Page 60 - ECOlogic Book

death penalty, and to respond more to groups previously denied equal
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access.”

Not surprisingly, women are more often concerned with the home. Perhaps
this is the reason women are so often in the forefront of environmental
issues, since even the word, “ecology” is derived from the Greek word,
“Oikos”, which means “home”. While there certainly are notable exceptions
(Al Gore, for example), women are often the ones who are pushing for
environmental legislation and who head up citizen’s action groups. I think it
goes back to women being the guardians of life while men tend to be the
guardians of turf.

I want to say a feminine vote is a green vote, even though I know this is a
dangerous generalization. A “feminine” vote doesn’t necessarily mean
voting for a woman, though all other things being equal, it wouldn’t be a bad
choice. I’m talking about an attitude toward the world, or rather with the
world, one which is more ecological and less technological. This attitude is
woven into our language in interesting ways. “The Latin word ‘natura’, from
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which the word, ‘nature’ is derived, literally means ‘birth’”. This direct
reference to the mothering process reveals a deep connection in the human
mind between the natural world and the feminine principle.

Rupert Sheldrake feels that the mechanistic view of science is giving way to
a more organismic one. He says, “Personal intuitive experience of nature
can no longer be kept in some sealed compartment of private life, dismissed
as merely subjective, for they may indeed be revelations of living nature
herself, just as they seem to be at the time. Mythic, animistic, and religious
ways of thinking can no longer be kept at bay. Nothing less than a
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revolution is at hand.”

He links this revolution to the return of the feminine archetype, and suggests
that the “archaic feminine archetypes . . . may gain rather than lose power
when they work below the surface of conscious thought.”
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73 Berman, Laura, “Why Women are Winning,” June 7, 1992 Detroit News.

74 Sheldrake, Rupert, the Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God, (Bantam Books, New York,
N.Y., 1991).

75 IBID., P. 75.

76 IBID., P. 74.

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