermian).\u00a0\u00a0 They \u201csaid\u201d opposing the bad was a \u201cnew home economics\u201d for the earth, (sustaining\/Hestian), but the action principles kept using the same old oppositional logic and authoritarian rules.<\/p>\n

At the deepest level, the difference is whether the culture using an action principle regularly tests it with \u201cthe precautionary principle<\/i>\u201d, always asking \u201cwhat better use might we make of the profits<\/i>\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0The math clearly tells the difference,<\/span><\/i> whether you measure your success only by your take<\/span><\/i>, or for the whole culture of give and take<\/i><\/span>. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With the one, using the precautionary principle for one\u2019s own action principles is a natural, automatic, and positive thing to do.\u00a0\u00a0 For the other it\u2019s a seeming great offense, to question the principle of profit approved by the group as a social unit, or by an authority, same rule based authoritarianism,\u2026 either way.<\/p>\n

Because what a system does with its profits maps its physical path into the future, those choices serve as its efficient steering mechanism<\/i>.\u00a0 Learning how to steer means getting people to rethink the use of the profit; to stuff one\u2019s pockets or care for your world. That\u2019s where the difficult rethinking will turn up… as well as the open paths to real societal transformation!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 jlh<\/p>\n

jlh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been having a very exciting time discovering and building on the many connections between my scientific method for studying the development and organization of Natural Systems, and the wonderfully radical scientific feminism of Pat Thompson’s “Hestian Home Economics” (1,2,3). \u00a0 They both center on what is at the heart of the liveliness of natural … Continue reading A Hestian Map – the sacred hearth not at home in an authoritarian world<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,9,10,13,15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-econn","category-theory","category-policy","category-pop","category-stories","category-trans","category-whattodo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2561"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3058,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2561\/revisions\/3058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}