The first cycle begins with a dialogue between the sad wizard, a teary eyed Easter Island head, and wisdom, the rusty scale representing science
Wizard: Why is the world after all my stories not living happily?
Wisdom: Do not despair. The secrets to happiness are in all stories, but instead of believing the stories like the fanatics do, be a scientist and examine what is universal in all stories, their plot; there you will see the wisdom of the scientific conflict resolution process.
The Conflict: A fair lady is surrounded by three dragons presenting conflict as the state of passivity, antagonism, and alienation.
Two marble sculptures by Bill Harby, ‘the Kiss and the Embrace’, illustrating resolution as the formal counterparts: mastery, cooperation and mutual respect.
Two sculptures by Bill Harby, ‘the Kiss and the Embrace’, illustrating resolution as the formal counterparts: mastery, cooperation and mutual respect.
By Suzan Benton, ‘Don Quixote and Dulcinea’, illustrating resolution as the formal counterparts: mastery, cooperation and mutual respect.
The Sphynx, Response: The Discovery of Mastery. The Homeric Epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, present patriarchy domesticating matriarchy’s powerful women. Greece discovered mastery of men over women as the way of resolving domestic conflicts. Helen of Troy, presented as a Sphinx, ‘The fight and flight woman’, the woman who does not resolve conflicts, was a matriarch, who had ten lovers. Greek men confronted her and demanded that she choose one among them. She chose Menelaus of Sparta. But then she flew the coop with Paris of Troy. The Iliad is about 1000 ships of Greek men fighting a war to capture Helen of Troy, the run-away wife. The Odyssey is about a man fighting single handedly the power of women. Characteristically he had his sailors bind him on the mast of their boat, so he can listen to the sirens without yielding to temptation, their music and their magic.
Response: The Discovery of Mastery.
Penelope is the heroine of the second Homeric Epic, the Odyssey because she resisted the advances of multiple suitors. The Greek family as portrayed on Olympus was conflicted as men like Zeus pursued women, which upset his wife Hera. Greek tragedies have as titles the names of women.
STRESS: CRUELTY OF MATRIARCHY IN MEXICO
Quatlique is an unapproachable monster: Her hands have the talons of an eagle. She wears a necklace of severed hands, hearts, and skulls. Her skirt is woven with snakes. Her feet are talons. She requires life sacrifices to postpone the impending fifth destruction of the universe as predicted in the Aztec Calendar.
ANXIETY: The Discovery of Cooperation Between Men & Women by Men Controlling Desires.
The Upanishads present the Moon Goddess, the sacred cows, Kali, as powerful women commanding respect and awe. Shiva is portrayed stepping on a demon, his inner child, the one that gets us in trouble with selfish desires; this image defines cooperation, the second principle of conflict resolution. Man has become a cog on the wheel of fortune instead of being the total wheel as he was in Greece.
DEFENSE: Anxiety is Countered by Action as a Role Reversal Between Men & Women in a Cooperative Culture.
Defense is presented as men emerging to power, while women are portrayed as losing power in the cultures of China and Japan. Men grew to become the fire breathing dragons and Sun-gods. Women are disabled in their mobility in China, while in Japan, they were given roles of subservience to men as diminutive compliant geishas.
Buddhism is the religion of cooperation. Its four noble truths are: Life is pain, desire increases pain; cessation of desire ends pain; to avoid desire follow the eightfold path of enlightenment, as meditation and moderation.
Opposition: Cooperation versus antagonism.
Reciprocity: Passivity versus activity.
Correlation: Alienation versus mutual respect.
Reversal: The Gilgamish Epic presents mutual respect, Gilgamesh finding friendship with a father figure, Enkidu, the mythical superman. Mesopotamia presents the failed quest for the third principle of conflict resolution, mutual respect.
COMPROMISE: The Distrust of Seductresses Inspire Adam and Eve.
The Enkidu Gilgamish relationship inspired the biblical Father Son Covenant, a relationship of mutual respect between fathers and sons, an alliance that diminished women’s political power. Men could have more than one wife. Abraham continued Gilgamish’s battle reducing women’s power by taking a hammer against his father’s beautiful sculptures considering them as pagan idols in conflict with reverence of the One God. Abraham focused on the new order, the process, Genesis the creation story, symbolized by a wheel, the periodic or cyclic phenomenon of the creation. This process has the characteristics of the creative process, the act of divine intervention.
The Abrahamic women were happy in their compliance but they could fight for their rights. Hagar escaped the threat of immolation with Ishmael in the desert. She is the woman as a Camel and her son, hostile to his sibling, while Sarah deferred to Abraham, a choice that killed her; while Abraham was in the process of staging the ultimate sacrifice, Sarah passed away.
Virgin Mary sacrificed her sexuality and her son for the love of God. This Messianic woman is an angel compared to Quatlique, the monster woman, who in the beginning of the trail seeks human live sacrifices. The cycle of the epics of the Goddess completes the transformation of conflicts between men and women as women surrender the power over their sexuality, and over their children, sacrificing their political role in that society.
Bill Harby arranged three groups of marble rocks and a single head stone, all with mirrors on one aspect of the massive stones. I interpret them as illustrating the three acts structure of the Conflict Resolution Process culminating to the single stone as the resolution. The mirrors symbolize the self-reflexiveness of the creative process. I call this sculpture Genesis, and its Greek equivalent, the Teleion Holon Greek for the Perfect Universe.