Partnership Studies 5: Partnership Education, Human Nature, and Building Caring Societies

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Keywords: Riane Eisler, partnership education, human nature, caring societies, cultural transformation

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/09/11

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She received the Humanist Pioneer Award, and in conversation with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Eisler emphasized the urgent need for humanists to focus on values-based systems and the transformative power of caring economics. Drawing on neuroscience and history, she argues that peace begins at home and calls for a shift in worldview to build more equitable, sustainable, and compassionate societies rooted in connection rather than control. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade—now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). 

In this conversation, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Eisler. She critiques the roots of education’s domination—fear, hierarchy, and top-down control—and advocates for a partnership-based education that emphasizes equity, multicultural content, environmental awareness, and relational skills. Drawing on neuroscience and history, Eisler emphasizes that “peace begins at home,” advocating for a shift toward caring economics and integrated learning. Her influential works—including The Chalice and the Blade, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Tomorrow’s Children—offer a blueprint for fostering compassionate, sustainable societies.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here once again with the prolific Riane Eisler. We will be discussing education within the partnership model. The partnership studies framework, which you developed, proposes a dualistic contrast between two systems: the domination system, which is based on hierarchy, control, and fear, and the partnership system, which emphasizes mutual respect, equity, and nurturing.

In education, has the United States historically focused more on the partnership model or on the domination model?

Riane Eisler: You know the answer to that—it has been the domination model. The approach has been mainly to cram information into children’s heads. That information, to a considerable extent, serves two purposes.

First, it prepares them for the dominant workplace. Second, it maintains the stories and the language of domination.

Jacobsen: When you say that it prepares them for the dominant workforce and conditions them for further domination in educational styles, are you suggesting it is all top-down? 

Eisler: The entire system is hierarchical. In Tomorrow’s Children—my book on applying partnership principles to education—I begin by discussing three elements of the educational process: process, structure, and content. Progressive education has paid considerable attention to process, aiming to make learning more participatory for children.

Some attention has also been given to structure, such as involving children in specific decision-making processes within schools. However, content has been almost entirely ignored by so-called progressive education.

In Tomorrow’s Children, the focus is very much on content. Why? Because we have been told many stories that are either false, biased, or incomplete. These omissions prevent us from adequately addressing the challenges we face as a species.

We are not well prepared to deal with issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and the complexities of the social media landscape. Education must instead emphasize new stories that are, first, gender-balanced—because much of the old curriculum, especially history, has idealized wars and the so-called “great men” who won them. Figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte come to mind. Students were expected to memorize their names and the dates of their battles.

Including more women is important, but it is not enough to add women into a domination system—those who have managed to succeed and become visible. We must also include values and qualities traditionally labelled as “feminine.”

 I will address that later. Of course, partnership education is also environmentally sensitive.

And the content must be multicultural. There are encouraging trends moving in this direction.

So it is a truly integrated and integrative approach to education, one that prepares young people for partnership rather than domination.

Jacobsen: What would you say are the important signifiers, in terms of labels and relations, that appear at the pre-secondary, secondary, and post-secondary levels of education? In terms of hierarchies, the potential for control and fear that arises from those hierarchies which are more prominent in school systems focused on domination.

Eisler: The fear is always there—the fear of failure. The fear of one’s peers, because they are competing with you, the fear of the administration, of the teacher,  of authority figures.

We do not know our history well, but Tomorrow’s Children does address it, including the domination aspects of our past, when physical punishment in schools was routine. Fear, therefore, is one of the clearest indicators of dominator education.

Jacobsen: What about systems that produce a particular persona—say, “Mr.” or “Mrs.”—someone who operates entirely on one gear? For example, part of education should probably involve interpersonal skills. Suppose someone is grieving or emotionally activated because something has upset them, and another person responds only with argumentation and a rigid system of facts. In that case, they are not using the right approach. In such situations, care and consolation are probably more appropriate.

Eisler: Precisely. One of the proposals of partnership education is not only to change the traditional content of education—making it more gender-balanced, multicultural, and environmentally sensitive—but also to teach children relational skills.

Children in partnership education would be taught how to care: caring for themselves, caring for others, and caring for our natural environment—our Mother Earth.

Moreover, it is striking how absent this is in traditional education. Again, there are some trends toward incorporating more multiculturalism, greater gender balance, and increased environmental consciousness. However, these are often treated as add-ons rather than being fully integrated into the system.

Partnership education is not only about making curricula more gender-balanced, multicultural, and environmentally sensitive, but also about teaching children relational skills—essential for building healthy relationships. 

What I propose in Tomorrow’s Children is an education that tells a different story of human nature and evolution than the one conventionally taught. In fact, the book foreshadows much of what we now recognize as essential: emotional literacy, which you mentioned earlier. It also foreshadows telling a different story of Darwin—what I call “meaningful evolution”—rather than the distorted “dog-eat-dog” story. Of course, dogs do not eat dogs, but that is how evolution has often been misinterpreted.

Jacobsen: Was it Kropotkin who argued that cooperation is a factor in evolution?

Eisler: It was Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902). Kropotkin was an anarchist—in the proper sense of the word, meaning self-governance, rather than chaos. He was indeed remarkable. Moreover, yes, thinkers like him, who recognized the importance of cooperation, should be included in education—but they are not.

Jacobsen: This may not influence the outcome of research itself. If research is done correctly, the results will be what they are. However, in terms of the questions asked and the research programs funded and emphasized, education appears to play a significant role. Specific perspectives dominate the intellectual and research landscape. Has this affected how human nature is represented in the evidence?

Eisler: Yes. If you ask the so-called “common person” what human nature is, many will respond with the language of sin—original sin—or with the reductionist story of “selfish genes.” Of course, we naturally care more for those who are closest to us. However, consider societies that have progressed further toward the partnership model: they have more caring policies, such as paid parental leave, universal healthcare, and support systems for families.

In these nations, like Finland, Sweden, and Norway, women hold approximately 40 to 50 percent of parliamentary seats, and female heads of state are not uncommon. These societies also invest a greater proportion of their GDP than most others in supporting people through NGOs worldwide—people to whom they are not regionally or genetically related.

There is clearly something wrong with the conventional view of human nature as inherently flawed. Sociobiologists popularized the idea that selfishness and aggression are dominant traits, but this view distorts reality. Killing one’s own mother, for example, is extraordinarily rare—the Menendez case is the exception, not the rule.The stories of selfishness and domination have been popularized and institutionalized, shaping education, culture, and policy in ways that obscure the whole reality of our human capacity for care, empathy, and cooperation.

These distorted stories about human nature have been accepted even in science because they maintain a domination system that is ultimately based on fear. It is a fear of those in power—whether a parent, a religious authority, or a political leader. Consider some of the so-called Christian parenting guides, which literally teach that you “spoil the child if you spare the rod.” They claim that even an eighteen-month-old baby must be forced to sit absolutely still in a high chair because what the child must learn is that the parent’s will is law.

If that is not preparation for fitting into a top-down system, I do not know what is. It begins with fearing God, then fearing the authoritarian leader of the state, and, of course, fearing the parent. This indoctrination begins very early. Education, as I point out in Tomorrow’s Children, begins long before formal schooling.

We have not paid enough attention to what neuroscience tells us. We are bombarded with data, but we often fail to connect the dots. What neuroscience makes clear is that what children observe or experience—especially in their earliest years—literally shapes the architecture of their brains. It influences how we feel, think, act, and even how we vote as adults.

Now, the good news is that we can change. Humans are an extraordinarily flexible species. However, as we know, meaningful change often takes time. Those who have undergone psychoanalysis, for example, will tell you that it requires significant effort and time to reprogram ourselves, if you will. So why not start early?

Fortunately, there has been a trend among pediatricians, early childhood educators, and Montessori practitioners to emphasize the importance of the first years of life. However, this work must continue. Parenting, dating, and numerous aspects of daily life require strong relational skills. These skills are shaped by whether relationships are oriented toward domination or toward partnership. Of course, it is always a matter of degree—where on the continuum a society or family falls.

Dominator societies tend to be very warlike. They devote enormous resources to military budgets—often euphemistically labelled “defence.”

Jacobsen: Where does partnership education emphasize peace? Not necessarily in the sense of advocating war or not, but in cultivating values that make war less appealing.

Eisler: Everywhere, to put it bluntly. Partnership education is not centered on memorizing the dates of wars or the names of the men who won or lost them. Instead, it fosters a more humane approach to learning. It is education for partnership rather than education for domination.

 The Center for Partnership Systems is hosting a virtual summit called ‘Peace Begins at Home,’ which connects the dots—showing what neuroscience reveals: that it is in our homes where we first learn how to relate, through what we observe and what we experience. Unless we encounter partnership models along the way, we may never realize that partnership is even a possibility.

It is also important to learn about our prehistoric past, thousands of years ago, when societies were oriented more toward partnership than domination—particularly during the early Neolithic, the first agrarian age. However, history has often been taught as if it only consists of the last five to ten thousand years, which marked the violent shift toward domination.

For example, the Yamnaya people—well documented in archaeology and genetics—introduced warfare and practices that were far from peaceful. DNA studies show that when they migrated into Europe, they killed or displaced the local male populations. The Yamnaya genetic markers largely replaced those of the earlier inhabitants, such as in what archaeologist Marija Gimbutas called “Old Europe.”

We have also inherited our languages through this shift in domination. Nearly all European languages are Indo-European. Only a few exceptions remain—such as Basque, spoken in a small region of the Pyrenees between Spain and France, which is not an Indo-European language. It is no coincidence that the Mondragón cooperatives emerged in this region, where matrilineal and matrifocal traditions endured. However, these were not matriarchies. 

The difference between matriarchy and patriarchy is only a matter of who controls. The genuine alternative to patriarchy is partnership.

In Tomorrow’s Children, I emphasize that partnership education also humanizes men. This is just as important as making women visible. It involves transforming rigid gender stereotypes for everyone.

I want to provide you with some examples. For instance, in developing the curriculum— and my book Tomorrow’s Children includes many lesson plans, most aimed at higher grades but adaptable for younger students—we challenge the conventional distinction between “art,” meaning what hangs in museums, and so-called “crafts,” such as tapestries, rugs, and weaving, is shown to be part of male-dominance. Traditionally, it was primarily women who created these,  so it is no coincidence that such forms have been marginalized.

I love some of the art that hangs in museums, but let us face it, much of it idealizes domination. In Tomorrow’s Children, I include a lesson plan that highlights this distinction and showcases women artists, such as African weavers and pottery makers. These are not “mere crafts”—they are art. So it is also multicultural.

We also discuss concepts such as mass. It is often difficult for children to relate to such abstract ideas, especially children who have not been included in the standard curriculum—indigenous children, for example. However, so-called “indigenous societies” understood mass in profound ways. They constructed monuments aligned with the solstices, so that at specific times of year the sun would shine through with precision. However, we have acted as though Western science is the only form of knowledge on the planet.

In Tomorrow’s Children, I cite the historian of science David Noble, who wrote A World Without Women. Consider this: Western science emerged from a clerical, all-male, misogynist culture, shaped in large part by the rediscovery of ancient Greek texts. However, even  Athens was already a mix—an uneasy blend of partnership and domination. It leaned heavily toward male dominance. Remember, the much-praised Athenian democracy excluded all women, all enslaved people (male and female), and all men who did not own property. Aristotle himself argued that women were inferior by nature.

So democracy in Athens was a peculiar adaptation of the concept. Moreover, as historian Robert Flacelière demonstrates in Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles [sometimes cited as The Daily Life of the Greeks], the head of household had the legal right to decide whether a newborn would live. If a father deemed a child unwanted, the infant could be exposed, left outside to die. Some were “rescued” and enslaved; others perished.

This illustrates how deeply ingrained male power and fear were—not only in public life but also in the household. The Old Testament echoes this as well: Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command is another example of male power, fear, and terror as normalized cultural elements.

As I point out in Tomorrow’s Children, and in my best-known book, The Chalice and the Blade, the Athenians even made it compulsory for everyone in society to watch plays that inculcated domination as the only viable model for society. However, within these same traditions, playwrights such as Aristophanes wrote of women’s peace movements in Athens. Is that not remarkable? However, we rarely connect such examples with our deeper prehistory.

Tomorrow’s Children was ahead of its time in drawing out these connections—between what we teach, the stories we tell, and the social systems we perpetuate. Tomorrow’s Children includes many examples drawn from across the humanities. Too often, when we think of the humanities, we imagine old white men from Western culture. However, that is not the humanities. Humanity is much broader and richer than that.

Some of the United Nations declarations on women and children should be part of our conception of the humanities. We need a way of including all of humanity, not just men, not just women. Domination systems rely on rigid gender stereotypes precisely so that one can be ranked above the other, while pretending that no one exists in between. However, throughout history and prehistory, there have always been people who did not fit neatly into these categories.

There are many such examples. So the goal is not to erase the positive aspects of American history, but to teach both the admirable and the terrible. For instance, we must include slavery and conquest. Christopher Columbus, once venerated, is now increasingly recognized in a more critical light. In Tomorrow’s Children, I use many illustrations and cartoons to help children think about these issues. One cartoon I particularly like shows conquistadors arriving on shore and proclaiming, “We discovered you,” while the indigenous people respond, “What do you mean? We discovered you arriving here.” It all depends on your paradigm, your worldview.

This does not mean we ignore the promising developments of the past centuries, especially the last three hundred years. However, we must connect the dots: every progressive social movement has challenged  a tradition of domination. Think about it.

The Enlightenment’s “rights of man” movement challenged the notion that kings had a divinely ordained right to rule over their subjects. The women’s movement challenged the divinely ordained right of men to rule over women and children within their homes. The abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, and today’s Black Lives Matter movement have all challenged the notion of a “superior race” ruling over an “inferior” one. The environmental movement challenges humanity’s supposed right to dominate nature.

That is what Tomorrow’s Children presents: that children—and humanity—do not have a viable future if the domination system continues to shape our policies and our attitudes. Between nuclear weapons and climate change, domination threatens to bring us to evolutionary collapse. We must shift toward partnership.

Jacobsen: Dominator models often produce bluster—a kind of defence mechanism of saving face when exposed for lying or being wrong. We see this in many prominent cases, including among tech industry leaders. What role does this have in reducing a society’s ability to make course corrections?

Eisler: 

  You know the answer: distraction. Marketing and overconsumption also serve as powerful distractions. Marketing for overconsumption has become a highly effective art form, and it is highly rewarded.

So, really, we are back to the four cornerstones: childhood and family, gender, economics, and story and language. So that children can have a future, we must recognize the barriers.

Gender, of course, is not only a woman’s issue but an organizing principle for families and for economic systems. The so-called “feminine” is consistently devalued. There is always money for weapons, but somehow there is never enough money for feeding and caring for children, for caregiving in general.

Our economic system rewards domination rather than care. And then there is story and language. Tomorrow’s Children addresses all of these—indeed, even before I formally articulated the framework of the four cornerstones, the book already grappled with them.

If we do not change education, we will continue to use it as an instrument to maintain domination. Education must instead become an instrument for accelerating the shift toward partnership. 

Not an idealized, perfect partnership—but certainly something better than the horrendous inequalities we now see worldwide, as regression toward authoritarianism and domination in all spheres, including the family, childhood, and gender, continues.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Riane. 

Eisler: Then we have more to look forward to. Take care of yourself, my friend.

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Partnership Studies 2: Human Prehistory

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/07/13

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She received the Humanist Pioneer Award, and in conversation with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Eisler emphasized the urgent need for humanists to focus on values-based systems and the transformative power of caring economics. Drawing on neuroscience and history, she argues that peace begins at home and calls for a shift in worldview to build more equitable, sustainable, and compassionate societies rooted in connection rather than control. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade—now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). Eisler examines the historical and cultural dynamics of partnership versus domination systems, highlighting how these models influence societies, gender roles, and technological development. Drawing on archaeological evidence, such as Marija Gimbutas’s work and DNA studies, she contrasts egalitarian prehistory with later hierarchical civilizations like ancient Athens. Eisler critiques modern structures that perpetuate violence, inequality, and trauma—often beginning in the home. She emphasizes the importance of whole-system thinking and highlights movements that have challenged domination throughout history. The core message is that peace and human flourishing depend on shifting from a culture of domination to one of partnership, starting with the family and education.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy. It is partnership. This is what we are increasingly learning from the study of prehistoric societies: that we need to connect the dots. We must assemble the larger picture. If a narrative is repeated often enough, it becomes more readily accessible to the mind. However, repetition does not distinguish between truth and falsehood. So, what are the myths we have been told about human prehistory—especially regarding relationships and gender roles? Is there a political utility to these myths? Or are they simply the result of mistaken interpretations? I think those are two essential questions.

Riane Eisler: These interpretations are indeed mistaken, but they serve a function: to sustain what I describe as a domination system. Consider the classic “caveman” cartoon: in one hand, the man holds a club—a weapon—and with the other, he drags a woman by the hair.

What message does this cartoon send—especially when shown to children long before their critical faculties have developed? It normalizes a worldview based on fear and violence (the club) and rigid male dominance enforced through violence, coercion. and cultural indoctrination. This is where the myth-making comes into play. It suggests that domination is natural and inevitable—that it has always been this way and always must be. However, the evidence is showing that this is not true.

For example, consider the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in present-day Turkey, which was inhabited from approximately 7100 BCE to 5700 BCE. Ian Hodder, a prominent Stanford archaeologist who directed excavations there for decades, has emphasized in multiple publications that the community exhibited signs of gender egalitarianism. In particular, grave goods, domestic architecture, and burial treatments do not show significant differentiation between males and females. In his article for Scientific American, Hodder argued that being born male or female in Çatalhöyük did not appear to determine social status.

Despite this, recent books and studies often omit these gender-related findings. Why? Because they lack the appropriate interpretive frame—the contrast between domination systems and partnership systems.

Suppose we fail to include childhood, family, and gender in our reconstructions of prehistory. In that case, we are left with an incomplete—indeed, distorted—picture. One might even call it a neutered prehistory because it leaves out fundamental aspects of human identity and relationships. Ironically, the caveman cartoon portrays these elements—especially gender relations—quite explicitly. However, modern archaeological narratives often avoid them. 

Jacobsen: You are right about that. However, you indeed mentioned gender in the caveman cartoon. And then there are the kinds of biblical mythologies, like Adam and Eve, or popular North American cartoons where Adam has a leaf over his groin and Eve over her breasts. It is very telling. 

Eisler: In my book on education, Tomorrow’s Children, a cartoon illustrates thinking outside the box. More and more people are beginning to do so—but often only in fragments, without applying the broader framework of partnership and domination. 

The cartoon I reference depicts Spanish conquistadors emerging from the water. At the same time, a Native American stands on the shore and says, “What do you mean you found us? We found you coming out of the water.” That cartoon flips the colonial narrative. Indeed, we are beginning to reinterpret that history. Columbus’ actions included the extermination of Indigenous peoples—some of which was deliberate and premeditated. However, part of it also resulted from the spread of contagious diseases to which Native Americans had no immunity.

We are reevaluating the Columbus story, and he is no longer widely regarded as a hero in the same uncritical manner. However, the reinterpretation is happening in bits and pieces, and it has not yet been integrated into a larger framework. That is the key: we need to connect the dots and understand the overarching systems at play.

Jacobsen: Why are the dominant myths about human prehistory such a patchwork rather than being understood systematically—if I hear you correctly?

Eisler: Yes, that is right. We rarely critically examine dioramas in museums, for example. They overwhelmingly depict men—as if women, who give life, did not exist.

Jacobsen: My mother would have something to say about that.

Eisler: What would she say?

Jacobsen: That they are missing the women—and the children.

Eisler: Those gaps are mirrored in our familiar social categories: right and left, religious and secular, Eastern and Western, Northern and Southern, capitalist and socialist. What is missing? Women and children—the majority of humanity. There is something fundamentally wrong with that picture.

Jacobsen: You often reference different spectra—capitalist/communist, secular/religious, and so on. Are there some categories that, for you, do not work well as binary opposites or antipodes?

Eisler: There are binaries in nature… There is hot and cold, light and dark—but it is always a matter of degree. So, even in the binary of domination and partnership, we have to consider it as a spectrum. Societies orient along that continuum to varying degrees. Right now, we are experiencing a regression—a marked shift toward the domination system. We see this clearly in the renewed emphasis on rigid gender roles.

These roles leave no room for anything in between, even though people have always existed outside binary norms. How that variance is treated depends on the cultural context. However, returning to prehistory—I think we have not been asking the right questions. Strangely, I began doing so when I was a child. I remember reading in the Bible that “henceforth, woman shall be subordinate to man,” and I wondered: What was it like before the henceforth?

Jacobsen: That is a powerful question. You were asking it earlier.

Eisler: Yes—and no one wanted to talk about it. I also wondered why a woman would take advice from a snake. We generally do not do that. [Laughing] But it was not until I began my whole-systems research—which includes both history and prehistory—that I came to see that what came before the “henceforth” was a more partnership-oriented model of society. I also learned that the snake was even in historic times still associated with oracular prophecy; think of the Oracle of Delphi: it was a priestess, a “pythoness” working with pythons, with snakes. Or think of the figurines from Crete of women, priestesses in an oracular trance with snakes coiled around their arms. So in searching for wisdom, Eve would turn to a snake! We have to connect the dots! And this requires a whole-systems study of our history, including our prehistory and its partnership rather than domination direction.

However, we are not taught history this way. We are taught history through the lens of conquest—winners and losers, wars and battles. Memorizing the dates of all these conflicts becomes the focus.

Jacobsen: Do you see definite ebbs and flows—regionally or even globally—between the domination model and the partnership model? You mentioned that we are currently in a regression, but there was also a long period of progression toward partnership values. What is your perspective on the longer historical arc of this tension?

Eisler: The real tipping point in this tension did not come until around 3000 BCE, and we know this now from genetic studies. During the Indo-European invasions, a dramatic shift occurred in the DNA record—most notably, a near-total replacement of male DNA in certain regions. This indicates violent conquest.

That is when domination took hold. I have written about this, and my work also incorporates technological change. I have an article forthcoming in a book on achieving peace, edited by my co-author, anthropologist Douglas Fry, of Nurturing Our Humanity. In it, I argue that we must look not only at major technological phases—such as the transition from foraging to farming—but also at overlooked transitions, like the shift from foraging to herding.

This shift is significant because herding cultures developed in increasingly arid regions of the world where climate change has degraded pasturelands. These conditions led to more competitive, often violent, social systems—domination-oriented cultures. Herders, seeking new territory, invaded more settled farming communities. Eventually, some of these herders, such as the Yamnaya, adopted agriculture themselves—but they carried with them the domination model.

Jacobsen: So, climate stress, migration, and technological shifts all helped push societies along the spectrum of domination?

Eisler: We need to see these factors in an integrated way—not just as isolated historical phases, but as interconnected elements that shaped the systems we still live with today. Again, we only know this in bits and pieces. To connect the dots, you need whole-systems analysis.

You can now see the shift very clearly in recent DNA studies. Still, decades ago, archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, an expert in Indo-European studies, had already identified it. She described the transformation quite accurately, at least in what she referred to as the Balkans and “Old Europe,” where a domination  society gradually supplanted a partnership-oriented civilization.

Some argue that force inevitably prevails. Which is actually not true, as we know, nonviolent movements have been very successful, as in India and Gandhi, for example. In any case, the problem with that reasoning is that we now stand at a unique moment in technological development. We have not only communication and transportation technologies that connect us but also technologies of destruction—biological warfare, nuclear weapons—that could annihilate us all in minutes.

So, domination and force are no longer adaptive, if they ever were, considering all the suffering and trauma they cause. Today they are dangerous—existentially so.

Jacobsen: Are there phases in prehistory—not necessarily tied to specific technologies—where we can track dominator and partnership systems in the same way that genetic evidence now allows us to trace population shifts, like with the Yamnaya?

Eisler: Yes. When the Yamnaya migrated into Europe, a dramatic rupture occurred. The destruction of earlier pottery traditions marked the end of older, more partnership-oriented cultures. There was a regression to cruder, less refined technology and social organization. Over time, the invaders absorbed and co-opted more advanced technologies, but now under male-dominated, hierarchical, violent  systems—domination systems.

Now, let me be very clear: This is not about blaming men. There is nothing inherently wrong with men. What is deeply wrong is the domination system, which continues to push us toward an evolutionary dead end.

Men are often the ones forced to give their lives—because someone at the top wants more territory, more power. Look at Putin. However, it is not just a geopolitical issue. Men are also promised a kind of “payoff.” In exchange for loyalty to the domination social and economic hierarchy, they are encouraged to dominate women and children—within what the domination model treats as their “castle,” the militarized metaphor of the home. 

We are seeing that pattern re-emerge in our current regression. There are other inflection points worth noting—points that we often overlook in our current educational and social frameworks. I believe that over the long term, the pen has been far more potent than the sword. Stories shape minds. That brings us right back to the myths.

Take the myths that blame Eve—or Pandora—for all of humanity’s suffering. It is absurd, truly. However, we have inherited these narratives. Myths that justify the domination of women, that treat women as property, as sexual objects, or simply as vessels for reproduction. That is what lies beneath many persistent gender stereotypes: the effort to reduce women to things, to tools.

Of course, women have been deeply traumatized by this. However, so have men. Because under dominator systems, men are taught to suppress much of their humanity. They are socialized into a narrow script, one that rewards dominance, aggression, and emotional repression. This is not a sustainable model for any of us.

I remember being in a park years ago and hearing a child wailing—crying—and then a man’s voice saying, “I am going to beat you until you stop crying. Boys do not cry.” That is the old “masculine” gender stereotype. It illustrates how these roles are enforced, often through violence and emotional repression. However, let us discuss how technology has shaped civilization—how, in some cases, it has fundamentally altered both partnership and domination systems.

Jacobsen: What about the cases where technological advancement caused major civilizational shifts—not just in external structures but also in social relations?

Eisler: Technology itself is values-neutral. What matters is how it is used. Take AI, for example—it all depends on how it is programmed. Yes, we should be concerned about becoming overly dependent on AI. But the real issue is what we are programming it for. If AI is programmed for domination, then yes, we should be highly concerned. However, if it is programmed for partnership—and it can be—it could be transformative. Unfortunately, most mainstream AI draws heavily from social media data, which reflects societies still shaped by systems of domination.

Again, that is not because people are bad. This is not about blame or shame. It is about recognizing that domination systems are trauma factories. They misallocate resources. In domination-based economies, there is often money for weapons and wars—but rarely for children, caregiving, or community well-being.

Like what we are seeing in the United States now—cutting social programs while military budgets continue to grow.  Speaking as a Holocaust survivor, let me be clear: I am not advocating for unilateral disarmament. That would be dangerous in a world where regimes such as those in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Russia, China, and North Korea continue to operate within highly domination-oriented frameworks.

But we must recognize how distorted our priorities have become. These are not the priorities of most people. However, people have been so traumatized, so thoroughly conditioned, that they accept them.

Jacobsen: What are some practices from prehistory that reflect partnership versus domination models?

Eisler: A great example is alloparenting—a practice observed still today among many foraging societies, where caregiving is shared across the group. It means that the entire community—men, women, and older children—participates in raising the young.

The bond with the biological mother remains essential, of course, but the responsibility and the safety net extend beyond her. That kind of distributed caregiving system is a hallmark of partnership societies.

However, the bond—and the sense of security—comes from being surrounded by caring adults and older individuals. We see a shift from that model in societies like ancient Athens, which we have so often idealized. Athens was a very uneasy mix of partnership and domination.In reality, the vast majority of the population in Athens was disenfranchised. Women, and both male and female slaves, were not allowed to vote. Beyond that, the male head of household held the legal right to “expose” any infant he did not want to raise—essentially abandoning the child to die. However, the term was a linguistic softening.

“Good women” were confined to the women’s quarters and deprived of education. Socrates did highlight some of this, but only in fragments. He never  connected these issues to the larger framework of domination that permeated Athenian society.

In my book, Sacred Pleasure, I include a chapter titled “The Reign of the Phallus,” which focuses on ancient Athens. It was not a society where most women had autonomy or education. The exceptions were women viewed as borderline courtesans—such as the hetairai—who had access to learning. In ancient Rome, poets like Ovid celebrated romantic partnerships, reflecting the human yearning for connection. However, that longing persisted despite domination systems, not because of them.

Domination systems systematically suppress empathy. They narrow our evolved capacity for compassion to the in-group only. Those outside the in-group—whether defined by gender, race, class, or tribe—are excluded. Often, the first “out-group” is female humanity.

Jacobsen: We have just about three minutes left. What do you consider the defining distinction between prehistory and recorded history?

Eisler: In essence, prehistory was characterized mainly by partnership-oriented societies. However, as domination systems emerged, we saw both resistance to change and full regressions into rigid domination hierarchies.

Remarkably, it is only in the last 300 years that we see mass movements directly challenging domination systems:

– The so-called “rights of man” contesting the divinely ordained right of kings.

– The abolitionist movement challenged the belief in the superiority of one race over another.

– The feminist movement questioned the supposed divine right of men to rule over women and children in the home.

– And the environmental movement challenges man’s conquest and domination over nature.

As I wrote in The Chalice and the Blade, these are all examples of a resurgence in partnership. However, today, we stand at a crossroads. The real struggle is not between right and left, or secular and religious, or East and West. Those are distractions.

The fundamental battle is between the partnership model and the domination model. We must recognize this, or we will remain caught in a cycle of emergency response—constantly putting out fires caused by domination systems—without ever addressing the deeper structural causes.

That is why our Summit, Peace Begins at Home, emphasizes strategy, not just tactics. Our core principle is that peace starts at home. That is foundational.

However, many prominent figures—even those who speak passionately about war, terrorism, and peace—do not address family violence. That is where the trauma begins.

Jacobsen: Riane, thank you again for your time today. I appreciate it.

Eisler: Yes, we covered much ground today—but that is good.

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