Paglia argues that the nature of man is not primitive, primal, animal or even genetically survivalist, but self-protective. She seems to stop short of saying psychologically self-protective, but isn't the mind the first priority of socialized man? What he thinks of himself, his world, his place in his world is paramount to his virility, success, satisfaction, breeding. (German birth rate since WW2, for example, though I recognize the intuitive nature of the argument without anymore evidence.) So hierarchy is in place to restore power (could this be "understanding" or "certainty"?) to the individual mind. To take the place of familial structure, which disintegrates in agriculture and further in industrialization to make room for commerce, which is dependent on innovation. So we drive a male creative process, which Paglia takes as more necessity of the ordering of nature, a rejection of the mother. (Though how familial structure is the rejection of the maternal, other than it being patriarchal.. I don't know.) How do you willfully separate yourself from your maternal figure? You make something of only yourself, you order your individual experience via externalized expression. Power has strange vitality, however thin and barely attained.
"Can you believe? We were birthed by human mothers."
