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THE RIVER Growing Flowing down to THE SEA
Page 3 by Elizabeth Abraham

But that term is only relative. We have seen in history only hints and glimpses of FREEDOM. Different societies have opened doors of opportunity in different directions, perhaps briefly. But then those freedoms have been remembered, passed on, and they have become part of the human heritage, on the opening way to completion: into a FREEDOM we don't even know enough to dream about.

At the present time a new view is opening. As the predicament of WOMAN becomes visible, as women express their true being (freedom of expression being the centre of true freedom), it becomes apparent how very relative that 'Freedom' of the past had always been, for in it there was always a corrupting oppression of one half of humanity: thus a failure to liberate one half of the whole human experience. So there was always an inevitable pressure for those 'Free Societies' to lapse back into oppression and tyranny. For they have all, since the dawn of civilisation (the life of cities), been patriarchal (eg. they go to war with macho ardour 'to defend their freedom', and lose it in the process).

For what ever reason, once society has gone outside the circle of hearth and home men have taken over and patriarchal culture has steered the course of history. Her story has always been the hidden side.

Places like Greenham Common are important in this perspective because these are places where the hidden alternative culture of women has been made visible to all the world: not just as a tribal phenomenon among the tribes, but as a head on challenge to the most complete and absolute of all male structures: the war machine.

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