The Matrix of Domination

There is one sentence in this section of the Collins excerpt that really stood out to me:

"an individual may be... simultaneously oppressor and oppressed."

I think this is a very important point.

It makes problematic any ideology that says that the culprit of any given social problem is a certain group of people.

Activists often think that the source of the problem can be easily pinned down. But the fraud of that way of thinking is obvious when the suspected group is exposed, tried, and convicted but the problem persists.

So what is the problem really? Well, maybe there are many rhizomatically structured sources of different problems. But one seemingly relevant is our attitude toward ourselves and others, or our basic beliefs about the world. For example, the belief in domination. As Collins puts it:

"This politic of domination refers to the ideological ground that they share, which is a belief in domination, and a belief in the notions of superior and inferior, which are components of all of those systems."

On some level, "notions of superior and inferior" is the basis of war in general. How to understand the prevalence of these notions? Charles Eisenstein offers his perspective:

"Western notions of story and plot have a kind of war built in to them as part of the standard three-act or five-act narrative structure, in which a conflict arises and is resolved... we in the West almost universally experience a story as something in which someone or something must be overcome. This surely colors our worldview, making 'evil'—the essence of that which must be overcome—seem quite natural a basis for the stories we construct to understand the world and its problems."

Eisenstein then goes on to explain that a prevalent attitude that values struggle and victory, along with corresponding notions about evil, contribute to the same problems that people are trying to solve if they do not recognize said deeper attitude. The answer is to see the good in others and to recognize, if on some level, we are all in this together. This in not to equate the suffering of one group with that of another, but to beg the question of unity and purpose through universal cooperation.

-Jose