All Together Now. Expose Armpits!

Now scratch. Now the other armpit. Now doesn’t that feel goooood? And so life unfolds, one “feel good” habitually conditioned behavior after another. That’s not how you think of yourself? That’s not your identity? Oh but it is my dear reader, it is.

Are you contending that homo sapiens have made progress since our Neolithic grunt, grunt, scratch, scratch darkened cave digs days? And your evidence? I know, I know. More material stuff. Bigger, warmer caves. Richer, more full-bodied wine. And power! Wow. We can now control….. uhhhhh? What can we control? Oh well two out of three ain’t bad huh? Oh but it is precisely that my dear itchy-pits reader. Bad, bad, very bad. You deny it? Well, I’m not surprised because you see, that is precisely the problem.

Now relax your reactions, turn off your ego’s protestations and do something you’re not used to. Listen, for a change. You have nothing of value to say anyway, you’re a zombie for God’s sake. After thousands of years of so-called evolution you have yet to create enough awareness to distinguish the difference between sustainable and unsustainable behaviors. You are still rushing headlong toward the Cliffs of Dover, elbowing aside the poor lemmings who are also eager to fling themselves into theEnglish Channel. What’s the big attraction? I hear the water’s cold and dark and dirty. Let’s ask our false self. It can give a penetrating analysis since it runs the whole show anyway.

One of the best and most startling examples of zombie or sleepwalking behavior is the relationship between males and females. Remember we are starting with two “types” of humans who have fundamentally, remember I said FUNDAMENTALLY, exactly the same True-self identity. The behaviors of both males and females, don’t forget now, is false-self behavior in a P-B context. BOTH spend the bulk of their lives pursuing plenty, pleasure and power. Lots of effort, lots of delusion and denial and, for the most part, very little deep and lasting satisfaction.

Nicholas Kristof writing in The New York Times corroborates my thesis. The thesis is that men and women expressing their false selves will behave the same and men and women expressing their True selves will behave the same; the former will self-destruct and the latter will live joyfully in the present moment. “Some people believe that women are more nurturing bosses, or that they offer more support to women below them. I’m skeptical. Women can be jerks as much as men.” We are not offering this off-the-cuff observation as proof positive. We use it for a lead-in to a much more devastating indictment. Ready or not here we come!

We will start out with the long-recognized “gender gap.” “In America, only 17 percent of American Fortune 500 board seats are held by women, a mere 3 percent of board chairs are women—and women are barely represented in President Obama’s cabinet.” Women have talents and gifts equal to that of men, but “relatively” different. That’s a good thing because it promotes variety and divergent thinking, right? Only a bone-headed society would waste half of its resources to assuage the ego-driven insecurity of the other half.

The underlying problem is in the beliefs, attitudes and values of the story told by men and accepted by women. This has been going on for a long time. “I’m guessing, [says Kristof] that the average boardroom doesn’t have much better gender equality than a team of cave hunters attacking a woolly mammoth 30,000 years ago.” And you thought my Neolithic context was an exaggeration. Just kidding. Chill out peeps!

Both male and female children born today will hear a version of how to construct the survival strategy appropriate to their sex and internalize it even though something just doesn’t ring true for them. The message received by the females is something like this: “We internalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives, the messages that say it’s wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than men. We lower our own expectations of what we can achieve.” This is Sheryl Sandburg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, writing in her book Lean In.

If you can’t find support for your self-worth in your environment and from your immediate community as a child, you can do what Sandburg did. When she was in elementary school, she trained her younger brother and sister to follow her around on the playground, listening to her speeches and periodically shouting “Right.”

How would the public and private sectors benefit from more women in leadership positions? Not surprisingly, more and more research is indicating that diverse groups reach better and probably healthier decisions. We see patriarchal societies around the globe self-destructing and yes, they would continue to destruct with more women leaders in the context of the old narrative.Nevertheless, in the interest of relative progress, it’s time for women to express their outrage. Epidemic sexual abuse, rape, egregious discrimination, all call out for aggressive litigation, mass demonstrations, boycotts, sit-ins, and yes, exposed armpits. Some 50 years ago, Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique began to raise feminine consciousness. When told by the police at a large demonstration on 5^th Avenue to get out of the street and march single file on the sidewalk, she raised her arm and signaled her sisters to spill into the street. The result of increased feminine activism would be to reduce the relative suffering around the world. Then it would also be time for the next step, moving into deeper human self-transformation and universal compassion which needs to be expressed by both men and women.

So what is our conclusion? The human story has to be radically rewritten with Oneness as the context which values all human beings equally and also cherishes the rest of Creation. With the transformed identities that would result for both men and women and the resultant healthier, life-affirming behaviors we could turn the onrush of humanity away from the cliffs of self-destruction. Then when women are rubbing elbows with men by “leaning in” at board meetings, the men won’t feel resentment or anxiety. They will listen attentively, recognize the value of the divergent female contribution and expose their armpits and shout “Right.” (Without the pit-scratching, of course.)

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References and notes are available for this essay.
Find a much more in-depth discussion in books by Roy Charles Henry:
Where Am I?  The First Great Question Concerning the Nature of Reality
Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival