Why Do We Pay Our Plumbers More Than Our Caregivers?

Why does the stock market rally when workers are laid off? Why are working people consistently losing ground? Why do so many women and children live in poverty? Why is the average age of a homeless person in the United States 9 years old? Why are so many seniors forgotten? Why don't we plan ahead or invest well when it comes to things like the environment, education or healthcare?

Can the answer be that our economic signals are out of whack with reality?

An interview with Riane Eisler, author of The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, shows how our current economic systems aren't solving our problems. If we want to address issues like poverty and environmental devastation, Eisler says, we must realize that the answer isn't in money; rather, it lies in the "contributions of people and nature."

An excerpt from The Real Wealth of Nations follows the interview.

Terrence McNally: Can you share a little bit about how your childhood experiences have influenced your life's work?

Riane Eisler: In terms of the social categories introduced by my earlier work -- the domination system and the partnership system -- I was born in Vienna at a time of massive regression to the domination side. From one day to the next, my whole world was wrenched asunder.

I was a little child on the first night of official Nazi terrorism against Jews, called Kristelnacht because so much glass was shattered in Jewish homes and synagogues. A gang of Gestapo broke into our home, and I watched horrified as they pushed my father down the stairs. But I saw not just this cruelty, I also saw spiritual courage, the courage to stand up against injustice out of love. My mother, recognized one of the men who had been an errand boy for our family business and got furious. She said, "How dare you do this to this man who has been so good to you?"

She could have been killed that night, but she survived and by a miracle was able to obtain my father's release. Eventually, of course, some money passed hands. By another miracle we escaped to Cuba, where, having lost everything, we lived in the industrial slums of Havana.

Now all of these experiences brought questions. When we have this enormous capacity for caring, for empathy, for love, for what I saw in my mother -- why is there so much cruelty, so much insensitivity and so much violence? Is it inevitable, or are there alternatives?

Seeking answers to those questions, I discovered that the conventional categories such as right versus left, religious versus secular, capitalist versus socialist, or east versus west, simply are not adequate. I could see patterns through my research for which there were no names, so I called one the partnership system and the other the domination system.

TMN: The Chalice and the Blade came out in 1987. It was a best seller and has been translated into many languages. As you look back, what do you feel has been its influence over time?

RE: I am very honored whenever people say that The Chalice and the Blade has changed their lives. Doing the research for that book has, of course, also changed my life in many ways. Categories are lenses, and these lenses are ways of connecting the dots, of showing how things that seem random are actually connected. Once we have that clarity, it not only empowers us individually, but it also empowers us to be more effective agents for cultural transformation.

TMN: Why did you write your new book, and what did you hope to accomplish with a book about economics?

RE: This is the third in a trilogy. The chalice and the blade are two symbols of power. The blade appropriate for the domination system, the power to dominate, to destroy, to take life. The chalice, very important but much ignored as a symbol of power, the power to give life, nurture, illumine, to empower rather than disempower. In the next book, Sacred Pleasure, I used the same analytical lenses of the partnership and domination systems to look at sex. Now The Real Wealth of Nations completes the trilogy of power, sex and money.