by Anne-Chloé Destremau

All over the world, the Western capitalist patriarchal empire is repressing, destroying and enslaving local indigenous cultures. This is possible because there is a weak link in local cultures that Western marketers exploit. The weak link is teenage boys. Western culture is tailored to them: fast cars, beautiful objectified women, easy money, power, fame... Western culture is a patriarchal culture created by uninitiated teenagers for uninitiated teenagers. Modern culture relies on these pubescents to subvert and take over local cultures.

Local boys are taken from their villages and sent to schools in the city "to learn skills that will allow them to get a real job and make money." The money they earn is, of course, used to buy what modern culture produces: Rayban sunglasses, Camel cigarettes, their own money, and their own apartment. In doing so, they leave behind knowledge of their own culture. The women and girls stay in the village and do the work alone that the whole community used to do together. Once strong and proud, women are excluded from community life, decision-making processes and their natural educational functions. Initiation processes are forgotten, as is the knowledge of growing food, building houses, and villaging. Communities are separated. Competition creeps in. Hatred and scarcity become the basis of thinking, making decision and taking action.

If the lever of modern culture for overpowering traditional cultures is the boys in adolescence, then adolescent women are the lever for the transition of modern culture into the next culture. Women, especially young women, are the key to the creation of Next Culture - Archiarchy.

Women are key because they have a better chance of escaping the patriarchal empire. In modern culture, women are the slaves of men's pubescent mentality. Slaves can escape patriarchy easier than masters because slaves know that something else is possible. The 'Lord' sees no reason why he should exchange his life for something else. He has no reason to question the system that makes him the undisputed ruler. However, when slaves decide that they want something completely different, (r)evolution inevitably follows.

Women's (r)evolution began at least 60 years ago with the women's liberation movement. However, I think that we - women - have failed to truly liberate ourselves.

We have until now not created a culture in which men and women are free to work together creatively for the good of all, including the good of planet Earth. This Path to liberation is as sharp and dangerous as a razor blade. Some women have tried to free themselves by fighting against a 6,000-year-old patriarchal system. They tried in vain to prosecute abuses by men, or marched through the streets with placards and slogans, only to be brutally beaten to the ground, pepper-sprayed in the eyes, and dragged off to prison cells or worse. These women walked directly into the swords wielded in defense of the patriarchal system, and they were deeply wounded. Other women have tried to beat men at their own game, believing that if men would respect them, they would finally be able to respect themselves. Women struggled to rise to the top of male-dominated hierarchical systems of politics, business, finance, health, education, religion, media, and forest destruction. The women who succeeded paid the ultimate personal price, for themselves and for us. Neither fighting the system nor defeating the system has managed to transform the system into something else. Both strategies failed.

I think that we have failed ourselves because we have not reclaimed our own Dignity and respect for what a Woman is. We have more respect for men and their social system than for our own Feelings, our Voice, our Authority and our Clarity. We have not taken back the power to Listen and let the Seed of what comes next speak clearly, incessantly, in whispers and roars. Even when the door is opened by other women - or even certain men these days - we turn away from them in emotional fear.

I sit here with this burning question - how can we women, for the sake of our children's children, for the sake of Gaia and life on Earth, for our own sake... how can we reclaim our own Dignity? What is the path to such an inner (r)evolution?

My experience has been that we women tend to vacillate between one extreme or the other. Sometimes we let ourselves be overwhelmed by our self-doubts "I am not good enough, never, for anything. I don't deserve anything other than this misery." At other times we claim "I am the best. These idiotic people don't deserve me. I'll show them what I'm capable of... or maybe I'll just leave them behind and torture them forever." We give ourselves a miserable choice of either 'I am less worthy than men' or 'I am far superior to them'. The deception is that thinking in polarities is just as rooted in patriarchal concepts of separation and competition. It is lived just as actively between men and women as it is among women.

It occurred to me to make an announcement: Women! It's time for us to start again. We are now starting again in a different context. Our new beginning has its origins in consciousness, radical responsibility and interdependence. Regaining our Dignity in a context of interdependence is not a selfish act. Regaining our dignity means standing up for ourselves in relationship to other women, men and nature.

Our job is to build the Bridge from modern culture to next culture - Archiarchy. The bridge is built as we walk it. Men cannot go first on this task because they are trapped in patriarchy and cannot leave it until someone shows them that something completely different from this is Possible. The change is happening now with every dignified woman crossing the bridge to a culture of creative collaboration between the feminine and the masculine.

I am writing this manifesto as a call for you, Woman, who are tired of wasting time taking care of a system that is eliminating your children's future, for you who are discovering your rage to create something new, for you who are reclaimining your Voice, your Heart and your Being and refuse to package them back into a culture that has no interested in your well-being.

The time of being nice and adaptive, twisting yourself to please others or spending hours in plotting revenge against your abusers, is over. You can decide it is over now. So a brighter future might have a chance, for your children and grandchildren who might hope for life. So your daughters can experience what it means to be a dignified woman in the arms of a newly awakened man. So your son has a chance to break out of a system that is eating his soul.

This is the Path of the Women of Earth.

Welcome.