I LOVE this from Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on the patriarchy, hierarchy, vocation, etc.:
"To engage in the integration of sexuality with your individual life is a series of sacrifices. So, for example, if you get married, it is a sacrifice of all other possibilities. And to have a child is the sacrifice of all the things that you could have done otherwise than to have that child. But must again say “that is a sacrifice, and there is a loss, but what you gain as a consequence is of immeasurable significance in contrast to the loss!”
Meaning is to be found in responsibility. Meaning isn’t happiness, and it isn’t self-esteem, and it isn’t momentary pleasure, it is the bearing of a sacrificial burden, and that actually works to enrich and ennoble your life in ways that make the tragic element of it tolerable, and to keep you from bitterness.
Things that are put forth as subjugation, like the subjugation of the woman to the catastrophe of birth (or even the indignity of patriarchal union) is all of a sudden something that you can take on as an aspirational goal rather than something that is a mere imposition on your moment to moment freedom.
Now, when I say I don’t believe in the idea of the patriarchy, it is met with stunned disbelief. It’s like “Well, what do you MEAN you don’t believe in the tyrannical patriarchy? EVERYONE knows that’s true.” But here’s their hypothesis: throughout history, the fundamental relationship between men and women is one of parasitism and exploitation, and that’s it, I guess, until 1960 with the publication of “The Feminine Mystique” and that’s the entire course of human history.
It seems to me, though, that the appropriate story is that men and women labored mightily under their terrible constraints for uncounted centuries, cooperating together, by and large, to build some modicum of security and freedom and stability so that they could raise children and have a somewhat harmonious and productive life. And all of a sudden it has become not only questionable to put forth that as a proposition, but somehow tyrannical just for positing it as a reality."
Here the whole podcast here: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/episode-63/
I'm glad someone is calling out the Marxist dichotomies of our day. Modern progressivism only gives us a dichotomy of persecutor vs. persecutee, white vs. black, man vs. woman, where the only way to make things right is for those without power to grab power, while those with power are eternally doing penance but never receiving absolution. Paul's words in Galatians 3 should motivate us to reject these dichotomies, because in Christ we are truly made members of His body, and need not cling to a dogged insistence of establishing the superiority of our own gender, our own nationality, or our own race up against its counterpart.
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