The Geometry of War

What the Circle Knows That the Line Never Will

As I’ve watched the war with Iran unfold, I find myself struck by an irony so strange, I’m reticent to write about it. Not because I don’t stand by what I’m about to say. Just that I know how easily my words can be misunderstood.

So let me say from the outset. I hate war. I think it’s a terrible solution to human conflict that creates more problems than it solves, costs a fortune to everyone but the war profiteers, and leaves unfathomable suffering, destruction, and environmental catastrophe in its wake. I’m a big fan of conversation. We are human beings after all. We have the capacity to speak, reflect, consider, imagine, and most of all, listen. I think we should use these gifts to resolve our differences. I’m also not an apologist for the Islamic Republic of Iran. I’m not naive about its theocratic brutality, suppression of women, and troubling history of human rights violations. I hold all of this.

And yet there is an irony unfolding in this war that is so striking in its paradox, I have to write about it.

Let’s start with the concept of patriarchy. I know you know this. I know I’ve written and spoken about it ad nauseam. I’m laying it out again here because what I’m about to say requires this frame.

I’ve been a student of the patriarchal paradigm for many years. My focus however is not patriarchy as an external organizing system. My interest is in the ways patriarchy’s ranking systems and values of domination and control plant themselves in the structures of human consciousness, and from that hidden vantage point assert much more control over our bodies, hearts, and minds than many of us realize.

This internalized patriarchy, what I think of as the “inner patriarch,” replicates the outer patriarchal system inside of us. This fosters the mind/body split that places action over stillness, masculine over feminine, intellect over intuition, and doing over being. This arbitrary (and incorrect) organizing system then fosters the sense of disequilibrium—the current buzzword is dis-regulation—that along with a long list of physical, psychological, and emotional symptoms, tricks us into projecting our power (i.e. sense of self, autonomy, and ability to discern truth from deception) onto people and belief systems outside of ourselves.

Needless to say this is never a good idea. I’ve written extensively about it in my book The Goddess Remedy. (If these ideas intrigue you, please do get a copy.) I’m writing about it here to lay a groundwork for this post. I want to be sure we’re speaking the same language, and underline the point that it is the inner patriarch that keeps us wedded to the outer patriarchy. The inner patriarch is patriarchy’s pawn. Dismantle its architecture within our mind/body system and the outer forms of patriarchy—which let’s be real, cause untold suffering from the individual to the planetary level—will erode.

One more very important point here: when I critique the patriarchy, inner or outer, I’m not speaking against men. In many ways, I’m speaking for them since men are as victimized by the patriarchal paradigm as women. Patriarchy is a distortion of the masculine (which is, in essence, our doing function). Patriarchy rips the masculine from its essential balance with the feminine (which is, in essence, our inner being). Regardless of gender ID, we’re all made of both. Which is why everything functions best when our doing and being, masculine and feminine, live in balance.

A helpful way to visualize the patriarchal masculine is through its geometry. Like a straight line moving forward, it never looks back. Its stance is always vertical, its perspective top-down, a single point of command moving through a rigid hierarchy. This is how it organizes and understands power. The line strikes. The line conquers. The line decapitates. For the patriarchal mind, this is the only shape that power can take.

When teaching these ideas, I often suggest that those who want a potent image of the inner patriarch do well to study Donald Trump. The one value he offers is as a mirror of this patriarchal implant in all its lying, blustering, truth-silencing, gaslighting toxicity. The inner patriarch is a hideously broken doing function, severed from connection and compulsively driven by a dangerous combination of greed, fear, self-absorption, and rage. It is incapable of inner stillness, cannot tolerate not-acting, not-controlling, not-dominating. Instead it plows ahead with no thought to consequences. And DJT, our mad king American president, embodies this patriarchal distortion of the masculine at warp speed.

And then there’s the goddess, aka the feminine ground or realm of being. Horizontal in outlook, circle rather than line. Power distributed equally through relationship, through the whole, through every point on the circumference. This is the world I have always believed in, the world I have nurtured where it exists and worked toward restoring where it’s been crushed.

I named this newsletter The Being Project precisely because I see being—aka the feminine ground—as the antidote to the patriarchal project. And strangely, unexpectedly, it is this war with Iran, this catastrophic war of choice, that is illustrating the point more vividly than anything I could have invented.

Because here is the paradox in all its stunning irony:

Iran’s leaders are embodying a healthy masculine, a masculine that is integrated with its feminine whole. And this is something to wrap one’s mind around…

This country, battered and demonized for decades, associated in the Western mind with theocratic and misogynistic brutality, appears to be the integrated adult in the room. This may strike you as simplistic. I don’t disagree with that stance. I’m speaking from a metaphorical perspective. Nevertheless, when I hear interviews with Iran’s spokespeople—and shoutout to Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, Chris Hedges, and the team at Breaking Points—I’m often struck by their wisdom, clarity, patience, and discipline.

And here’s where the geometry of it all truly blows my mind. Iran’s leadership structure is horizontal. Circular. Distributed. So that no matter how many key people we may assassinate, the circle closes around itself and keeps moving. There is no single head to cut off because power is not organized around a single head.

Our military establishment defines this strategy as “asymmetrical warfare.” Let’s pause for a moment to reflect on this term. The arrogance embedded in this language is a perfect expression of the patriarchal worldview. We are the symmetrical. We are the standard, the norm, the definition of how power properly organizes itself. They are the deviation, the asymmetry, the irregularity to be managed.

It never occurs to the patriarchal mind that what it’s actually encountering is a different—and arguably far more sophisticated—form of symmetry. The symmetry of the circle. The symmetry that sees the whole. The symmetry of the goddess.

Meanwhile the so-called mighty are bringing down the hammer, believing in the old trope that might makes right. Except it doesn’t. Might most often makes stupid.

So here we are…

The so-called mighty, organized around the vertical line of patriarchal command, are being humbled, not through superior firepower, but through the patient, distributed, circular intelligence of a people who have learned, through necessity and perhaps through something deeper, to organize themselves around the whole. Around the circle. Around the notion that power shared is power multiplied, and that no single point of the circumference need bear the full weight alone. This is the consciousness of the goddess!

I’m not saying that Iran is all wise and benevolent. I’m saying that in this moment, on this particular stage, we are watching a living demonstration of the patriarchal paradigm in love with itself, racing ahead with eyes wide shut, running unchecked with the most weapons and theoretically at least, the most power, losing ground, losing stature, losing respect, losing allies, wasting $1–$2 billion dollars a day, spiking inflation, crashing the world economy, and leaving a HUGE MESS for the rest of us to clean up.

While the enemy it attacked, strategically patient, clear seeing, and embodying the horizontal intelligence of the circle, is quietly prevailing. The consciousness of the goddess on view for all to see. And the irony that we see this exemplified by people associated with world class misogyny is truly something to behold…

I think every good morality tale should end with a spark of uplift. I'm going to leave you with three. The first spark is one of my favorite teachings from the yogic tradition. If you're looking for a spiritual practice, this one can change your life. If we could get everyone to practice it, and include not just speech but also thought and action in its suggestion, we would see the end of war. We would see the patriarchy forever transformed. We would see our beautiful planet become the paradise for all life that is so clearly encoded in its DNA.

The Dharma of Speech

Speak only that which is kind, true, necessary,

and at the appropriate time…

The second spark is Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s 1965 song, What The World Needs Now is Love. Here’s video of the great Dionne Warwick singing it. No commentary necessary. It’s all there in the title and she sings with the only might that does make right. The might of the loving heart.

Finally, a friend sent this quote from Bruce Springsteen opening his recent show in Los Angeles. Reading it I thought, here’s the third spark, offering the perfect way to end this piece.

Good evening, Los Angeles.

The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll in dangerous times. We are here in celebration and defense of our American ideals, democracy, our Constitution, and our sacred American promise. The America I love, the America that I’ve written about for 50 years, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration.

Tonight we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unrivaled corruption, resistance over complacency, truth over lies, unity over division, and peace over war.

Thanks so much for reading this newsletter. I truly value your presence and support. Please subscribe, leave a comment, forward it to a friend. Most of all, give the Dharma of Speech a try in your daily life. And along with speaking only that which is kind, true, necessary, and at the appropriate time, you might add thinking and acting only that which is kind, true, necessary, and at the appropriate time. Not easy. Requires great discipline, attention, and love. But oh, what fruits it does deliver. Try it for an hour or a day or a week or a month. See how it feels. And if you are so moved, tell us about your experience in the comments section.

Image credit: Dreamstime.com: Irinayeryominam