Patriarchy is an old concept of society but not the oldest ever. Even older is the one about matriarchy.
What they mean? They are about power in societies and describe the fact that either the male or female aspect reigns, the eldest being the head of the family, respectively.
Patriarchy in particular has won a rather doubtful reputation over the centuries since its advent. It’s been a while, bluntly put, a couple of thousands of years. But archaeologists still find ample and unambiguous proof that matriarchy is even older as a concept and was wide-spread at one time all around the world. Some religious traditions and rites still show the roots of it to this day. Just as some rather old customs, in all cultures today.
Patriarchy employs rather doubtful means to its ends, as it were. A society model that to a great extent is based on – competition.
Some people try to tell us competition is a human impulse. I beg to differ, to my mind such people do not look closely enough and I think that the humanities agree: In many societies around the globe a basic human need is met only by winning something:
The need for attention.
Human beings need attention, actually some form of love, to survive. And the closest some lesser developed cultures seem to get to that is the attention provided when winning a competition.
And sadly, this fact also is often used between the ‘comrades’, the ‘buddies’ when trying other people to do something, get them to react, in short: Make them feel or think something.
It never was nice. And it never was really considerate. Even less ‘gentlemanly’. I find the original idea of the ‘gentle man’ rather intriguing. As opposed to some aberrations of the snob.
Again, quite bluntly put: Manipulation is often used as a means to win an end. But as my father used to put it even more bluntly: “Do you have to sit on cr…p just because a million flies do?”