Kevin R. Nelson

Hunter-gatherers engaged fully in life with their psyches intact. They experienced far richer meaning and deeper relational being than we can now even imagine. That is what we must recover as we fight back.

I’m not suggesting that nothing has changed, nor that religion has faded into the background. Religious themes remain highly pronounced today, especially in American culture. At the same time, these theological structures have been secularized in ways that now shape experience far beyond formal belief.

Yes, the West has been subjected to extensive critique. But I will show that such critiques rarely reach its core nature and are more often absorbed, neutralized, and ultimately survived by the system itself.

We can now see how the mechanism of transcendence divides us into opposing groups of putatively good and bad while misleading us with false claims and illusions. It must be rooted out—of language—of thought—of behavior—of action.

Every myth matters. Each one reveals how people once understood their place in the cosmos. Most have been lost, their meanings erased. The story of Marduk and Tiamat survives—and that alone makes it worth examining.

Far from exonerating my gender for its role in sustaining patriarchy, I insist that men must now take the lead in dismantling it—decisively and without delay. But patriarchy is not the only destructive force we face. Interlocking ideologies—racism, classism, colonialism, transphobia—continue to shape our world, and most people, in some way, still participate in sustaining them. This work demands collective responsibility from people of all gender identities, because these systems harm us all.