For new ideas to be translated into new realities requires not only clarity of vision but also the opportunity to change old realities.

When the status and power of women is greater so also is the nation’s general quality of life; when they are lower, so is the quality of life for all.

This notion that man can, and should, have absolute dominion over the "chaotic" powers of nature and woman...is what ultimately lies behind man's famous "conquest of nature" - a conquest that is today puncturing holes in the earth's ozone layer, destroying our forests, polluting our air and water, and increasingly threatening the welfare, and even survival, of thousands of living species, including our own.

For new ideas to be translated into new realities requires not only clarity of vision but also the opportunity to change old realities.

[On the ancient Venus figurines:] If the central religious figure was a woman giving birth and not, as in our time, a man dying on a cross, it would not be unreasonable to infer that life and the love of life - rather than death and the fear of death - were dominant in society as well as art.

We are rapidly moving into the post-industrial age, when we must redefine what is "productive" work, as more and more jobs are being replaced by automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

If we look at the last decades, we see that the US rightist-fundamentalist alliance demonized partnership-oriented families and painted women's rights as a threat to "tradition" - which of course it is to traditions of domination. These people had an integrated political agenda that recognizes that a "traditional" authoritarian, male dominated, punitive family is foundational to an authoritarian, male dominated, punitive politics. We can see this connection in sharp relief in brutal top-down regimes, be they secular like Nazi Germany or religious like ISIS in the Middle East.