Partnership Studies 7: Peace, Violence, and the Domination–Partnership Model

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/09/19

 Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She received the Humanist Pioneer Award, and in conversation with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Eisler emphasized the urgent need for humanists to focus on values-based systems and the transformative power of caring economics. Drawing on neuroscience and history, she argues that peace begins at home and calls for a shift in worldview to build more equitable, sustainable, and compassionate societies rooted in connection rather than control. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade—now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). 

In this dialogue, Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Eisler on peace, violence, and the domination–partnership social model. Eisler argues that large-scale war is not inevitable but a symptom of domination systems that reward violence and hierarchy. Partnership systems, by contrast, prioritize caring, equality, and sustainable relations with self, others, and the Earth. She stresses the importance of early childhood experiences, gender equality, economic valuation of care work, and cultural narratives in shaping societies. In an era of nuclear weapons and climate crisis, Eisler insists that moving toward partnership is not just moral but essential for survival.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We are here for a partnership study series with Riane Eisler, a scholar who developed the domination–partnership social model and founded the Center for Partnership Systems. Thank you for joining me again. A big question: What is peace? What is violence? You’ve often said nature presents dichotomies as opposites. Should we define peace and violence as opposites? And if so, should they be described in relation to each other?

Riane Eisler: We commonly think of peace as merely an interval between wars—as if war were inevitable. Yet archaeological and historical evidence shows that while interpersonal violence is ancient, the scale and organization of warfare increased markedly with settled agriculture, social stratification, and the rise of states. In other words, large-scale, organized war is not a timeless human constant; it intensified under particular social conditions.

Treating war as “inevitable” serves systems that maintain control through superior force. Organized violence has long been used to dominate other nations and groups—and even to control one’s own population. So there is a distinction, but also a connection, between social systems that normalize the use of violence, fear, and pain and the persistence of war over peace.

Jacobsen: Over several millennia, you describe an ebb and flow between domination and partnership systems. You’ve suggested two broad phases of violence: pre-industrial and post-industrial, with mechanization making wars more deadly. Is that a useful distinction, or is war simply war?

Eisler: It’s useful. War as an instrument of control through superior force is a symptom of domination systems. When societies reward such behaviour, technological advances—from metallurgy to industrial manufacturing to digital targeting—tend to amplify harm. If incentives were aligned with partnership values, we would invest more in nonviolent conflict resolution rather than in escalating the capacity to inflict suffering.

Jacobsen: What about subterfuge, coercion, and torture as elements of war?

Eisler: They’re part of the same control toolkit. And now, in a nuclear, post-industrial era—under climate stress and with weapons capable of mass destruction—we have to view war through a survival lens. The risk is not only state-to-state conflict but also catastrophic decisions by actors driven by absolutist ideologies, sometimes couched in religious terms. Humanity now wields destructive power once imagined as belonging only to a “father-god,” which makes cultivating partnership systems not just preferable, but necessary.

In most world religions, ultimate power was once attributed to the divine—the power of destruction. Humanity now holds that power. This means we have to ask what is truly adaptable from a realistic perspective. In the age of nuclear weapons, climate change, and global crises, war is not flexible.

Jacobsen: Then peace is not just the absence of war. In partnership studies, what do we mean by peace in a more technical sense?

Eisler: At the Center for Partnership Systems, including in our “Peace Begins at Home” summit, we emphasize that peace is not just the absence of war. Peace is a way of relating—relating to ourselves, to others, and to our Mother Earth. “Others” includes family members, neighbours, communities, and other nations.

We must create institutions that help us move away from domination. People raised in domination systems believe there are only two options: you either dominate or you are dominated. Naturally, this mindset justifies the use of force. But in an age of nuclear weapons, that logic is ultimately self-destructive. We have to find another way of relating.

Neuroscience confirms that early family relations shape lifelong patterns. This is why peace-building must begin at home. Violence and authoritarianism are deeply connected, and if we want to change the roots of violence, we must change how children experience care and authority in their earliest years. This is what we highlight in the “Peace Begins at Home” summit: there is a third alternative, which we call partnership. Partnership requires developing institutions and behaviours that help us address our existential crises.

Even in nations such as the United States, which is experiencing a regression toward domination, partnership elements remain. Many organizations are working for peace and demonstrating that alternatives exist.

Jacobsen: We often talk about binaries in nature. I see two aspects to that. If we use a correspondence theory of truth, some binaries—like hot and cold—are sensory and physical. Others are conceptual and socially constructed, especially in human relations. For example, if you look at the Earth and the moon, the binary of East and West does not exist in any physical sense; it is a human construct.

In human affairs, we often talk about “East” and “West” as dichotomies, but in practice, people are far more similar than those categories suggest. These global binaries exist in some cultural or geopolitical metrics, but when it comes to individuals, the differences are often overstated.

There’s not much difference between people across supposed cultural divides. So, when we look at the evidence presented at the summit, where do these false dichotomies come from? How do they become the basis for seeing others as “the other,” with a negative valence?

Eisler: What you’re pointing to is really an issue of consciousness, of worldview. If you have a partnership worldview, you recognize that we are interconnected. Nations that lean more toward partnership—such as Finland, Sweden, and Norway—invest more of their foreign aid in people on the other side of the globe, people to whom they are not genetically related. This reflects a recognition of some of the core principles present in many world religions—what I call the more “feminine” teachings of interconnection, caring, and love.

The problem is that we are not systematically taught caring in our education. We should be learning to care for ourselves, for others, and for our Mother Earth. But in domination systems, the aim of schooling often becomes instilling the belief that you either dominate or you are dominated.

Domination systems, like partnership systems, are self-perpetuating. They benefit from maintaining dichotomies: “We, the East, are not like the self-indulgent West,” or “We, the West, are not like the backward East.” In-group versus out-group thinking is fundamental to domination systems.

One of the significant issues I focus on in my whole-systems research is gender. There are two basic biological forms in humanity—male and female. In regressive periods, such as what we see in Afghanistan under the Taliban or in fundamentalist Iran, domination systems reinforce rigid gender stereotypes. They insist on strict rankings of male over female, denying the existence of anything in between. Such rigidity is necessary for maintaining domination.

This trains people to equate difference—starting with male versus female forms, and what is defined as “masculine” or “feminine”—with hierarchy: superior versus inferior, dominating versus dominated. That is falsely presented as “natural” or “normal.”

We must therefore look at the roots of the problem, which take us directly to gender. Neuroscience also reveals that the first five years of life are crucial. A child’s brain is still forming, and what they experience or observe in those years shapes not only how they think and feel, but also how they act later in life—even how they vote. This is why I consider two cornerstones essential: changing the way we raise children and changing the way we think about gender.

Both domination and partnership systems take us to the root causes. If a child observes in their family that so-called “women’s work” is considered less valuable, then we see how rigid gender stereotypes are reinforced. This connects directly to a third cornerstone: economics.

Caring isn’t valued. Historically, both Karl Marx and Adam Smith—reflecting the norms of their times—treated care work, starting from birth, as unpaid labour performed by women in male-controlled households. We must look at this history carefully, and also at the role of story and language in shaping our values.

I don’t have all the answers, but I know we cannot find them unless we recognize partnership as a viable alternative—how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to our Mother Earth.

Jacobsen: On the topic of stories and violence, religions contain caring and nurturing teachings. Yet many also emphasize war and histories of combat. Some of these battles may or may not have occurred historically, but they’re often given divine sanction and mythologized. We find narratives where entire peoples are ordered to be slaughtered, for example.

Eisler: Yes, you’ve touched on a crucial issue. Progressive religious leaders who want a more peaceful, equitable, and sustainable world must examine scriptures with discernment. They need to separate the “grain”—the core teachings of caring and reciprocity, such as the Golden Rule, which are present in all traditions—from the domination overlay: teachings that rank women as inferior or blame them for humanity’s ills.

And this isn’t limited to the major Abrahamic religions. In Zoroastrianism, for example, feminine figures are sometimes blamed for chaos. In Buddhism, very few holy figures are women, and historically, women have faced significant barriers to entering monasteries or rising to positions of authority.

You may recall that the Dalai Lama once joked—though I’d suggest partly in earnest—that if he were reborn, he hoped it would be as a woman, even a Western woman. He has also said that the fate of Tibet was tied to the treatment of women, suggesting a kind of karmic connection.

What matters here is urging religious leaders to sort the grain from the chaff. The vengeful, capricious deity imagery often serves to reinforce domination systems on Earth. Traditional religions frequently emphasize the time before we are born and after we die. Life in between is framed as a “veil of tears,” justified by ideas such as original sin. Even in secular science, narratives like “selfish genes” reinforce a worldview where cooperation is minimized and only in-group solidarity is seen as natural.

That’s not true. People do help those outside their group. Look at Doctors Without Borders, for example. They provide care to people with whom they share no genetic ties. However, the truth is that they’re a relatively small group. And even they sometimes fall into out-group blame and shame.

Blame and shame are integral to the arsenal of domination systems. In childhood, they force us to deny reality—because we cannot admit that the very people we depend on for life, shelter, food, and care are also causing us pain. That denial becomes a pattern. As adults, we become more susceptible to climate change denial, COVID denial, election result denial—denial in many forms.

This is why we must pay close attention to the four cornerstones: childhood and family relations, gender norms, economic values, and stories and language. Gender in particular is central because it teaches us to equate difference with superiority or inferiority. That logic extends outward to race, religion, ethnicity, and nationality. The goal is not perfection but moving societies toward the partnership side of the domination–partnership social scale. And that movement is now a matter of survival at our stage of technological development.

Domination systems rely on war and violence, and they reduce people to utilities. Women are valued for their reproductive capacity—hence, current calls from some wealthy elites for higher birth rates. Men, meanwhile, are sent to war, often drafted to die at a young age. Men don’t fare well in domination systems either, but they’re given a “substitute reward”: the sense of being “king of the castle” at home, with authority over women and children.

Unfortunately, we are not taught to connect the dots. What passes for systems thinking often ignores the majority of humanity—women and children. That is not true systems thinking.

Jacobsen: Why is mental compartmentalization key to understanding domination systems?

Eisler: Because one of the things we’re taught in domination systems is to compartmentalize. Take empathy. Empathy evolved gradually. In reptiles, offspring receive little to no care. But with mammals and birds, care of the young became essential for survival. Empathy is part of our evolutionary heritage. Yet domination systems compartmentalize it. They restrict empathy to the in-group, and even then, not to all members—for example, women may be considered inferior even within the in-group.

This isn’t about women against men or men against women. Caring is a human capacity. But we’ve been taught to equate caring with the “feminine.” That not only devalues care itself but also deprives men of part of their humanity. Men feel emotions too, and partnership systems encourage them to acknowledge and embrace those emotions instead of suppressing them. Men are allowed to express contempt and anger, but they’re discouraged from expressing softer, more caring emotions.

Jacobsen: Let’s expand this. Modern technologies have changed the discourse. People carry a war mentality online. Anonymity across borders enables them to attack one another, build echo chambers, form coalitions, and emotionally abuse people they don’t even know. It becomes an abstracted in-group/out-group dynamic—hatred directed toward strangers halfway across the world.

Eisler: To address this, we must examine the problem systematically. What is instilled in children when they are young? If we teach them to equate caring with the feminine, and the feminine with weakness, then we limit their sense of what is humanly possible. It becomes a question of consciousness—how we see ourselves and others—and that question is now existential.

Jacobsen: On health metrics, domination-oriented societies seem to live shorter lives, don’t they?

Eisler: The picture is more complicated. In some domination-oriented countries, life expectancies have increased thanks to advances in medical science—vaccines, for example, have saved millions of lives. Yet at the same time, we see resistance to science, such as vaccine denial in the United States. 

In societies locked in domination, war casualties are also devastating. Take Russia today: its war has produced tremendous casualties, with men especially paying the price. Domination systems often show little regard for the value of human life.

So it’s not a simple question, but I always return to the importance of a shift in consciousness. Peace begins at home. It starts in early childhood and family life. It also requires re-examining our religious beliefs. Sorting the grain from the chaff in scripture is a vital project—lifting the teachings of care while rejecting domination overlays. But this work carries risks. Religious fanatics, who insist every word of scripture is divine and unquestionable, can respond with violence.

Jacobsen: Why is the partnership model not prevailing right now, when it would clearly help reduce violence and war?

Eisler: That’s an important question. The partnership model is not absent. It is gaining ground among specific segments of the population—even in countries like the United States, where there’s a significant regression toward domination. Look at the global women’s movement, the children’s rights movement, the anti-racism movement, the peace movement, and the economic justice movement. These are all manifestations of partnership values. But they are countered by enormous and often violent domination backlash.

Eisler: The very notion of “winning” or “losing” comes from domination systems. Partnership calls for a win–win framework, where everyone’s basic needs can be met. That’s only possible if we give up the idea that one type of person must always be on top and another underneath.

Jacobsen: How can large, complex societies make care and dignity non-optional? So, in other words, you’re talking about embedding change into institutions—making care and dignity non-optional.

Eisler: That means shifting the four cornerstones from domination to partnership. And it really has to be all four. If we reward caring—if we find ways to value it economically—then we will see much more of it. If we model partnership in families, between the two basic forms of humanity, and stop devaluing so-called “women’s work” of caring, then society as a whole will come to value it. It’s a question of values. What do we reward in families, in economics, in our culture, in our stories and language? That is what shapes the future.

Jacobsen: The end. All right, Riane, I’ll see you next week. Thank you. 

Eisler: Thank you. Take care of yourself.

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