Saturday, 21 May 2011
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Why Women Should Rule The World
By William Bond
First published in 2004 by PublishAmerica under the title: Make Love Not War
Acknowledgement
I wish to thank Pamela Suffield, Kazz, Dianna Vesta and Jess Cormack for all the help and encouragement they gave me in writing this book.
Famous Men Who Want Women To Rule The World
Famous Men Who Want Women To Rule The World
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Preface
Is it inevitable that men will always be the dominant sex? Is it also inevitable that we always will live in a world of conflict, war and poverty? Steven Goldberg put forward a powerful argument for this in his book, The Inevitability of Patriarchy. His reasoning largely focused on hormones. Men naturally have more testosterone than women. This hormone not only makes men physically stronger than women, it also makes them more aggressive and competitive. This competitive behaviour Goldburg says, will always make men strive harder than most women to gain the high-status roles in any society. He claims this means that men will always outnumber women in most positions of power in our world. To be fair, this is the situation in our world today, and has always been the case throughout recorded history.
The big problem for me with this thesis is that it also suggests that the most aggressive and competitive people will always rule our world. The result of this we can read about in our history books. War has become the normal way to settle disputes between countries. Throughout history many leaders have thought nothing of invading other countries and if successful, they are written down in history as a “great” leaders. Well known examples, are Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan and Napoleon. The fact that these great men have caused the deaths of millions of people doesn’t seem to be a problem. We live in a world that worships winners. Had Hitler won the Second World War he would be now thought of as a great leader, simply because it would be his supporters who would be writing history.
So “normal” is this behaviour that very few people seem to question the insanity of war. Nor do we seem to notice that we live in an unfair world where according to the World Bank, over 1 billion people in the world live in conditions of extreme poverty and where there are between 15-20 million starvation related deaths per year. Yet again this is justified because we live in a competitive world of winners and losers. It’s OK to ignore those who live in dire poverty or starve to death because after all they are only “losers”.
We are taught at school that men have always dominated human society, not only during recorded history but throughout the Stone Age as well. According to everything we are told, men have always been the dominant sex. From this it is speculated that life for humans in the Stone Age was savage and very brutal. Men fought and killed each other for dominance, and enslaved women through violence. Because of what ordinary people had been taught about the Stone-Age, popular cartoons used to depict the cavemen mating habits of the male hitting a woman over the head with a club and dragging her off to his cave by her hair. What a reality! A very brutal and hellish world of conflict, violence and extreme suffering. Is it true?
We are also taught that the masculine way is the way of the whole of nature, in being, “red in tooth and claw”. According to the way evolutionary theory is interpreted, evolution is driven by the concept of the “survival of the fittest”. The fittest being the winners of evolutionary game while the losers become extinct. We are taught, this is the way of the world. So not only is it natural that men will rule human society, the whole of nature is masculine. I found one book about evolution called, Evolution: The Four Billion Year War. Clearly the authors thought evolution was solely about competition and fighting. Perhaps we should stop thinking in terms of Mother Nature and call it Father Nature instead!
So that’s it then. Feminism is just a passing phase, which will disappear in time. Yes, it might be unfair that men should rule the world and we live in a world of winners and losers, but it’s a law of nature, and there is nothing that can be done about it. Or so we are told.
All the theories on evolution and early man sound very scientific, we are told that scientists are driven by unemotional cold logic. Yet by no means are scientists super humans. Like everyone else they are subject to emotions, prejudice and bias. Isn’t it interesting that all the theories about why men should naturally rule the world, have been created by men themselves? These theories are similar in attitude to the Judeo-Christian god in the Bible. He declared to Adam and Eve after they ate from the tree of knowledge. “And I will put enmity between thee and the women, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and shall bruise his heel. Unto the women he said. I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow shalt bring forth children, and they desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Genesis 3 verses 15-16.
Here is an extremely brutal and vindictive god, who sounds very much like the brutal caveman that scientists tell us we were descended from. Competitive men dominate both science and patriarchal religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So to slightly misquote Mandy Rice Davis. –
“Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?”
(“Well, he would, wouldn't he?” was her withering reply in court on being told by Counsel that Lord Astor had denied any impropriety in his relationship with her. The Profumo scandal in 1963.)
As alpha males create these scientific and religious beliefs. They are hardly likely to endorse views that remove them from their position of supremacy and to promote the rights of those they are oppressing.
It seems that these men only see god or nature from their biased point of view. In the Judeo-Christian Bible it is claimed that, “god made man in his own image”. Yet it would be more true to say that, men made god in their image. The Judeo-Christian god and Allah in the Muslim world both behave like macho man. When scientists took over from priests in the 19th century as the “wise men” of our society, they still had much the same attitude. They saw Nature in a very similar way patriarchal priests conceptualized god.
If macho men dominate our worldview, reflecting a highly masculine point of view, it is not surprising that they should see a creator god or nature as a reflection of themselves. Is there an alternative to this point of view? Surprisingly there is, but it is a very radical one that has been subjected to censorship for thousands of years. It is what I would call the, “Make Love Not War” thesis. This concept encompasses feminine ideals of love, compassion and nurturing. We are told they are wonderful ideals, but completely “unrealistic” in our world of conflict, violence and suffering. Yet these feminine ideals are only impractical whilst we are unaware of the alternative to the masculine viewpoint.
It is possible for us to live in a compassionate and caring world. But to do so we have to question all the masculine propaganda we have been subjected to for the last five thousand years. In the past, and even today, we were told that a “real man” was someone who stood up for himself and didn’t take any shit from anyone. In the Middle Ages it was normal for a king to declare war on his neighbours to “prove” himself. Then the measure of his greatness depended on how well he had fought in battle. So Henry V (1387-1422) became a great king of Britain because he won the battle of Agincourt. We even have a Shakespearean play glorifying his deeds. Yet many British historians conveniently forgot the fact that this battle started the Hundred Year’s War between Britain and France. From a masculine point of view the battle of Agincourt was a stunning victory or terrible defeat, (depending on which side you are on). From a feminine point of view it was the beginning of a hundred year tragedy.
Even in modern times when the majority of people no longer believe it is a great idea to go to war, the attractive myth of the violent hero is still being portrayed on TV, films, books and video games. The theme of these stories is all the same. You have a villain who is “bad and evil”, and more than likely murders other people. Then enter the hero who overcomes the villain mostly by violence and either kills the villain or puts him in jail.
This looks great as a piece of entertainment but a complete disaster when acted out in real life. We can see this clearly in Israel today. To many Israeli people their military are heroes who go in and “kick ass” whenever Israel is attacked. Mostly this is aimed at the Palestinians, who not surprisingly have a very different opinion about what’s going on. They don’t see the Israeli military as heroes but as villains. They believe that their own suicide bombers are heroes who are hitting back at oppressors. A disagreement about who are the heroes and villains in this tragic drama is what perpetuates it indefinitely.
The whole world is the victim of this violent hero, who “puts the world to rights” through aggression, intimidation and violence. To the majority of the world Hitler was the archetypal evil villain. Yet it is doubtful if he saw himself in that light. His opinion of himself and his followers was that he was a great hero, who was strong enough to destroy all the “bad” people of the world. In his opinion they were Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and homosexuals.
The hero may genuinely believe that he is doing “good”, in committing violence against people he judges as “bad”, not realising or caring that the people he judges may have a completely different viewpoint. They may even think that he is the villain! Not seeing the other guy’s point of view, can lead to extreme violence, time after time after time.
Let’s look at Pol Pot. He became leader of Cambodia in 1976 and set about killing and torturing millions of his own people. The irony of this is that his intention was to create a utopia where people could live in harmony and equality. The real tragedy is that many violent men do have a genuine desire to do good, to make the world a better place. The intentions may be good but the methods used are extremely brutal and barbaric. So why do we have this problem? Why do people continue to use methods that clearly do not produce a better world?
It’s because the hero solves a problem through aggression and so we live in a world that adores and glorifies the masculine. We are taught to find only macho solutions to all our problems. Unfortunately these solutions only seem to work in the fantasies of films and books. Yes, John Wayne or Clint Eastward on the silver screen can put the world to rights by shooting all the bad guys and riding off into the sunset.. But the underlying message that is given out is that, “might is right” and violence is always justified. Provided you are the hero and that the people you kill are bad people! The old saying that. –
“Two wrongs don’t make a right”.
Is completely ignored in the macho mindset. The masculine mind believes very firmly that. -
“The ends justify the means”.
Here we have the inherent weakness of the macho theory, because men are superb at justifying their actions, and of course are NEVER wrong. Yet if we don’t use the macho way to solve our problems what is the alternative? The alternative is the feminine way of compassion, understanding and forgiveness. In the eyes of the masculine this is seen as weak and impracticable. Yet a practical demonstration of the merits of the masculine and feminine way was demonstrated in the First and Second World Wars.
After the First World War ended with the defeat of Germany, the Allies decided to blame and punish Germany for causing the War. In the Versailles Treaty they demanded that Germany pay the Allies £24 Billion, (In today’s money this would be over a Trillion pounds). The famous economist John Maynard Keyes resigned his position in the British Treasury over this, because as he pointed out, Germany at the time didn’t have the resources to pay back this debt. He also predicted that it would ruin the country and create widespread poverty in Germany. Causing deep resentment and hatred towards the Allies. His predictions unfortunately became true. Extreme political parties on both the left and right became popular and at one time it looked as though the communists would gain power in Germany. To counter this, big business financed the extreme right wing Nazi party, resulting in them coming to power and starting the Second World War.
So that was the macho solution. Everyone blamed Germany for the First World War and decided to punish them. This kept the cycle of violence going as it fueled resentment, hatred and extremism. After the second defeat of Germany the Western Allies decided they needed the German people on their side against the growing threat of Communism. This time they only punished the leaders and not the German people. They even helped Germany to recover from the terrible effects of the war. In so doing the Allies instigated the feminine approach of forgiveness and understanding. The cycle of hatred and violence between Germany and the other European countries was broken. Within a short time France and Germany who had been bitter enemies since the Franco-Prussian War, (1870-71) got together, in 1958 and started the European Common Market, along with other European countries.
So it can be done. The feminine way can work. A act of forgiveness and kindness was able to take a nation traumatized by two major wars and one of the most despotic dictatorship ever, and allow it to become a peaceful moderate country. It shows clearly that if we treat people with love, understanding and compassion they can respond to this in a positive way. So if the feminine way can work so successfully, why is it not used more in our world? It must be blindingly obvious that if you are brutal and punitive with people they will learn to fear and hate you. If you give people love, compassion and respect they will eventually return the compliment.
The feminine way also worked successfully in South Africa at the end of apartheid. With what happened elsewhere in Africa and the rest of the world we would assume that a bloodbath would happen, with the ending of white minority rule, This is fairly normal when oppressed people seek revenge for the violence inflicted on them. The fact that this didn’t happen is down to one man Nelson Mandela, who followed a policy of forgiveness and reconciliation. And it worked. People in all parts of South Africa did respond to his leadership in wanting a peaceful transition to majority rule.
The problem with the feminine way is that it is works indirectly on the long term and requires not only compassion and love, but intelligence as well. While the masculine way is far more direct, easy to understand and it can get instant results. A pure masculine solution in the case of two countries in conflict is simply to wipe the other guy of the face of the earth. Which is possible if one side possesses nuclear weapons and the other doesn’t. Then it would be easy for the country owning weapons of mass destruction to wipe out the other one. So you can see how simple and easy this is? Just press a button and let off your nuclear missiles, and bingo, no more problems! This has to be just so much easier than to try and talk with the country you are in conflict with and try and understand their point of view!
As we have seen in the Northern Ireland and conflict between the Roman Catholics and Protestants. Trying to bring peace between warring factions who hate each other, can take a very long time. This needs great diplomacy and patients by negotiators. Political leaders have to take chances and risk being murdered by their own supporters. Who may see their peace negotiations as a act of treason. As do ordinary people who have to dare to question the beliefs within their community that the “other side” are evil people. As voicing any sane and sensible idea, may provoke disciplinary action from the local para-military. Hatred and revenge can appear instantly through an act of violence but it can take a very long time for people to learn to forgive and forget.
Faced with all the great complexities of negotiations, seeing another person’s point of view, and overcoming fear and hatred. The very direct and simple macho way has to be seen as so much easier. Just let the two sides fight it out and who ever wins, wipes out the other side. After all, this is the “survival of the fittest”, in it’s purest form. So why tax our brains with all the problems of understanding others? Just keep it simple. When Hitler saw there was a problem with Jews he simply rounded them up and murdered them. The Jews themselves seem to of only partly learnt from this in their dealing with the Palestinians. They don’t go all the way and simply wipe them out, because wimps among the Jewish population who are uneasy about doing this hold them back. If they where to go for the final solution, then the Palestinian problem would be solved in no time. After all Israel has the military muscle to do this, and there shouldn’t be any moral problem, because the Jews are “God’s chosen people”. Aren’t they?
The simplicity of the macho way is that it rewards winners and punishes losers, and if everyone on Earth were in complete agreement to this, there wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately people who live in conquered states or under oppressive governments, or are at the receiving end of genocide, or are discriminated against because of race or religion, or simply live in poverty, tend to feel aggrieved about it. Arguments like, “it’s your fault, because you are a loser”, for some reason fail to convince them to accept their situation with grace and acceptance.
Arguments that we live in a world of winners and losers tend to come from wealthy men who regard themselves as winners. These are the men who dominate our world, and therefore have most to say. We don’t hear very much about the alternative point of view, except from feminists. Unfortunately feminism is mostly written by women for female readers. Which is a pity because feminism cannot only help women but men as well, because men are also victims of patriarchal. Both men and women have something to gain by questioning the assumptions and propaganda of our masculine world.
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Chapter One - Why Men Are Not Feminists
It’s a strange fact that when Feminists used to take to the streets agitating for sexual equality, you rarely see men marching along with them. You can find both sexes protesting about worker’s rights, race equality, and the rights of homosexuals, but Feminism? If you find men involved they always seem to want to keep quiet about it. The only man I heard openly advocating Feminism was the English poet Robert Graves. Yet he was criticised by many Feminists because they claimed his brand of Feminism was not about equality, but that women should rule the world.
Feminism is about the equality of the sexes and this makes perfect sense to most women. From the time of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication Of The Rights Of women in 1792, until now, women have written countless book on sex equality. Yet we don’t find many male authors writing about Feminism, unless it is about why it can’t work. (like The Inevitability of Patriarchy). Nor do we find many men protesting on the street about this either. Men either make jokes about Feminism and political correctness or claim that Feminism has gone too far and men now are being discriminated against! Or they just keep quiet about the whole subject.
In my personal experience I have found that Feminists themselves regard many men who voice any sympathy about Feminism with deep suspicion. Most Feminists groups have a very strict rule about not allowing men into their groups. Which is a strange rule for a group that advocates, equality, political correctness and anti-discrimination. Though I can understand why they don’t want men in their groups. There is admittedly the problem of some, big I am, turning up and lecturing them on why Feminism won’t work, or attempt to take over. This was the experience of Feminists during the 1970s. They then allowed men into their groups, but even very sympathetic and well-intended men still tended to dominate the conversation and compete with women within the group. For this reason most Feminist groups ended up banning men.
The most famous case of this was the Greenham Common Peace Camp. In 1981 a group of 36 women started a protest against the deployment of cruise missiles at an American Air Base, at Greenham Common. This began a mass protest of both men and women but soon the women started to ban men from their camps around the site. Some camps placed a complete ban on men while others only allowed men to join them to protest during the daytime. This was given as one of the reasons why the Greenham Common protest was so successful, because men didn’t interfere with the unity of the women.
Yet the very fact of banning men undermines the Feminist ideal of sexual equality. Because it is a admission by Feminists that they cannot make equality with men work, even in just Feminist meetings and protest movements. So if they are willing to acknowledge that they cannot create equality with men in groups that actually advocate sexual equality. Now do they expect to do the same in all other aspects of life?
So why is sexual equality strongly advocated by women but men show little interest? The obvious reason would be that women have something to gain through sexual equality. Whist men have something to lose. That is to say, men would lose dominance over women. While women have progressed from a position of servitude to that of equal opportunities in the West at least. This is true in all aspects of life. If you are a serf, slave or live in poverty, then equality sounds like a really great idea. If on the other hand, you are a wealthy member of the ruling elite, then of course, equality is a very dangerous, stupid and totally impracticable idea.
Perhaps this argument might be a bit too hard on men. After all it was 100% male governments in the early 20th century who voted to give women equal voting rights. It was also male dominated legislative chambers who voted to pass equal opportunity laws for women in the 1960s and 70s. So it does seem that the majority of men in the Western world are not actually opposed to Feminism, and secretly many men seem to support it. Yet even men who will support Feminist women, do not seem that enthusiastic about sexual equality. The problem might be that equality is a totally alien concept to the masculine mind.
For many men the whole of life is a big competitive game. In fact some men do talk about, “the game of life”. The only trouble with treating life as one big game is that there will always be winners and losers. Which doesn’t seem to be a problem if you are a winner, but a real problem if you happen to be a loser. If you happen to come from a wealthy family and have gone to university and have a well paid job, like a lawyer. Then you are not going to see a problem with treating life as just one big game, because you are on the winning team. It is of interest that many people who do live in poverty are contemptuously referred to as losers by some of the well off. They will even go as far as to claim that it is people’s own fault if they live in poverty. Forgetting that in a world of winners and losers, you cannot have winners without losers.
In fact in any competitive game the losers always far outnumber winners. We can see this in any sporting competition you might have hundreds of individuals or teams enter it, but in the end you can only have one winner. So in a competition like the football World Cup it was started with hundreds of teams seeking qualification, but all finally got defeated and knocked out, except for the single winner. The same is true of the game of life, the poor and powerless far outnumber the rich and powerful.
Men have dominated our world for the last five thousand years. Yet if we go through every society ruled by men, what we don’t find is any form of equality. Even political movements that have set out with the firm intention to create equality have totally failed in this. If we go back to the English Civil War of 1642-8 between the King Charles 1 and Parliament, it was started because of the dictatorial behaviour of Charles 1 who wanted to dissolve Parliament and rule alone. This created a bitterly fought war, (the worst internal war in English history) and guess what happened? Cromwell, the commander-in-chief of the Parliament forces became dictator and it was HE who ended up dissolving Parliament! Which was supposed to be what the Civil war was all about. The idealists of the time agitated to create an equal society, but they soon ended up in jail or on the scaffold. (Even equal rights between men and women were briefly discussed before Cromwell took control). The dictatorship of Cromwell was so bad that within a few years after his death, Charles 2 the son of the hated Charles 1, was invited back to rule England.
Egalitarianism was also the aim of the French Revolution in the 18th century, yet again all they created was a dictatorship and a reign of terror ruled by people like Robespierre and later Napoleon. Who was so competitive that he tried to conquer the world. The same was to happen in the communist revolutions of the 20th century where brutal dictators like Stalin and Mao Tse-tung took power. All these revolutions ended up creating tyrants, far worse than the ones they replaced. So the lesson here was that violent revolution is probably the worse possible way to try and create equality. Because all you do is to replace one group of very competitive men with another group of competitive men. What is more, the new rulers are likely to be also very violent men, because this was the way they obtained power.
The exception to this rule is the American Revolution. Where although the commander-in-chief of the revolutionary army George Washington did also became the President. Fortunately unlike Cromwell he didn’t lose sight of why the revolution was fought. In his term of office he showed he believed in Democracy and wasn’t interested in becoming a dictator. Another exception was Marshell Tito who although he was an extremely ruthless and violent partisan leader during World War Two. When he became dictator of Yugoslavia he turned out to be a reasonably enlightened leader. He was able to keep the Balkans in peace while he was in power, but unfortunately when he died the whole country split apart into violence. So it is possible for men of violence to become reasonable enlighten rulers but unfortunately they are a small minority.
Men themselves have seen that our very unequal world is a problem, and have attempted to do something about it through political movements like Communism, Socialism and Democracy. Unfortunately in all these systems only Democracy has worked. Though even with Democracy it took a long time to find a way to make it possible. The ancient Greeks and Romans tried it out, but it created so many disputes, it was finally given up as impossibility. So people switched back to dictatorship and kingship. Men have for a long time been searching for better ways to rule their societies. It is a sign of progress that Democracy was finally made to work in modern times after it was abandoned two thousand years ago in ancient Greece and Rome.
The problem with the failure of Communism and Socialism as well as the failure of Democracy in ancient times is that it takes away all hope of creating a just and equal society. Capitalists claim that competition is essential to motivate men. Some even go, as far to claim, “greed is good”. This is perfectly true from the viewpoint of a wealthy businessman. From the viewpoint of those living in poverty, greed is a source of frustration, envy and even hatred. So it means that in positive way greed can motivate men to work hard to achieve their desires. Or in a negative way it can motivate men towards hatred, envy, crime and violent revolution. Also greed is not the best motivation for political leaders, as it is more likely to make them corrupt, or to become conquers of other nations. While competitive desires seem to motive politicians to want power for its own sake. That is to say they have become a winner, (the champion politician of their country) and the exercise of power is all they are interested in.
Yet we cannot just blame dictators and world leaders for all the ills of the world. They are ordinary competitive men who just happen to get to the top of the heap. All men, it seems, like nothing better to do than to be involved in competitive games with each other. If they are not playing competitive games with other men, then they like to watch them, as we can see with the great popularity of sport on TV. Because of this, it is men’s competitive instinct that has made capitalism such a success in our world. One of the reasons why Communism and Socialism failed was that it didn’t allow competitiveness in industry. Resulting in communist industry stagnating and becoming very inefficient, while in the Western world industry was made very efficient and progressive by the competition between industrial companies. Democracy is also only possible because of competition between political parties for power. That is the upside of competition but it also has a terrible downside.
Rulers of countries have for centuries competed with each other so vigorously that they have gone to war with each other. Conquers like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Hitler have conquered and destroyed many countries and caused the deaths of millions of people. Just so they can proudly say, “wow, look how many countries I’ve conquered”. In fact their attitude doesn’t seem to be much different to say a famous tennis player who has won the grand slam, and wants to be remembered as the greatest tennis player of all time. The difference is that the only harm a great sporting hero causes is the bruised egos of some of his opponents. With a great conqueror we are talking about widespread death, destruction and suffering of millions of people. So for five thousand years of human history, competition between countries and rulers has led to countless wars and acts of genocide. This became so bad in the 20th century that whole cities were destroyed in the Second World War through aerial bombing. As well as the many instances of genocide practised in Nazi Germany, Cambodia, The Balkans and Rwanda. Also in the Cold War between NATO counties and the Soviet Union both sides armed themselves with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet many times over.
The competition between the USSR and the USA became really crazy during the Cold War. In the 1950s and early 60s, there was competition about who could produce the biggest nuclear explosion. The Soviet Union won this one. A hydrogen bomb test conducted by the Soviet Union in 1961 detonated with an explosive force of 50 megatons, or 3300 times the power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, which were “only” 1-1.5 kilotons. The winning Soviet explosion was so large that it punched through atmosphere above it, right into outer space. It frightened both sides so much they decided to give up on this, one-up-man-ship game, as scientists on both sides informed their leaders that a bigger explosion might do permanent damage to the biosphere. There was also a concern that nuclear testing in the atmosphere was producing radiation fall out. Even though the politicians of the time claimed, “that there was no scientific proof that fall out from nuclear bombs was harmful to humans.” How many times since have we the public receive reassurances like this? Anyway you can’t let little problems like the radiation poisoning of whole countries, get in the way of being able to proudly say, “we built the biggest bomb in the world”. Can you?
Then there was the space race where both sides spent billions of dollars just to get the first man on the moon. As well as a competition about who had the most nuclear missiles. At the end of the Cold War the USSR had 39,000 nuclear warheads while USA had “only” 24,000. Why both sides needed so many nuclear weapons was never made clear. It was just another case of the competitive spirit among men getting completely out of hand. Yet because of it, for four decades from the 1950s to the 1980s people all over the world lived in fear of a Third World War that would wipe out the whole human race.
There was even one case where a defect in the defence computer of the Soviet Union, told its operators that they were under missile attack from the USA. Fortunately the man in charge knew that the computer wasn’t reliable and waited for confirmation from other sources, before he would give the order to launch a counter strike. He was then thrown out of the military for disobeying orders! Still it was better than being court marshalled and then shot, as would normally happen in the USSR. I suppose the only consolation he had, was that he is the only man ever; who can claim he single-handedly saved the world. It is total insanity that because of fierce competition between the super powers, we came that close to committing global suicide. The Americans indirectly admitted to this insanity by naming their nuclear strategy M.A.D (Mutually Assured Destruction).
This then means that men’s competitive instinct rules out completely any chance of men creating an equal society or overcoming the suffering of poverty. Because it is natural for men to compete with each other about, “who is boss around here”? We live in a “winner takes it all” world where the rich and powerful want more and more power and wealth and the poor get nothing.
USA is the most competitive capitalist country in the world; this undoubtedly makes it the most dynamic and go-ahead state in the world. The downside of this ferocious competition is that 0.5% of the population of the USA own as much as the bottom 90%. It is no wonder the rich and wealthy like capitalism so much. It is these individuals that own all TV stations, film companies and newspapers, so it is natural for them to use the media to sing the praises of capitalism as much as they can. USA is the richest country in the world yet 45 million of its people live below the poverty line and over 40% have no medical cover.
To add insult to injury the rich don’t even pay taxes. In most Western countries an entire industry has been created to help the rich to minimise their payment of taxation. So successful has this industry become that accountants make a mockery of taxation laws and use myriad of personal allowances, pension rights, deductible expenses and reinvestment allowances to allow their rich clients not to pay taxation. As one American millionairess once remarked, "Only poor people pay taxes".
The rich also put their money in overseas accounts, well away from the reach of the taxman. The point is that this means that it is only the poor and middle class have to pay the taxes, to keep the infrastructure of individual countries going, as well as to pay for the trillion dollar arms industry. The reason why this happens it that this wealthy rule the world, and so can make up their own rules and laws to suit themselves. It is also the big advantage of globalisation, as it makes it so much easier for the super rich to dodge taxation.
We live in a world where, it seems “nice guys come last”. The fact is that you are unlikely to be the leader of a country, a religion or international business by being a compassionate, caring and loving person. The only exception to this I know is Nelson Mandela, he became president of South Africa because the previous white minority government was under pressure to give in to majority rule. Fortunately because Nelson Mandela the leader of the biggest party was a genuine forgiving and caring man, it was easy for the white politicians to hand power over to him. So we had a non-violent hand over of power to majority rule. Had Nelson Mandela been a different sort of person, the white minority in power may of wanted to fight it out, like they did in Zimbabwe. This was because they had to deal with a very different sort of leader in Robert Mugabe, who has since become another brutal dictator.
So it is possible for a caring and compassionate politician to make a positive difference to our world. Unfortunately Nelson Mandela is more the exception that proves the rule. Most politicians get to these positions of power through being ruthless, aggressive and devious. Political leaders even make claims that they are very tough and ruthless to get votes. Then we wonder why we live in an unjust and uncaring world. The point is that because we live in a world where only the most competitive, ruthless and Machiavellian people get to the top, it is no wonder that equality seems totally impossible in our world.
So where does this leave Feminism? Nowhere unfortunately. Today in the Western world we have laws to enforce equal opportunity. Now note the phrasing here, it says equal OPPORTUNITY not sex EQUALITY. Yes, by law women can in theory be equal to men, the catch is, women have to play the man’s game and behave like competitive men.
This is the problem identified by Feminists themselves. Over more than a generation after the first equal opportunity laws were passed in the Western world, women on average are still paid far less then men, while the vast majority of the top jobs are still in the hands of men. If we look at this problem worldwide we find that women only own 1% of the world’s wealth. This means that 99% of world’s wealth is still owned by men. It makes you realise that the great progress that women seem to have made over the 20th century for equality, is still very much an illusion. Perhaps the only thing you can say about it that it is better than perhaps the 0001% that existed in the 19th century. Where women by law had few rights to own any property and didn’t even have the right to vote. The problem for Feminists is that if women want to get top jobs they have to act like a Margaret Thatcher and become totally ruthless and uncaring. It seems only a small minority of women want to do this.
The solution given by Feminists is that we have to change the whole structure of society, because every social system in the world was created by men, for men. So they reflect men’s competitive instincts and strengths. This then means if we have Democracy we have to have ferocious competition between political parties for power. If we don’t have this, Democracy is eroded to the degree that it doesn’t matter which party you vote for, the policies are the same. (Which is true in both the UK and the USA today). The same is true for the capitalist system. Capitalism only works while there is again ruthless competition between companies. If one company becomes too successful it will take over its competitors or put them out of business. Then it becomes a monopoly with no competition. Or if you are only left with a few large companies they will start to wonder why they need to compete with each other, when it is so much easier to co-operate. So they form a secret cartel and we soon have price fixing and complacency. This has happen in all the older industries. In the first half of the 20th century there were hundreds of car and aircraft companies competing with each other for customers. At the end of the 20th century there are only two large companies in the world that make commercial airlines and only a handful of car manufacturers, who are all in each other’s pockets.
This then means that if the Feminists have their way and ruthless competition is eliminated, then men would be at a serious disadvantage, because without competition men do seem to lose interest in what they are doing. This is clearly demonstrated in communist countries where industries stagnated because of the lack of competition. Communists only did well in competing or fighting against the USA, as we can see in Vietnam, where a third world country defeated a super power. (Though admittedly they were well armed by the Soviet Union). This was also true in the space race. In fact during most of the 1950s and 60s the USSR was far ahead of USA in putting the first satellite, the first man, the first woman and the first space station in space. They only missed out on the main prize of putting the first man on the moon, and since then have lagged far behind. Now, without the competition between the Soviet Union and America, space exploration has stagnated.
So it seems competition is essential for men to be efficient. The problem is that competition can lead to possible global suicide, as we saw in the Cold War. It also creates a world of winners and losers, where the majority of the people of the world are losers in that they live in poverty. While the small minority of winners keep all the wealth of the world in their greedy hands. Another problem is that in a competitive world everyone is so busy looking after number one and no one is looking where they are going. This can create unbelievable cock-ups.
In 1960 the oil producing countries of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela got together to form a cartel called OPEC because they wanted to prevent the trend of falling oil prices. Later on other oil producing counties also joined. Then in 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked Israel to try and regain all the territory they had lost in the previous Six-Day War of 1967. At first the war went well for the Arab states and Israel appealed to USA for more weapons. President Nixon acceded to this request and publicly proposed a $2.2 billion military aid package for Israel. This greatly angered the Arab countries that decided to use the power of OPEC as an oil weapon.
OPEC imposed an oil embargo on USA and Europe and agreed a $3.00 a barrel price rise. In the end this didn’t make any difference and Israel won the war. Yet as a result of the greatly increased oil price OPEC countries found themselves awash with so much money, they didn’t know what to do with it. Some of them bought brand new toys like the latest weapons that arms dealers could supply them, and what was left over they invested in international banks. Now this was to cause a big problem because the banks didn’t know what to do with the surplus money either, until someone had the bright idea of loaning the money to poor third world countries. The theory being that developing countries would be able to invest in projects to industrialise their countries. That was the theory; the reality was a total disaster.
Most third world countries are ruled by corrupt dictatorships, so the money that was lent, went into buying arms, and starting a third world arms race. Which suited countries like Britain, as arms are its biggest export earner. As well as the USA because it is, the biggest arms exporter in the world. Money was also squandered on large inappropriate projects. Which again suited many Western governments, as it was Western engineering companies that built dams and other grandiose schemes the politicians thought up. Also unfortunately much of the money simply ended up in the pockets of corrupt officials. The only exception to this for a while was India, which was ruled at the time by Indira Gandhi. Although she took the opportunity to borrow from the World Bank she was prudent enough to make sure she was able to pay back later everything she borrowed. Unfortunately she was assassinated in 1984 and her son Rajiv Gandhi became leader. He didn’t have any of his mother’s prudence and borrowed heavily and soon found he was unable to pay the money back, plunging India into debt.
The result was that all these third world countries were unable not only to pay back the original debt but unable to pay back the INTEREST on the debt. The IMF and World Bank stepped in and demanded that these countries started to go over to planting cash crops like cotton for export money and not crops to feed their own people. They also demanded cut backs on government spending. The result was these governments cut back on health care and education for the people. (You couldn’t seriously expect them to cut back on far more important things like arms, bribes and high salaries for important government officials, could you?) Which was a disaster because without proper education for the people, there is no way a developing country can catch up with the developed world. Also without proper health care, and using land to grow cash crops for export, there has been an increase in the mortality rate of people in the third world through disease and starvation.
The scale of this tragedy can been seen by the following statistics. Internationally, 815 million people worldwide go hungry. We live on a planet where 55% of the 12 million child deaths each year are caused by malnutrition. And it’s getting worse. According to the United Nations, the poorest countries are worse off now, than they were 30 years ago.
The irony of this is that if any third world country wants to have a fight with its neighbour or have a civil war, guns and a limitless supply of ammunition are readily available. Yet money for education, heath care is in short supply for these countries, but then you got to get your priorities right haven’t you? You cannot deny men the fun of playing with exciting toys like machine guns; tanks and flamethrowers can you?
Yet we have to be fair about this, men in the last few hundred years have made progress. Back in the 18th century it was commonplace for criminals to be flogged, tortured and executed for minor offences. People would die of starvation in the streets of major European cities and slavery was still practised. All this extreme brutality has slowly been banned in the West by exclusively male governments. This means that men in power are capable of compassion for their fellow human beings.
It means that men do have a choice. They are more than capable of being
extremely brutal, as we have seen in so many cases of torture, violence and genocide even in our world of today. Yet this is not true of all men and we can find many examples of men who are capable of caring for others. Philanthropists like William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and Granville Sharp (1735-1813) who devoted their lives to abolishing slavery or John Barnardo (1845-1905) who set up homes for destitute children. Are examples of this. Yet a man doesn’t have to be a wealthy philanthropist to be caring of others. Many ordinary men are caring of others. Unfortunately not enough of the loving and compassionate people get into positions of power to create a peaceful and caring world.
So what causes men to become extremely brutal while others devote their lives to caring for others? The simplistic answer is that some men are good while others are evil. Which explains nothing and this explanation does more harm than good. A better explanation comes from evolutionary theory, the study of early humans and primate studies. This science tells us where we come from and why we are like we are. Unfortunately these studies have also been distorted through sexual bias by male academics, who are blinded to the role of women and the feminine in the evolution of the human species. A more balanced approach would give us a far deeper insight to the human condition.
This is something I will explore in the following chapters. Showing that if we are aware of the masculine bias in evolutionary theory, history and early human studies. We can discover why men have created a world of conflict, violence and suffering and what can be done to change this.
Friday, 10 September 2010
Chapter Two - The Selfish Gene, (And other feeble excuses made up by men).
Back in the 1960s at when the Women’s Liberation Movement was going strong, women libbers were claiming that men and women were exactly the same. They claimed this for two reasons-
1. Men previously were claiming that women were not as intelligent as men. In fact in the 19th century male scientists “proved” that women had smaller brains then men. The idea that perhaps these male scientists might be a little biased never crossed anyone’s mind. After all scientists are above human failings like emotions, bias and prejudice. These super humans can see the facts logically and clearly without human emotions. So of course they cannot possibly make a mistake, can they? They were also claiming that women were too emotional to make sensible decisions. After all women would get too emotional to make rational decisions like ordering hundreds of thousands of men to die in the face of machine gun fire. Or use gas warfare, as a more efficient way to kill and blind people. Like they did in the First World War.
2. In the 1960s the fashionable scientific theory then was that it was our upbringing that made us what we are. So Feminists seized on this and claimed it was only cultural bias in the way we brought up children that made the sexes different. Great theory, but somehow in practice it didn’t work out like this. Feminist mothers and schoolteachers worked hard at treating little boys and girls exactly the same. So little Johnny was given a doll to play with, which he immediately took apart, or used as a football. While little Mary was given a train set, which she didn’t know what to do with. No matter what Feminist mothers did, they found that the majority of little girls still liked playing with dolls and the majority of little boys still liked playing with toy guns.
Since then it has become clear that the sexes are very different. Scientists have discovered that the brains of men and women are not the same and are wired up very differently. Also the latest fashionable scientific theory is that, “it’s all in the jeans”. Genetics has taken over as the “theory of everything” to do with human and animal life. This then means a man cannot behave like a woman or a woman behave like a man, unless they have the genes within them to make them that way.
So is that it? Is it impossible for men and women to be different because it is programmed in our genes? Will this mean that men always want to compete and fight each other and try to blow up the world with nuclear bombs? And will women always be nice and kind and end up at the bottom of the heap in our competitive world? Well not quite. In the “nature verse nurture” debate there is surprisingly a third possibility. That both our genes AND the way we were brought up could influence our behaviour. We could even be influenced by the way we choose to think. (Which is a very revolutionary idea that politicians and marketing people don’t want to hear). After all we are supposed to be the most intelligent creatures on this earth, aren’t we? Well you would think so, but from the crazy way we run our world, a case could be made that we are the most stupidest animal on this earth. After all although we are very clever monkeys, we seem to use to use our brains to mostly find better ways to inflict, pain, hate, violence and suffering on each other. We are so intelligent that we can produce a space ship that can fly to the moon. Yet we are unable to find a solution to far more important problems like world poverty. To quote UN statistics.
1 billion people live in 'extreme poverty' and 2 billion people live in 'poverty'. 17 million people die every year from easily preventable causes, of which 11 million are children- that is 30,000 children dying each day from hunger and preventable diseases. 800 million people are hungry. 1 billion people do not have access to clean water and 2 billion do not have proper sanitation. The world's richest 1% of people earn as much combined annual income as the bottom 57%.
Why are we so stupid that we have all our priorities so completely wrong? In that we put our best brains and trillions of dollars into finding better ways to kill each other. Yet in comparison we put hardly any intellectual or material capital into making this world a better place for ALL people to live in. We are also supposed to have free will. (Though not if the politicians can help it). Yet few of us seem to use it and we follow the herd like sheep. In fact throughout history people who are slightly different from the norm are persecuted and have even been murdered for this, “crime”.
The biggest problem with the nature v nurture debate is that it is also very political. In no way should political leanings get in the way of scientific inquiry, but then, science is practised by human beings. So it means that the belief that it is, “all in the jeans” is a powerful argument for conservatism. Which means that human nature is the way it is because it has been programmed in our genes. Which in turn justifies the status quo, which is war, capitalism and poverty. Those who advocate nurture are looking for social change and are mostly feminists, pacifists or left wing activists. So in means in recent years the scientific beliefs that it is only genes that determine our behaviour has been used as a very powerful argument for the forces of conservatism. Though as I will explain later in this book this argument is a two edged sword.
The Selfish Gene theory by Richard Dawkins is presented as a very powerful argument for conservatism and capitalism to the degree it has become a standard textbook in American universities. As it claims that the only purpose in life is for gene to reproduce themselves, and we all compete with each other to ensure it is our genes that produce the next generation.
Reproduction is the most important instinct all animals have. To the degree it will take precedence over personal survival. As in the case of the octopus. When the mother lays her eggs she will slowly starve to death looking after her eggs until they hatch. Some female insects die when they lay their eggs and the first meal the larvae has, when they hatch, is the body of their own mother. In the case of some species of spiders, the female eats the male after they have mated, (apparently sex gives her a appetite). The praying mantis also has similar habits. While the male is mating, the female have been observed to eat his head, yet the headless body will continue to mate. Which is a confirmation of what many women say about men.
“Their brains are in the end of their penis’ ”.
Although these instincts seem to be brutal, it still makes sense because if any species of animal is to endure, then it has to ensure its offspring will survive to adulthood.
This then is why in most species of animals the mother has very powerful maternal instincts. In the evolutionary theories invented by neo-Dawinists they always focus on the power and strength of the males. Yet the most important factor in the survival of any species is the behaviour of females. To be fair the Selfish Gene theory does acknowledge the role of the mother.
He is willing to accept that except for some species of birds, it is females who have most to do with ensuring the next generation will survive and go on to reproduce again. Whist for many species the male has very little to do with helping their offspring and in some cases will hinder and sabotage the efforts of the mother to protect and care for her young. Yet Dawkins seem to see this as a clever strategy by males in putting all his efforts into passing on his genes to as many females as possible.
So what is the role of the male in survival of the species? In most species of birds the male bird behaves like “a new man” in that they help to make nests, and sit on eggs and feed the chicks. This is not the case in most mammals, which is what we are. Male lions have been witnessed killing cubs whom he hasn’t fathered. Lionesses do most of the hunting in prides but the male lion will use his larger size to bully the lionesses away to feed first, or even steal the food completely from the lionesses. In spite of the fact, it is far more important for the survival of the pride, and his own off spring, that lionesses take priory in feeding, if she has to suckle young or is pregnant. In many mammals the only job the male does is to impregnate the females.
Of course we human males are not like this, are we? If we get a girl pregnant we always stick by her and help look after the kid, don’t we? Well, some of us do. A very large number of young men leave girls who get pregnant and refuse to pay maintenance. After all, the child might not be his! And anyway it wasn’t his idea to have children! She should have taken the pill or something. Why can’t she just get an abortion? I mean he had nothing to do with it, did he? All he wanted was a bit of fun and certainly not being saddled with a screaming brat, the rest of his life.
In most species of mammals the females are more than capable of feeding and protecting her young herself. Even in herd animals except in the case of buffaloes and cattle the males don’t get involved in protecting the young, and will run off like everyone else if approached by a predator. So if males don’t do much in caring and protecting of the young, what do they do? It seems what they do best, is fight each other.
Fighting seems to be the common pastime among most types of male animals. We have animals like stags, bulls and rams that every spring goes in for bashing their heads together. Or giraffes who also use their head as a weapon as they swing it on their long neck. Which makes boxing, and the damage that can be done to the brain by being punched in the head, seem quite sane and sensible. So why do male animals go in for head banging and inflicting damage to each other? According to evolutionists it has something to do with the male sex drive.
In the “survival of the fittest” theory, it is important that only the strongest male animals mates with the females. So the instinct for males to fight each other is a test of strength to ensure that only the strongest will pass on their genes to the next generation. Though this theory doesn’t always work out in practice. Studies done on the coyote show that although male coyotes will fight each other for the privilege of mating, the females will not always pick the winner. Some females have been observed driving off the winner and mating with the loser. Clearly this is a case where coyotes need someone to teach them how the theory of evolution works.
If we take all the knowledge we have on the observation of animals in the wild and apply it to human behaviour we can see a similarity. It was once normal for non-Christian kings and tribal chiefs to have more than a hundred wives and hundreds of children. Which makes sense, in evolutionary theory, because he would be the alpha male in the community. So would have a desire to pass on his genes to as many offspring as possible. In this way, he is not behaving much differently from a stag or lion who have a harem of females and tries to mate with all of them.
Many alpha males in the animal world have territories, which they fight for against other males. Again we see similar behaviour among humans. Kings, and tribal chiefs, would also have territories that he would claim as his, and fight other kings or chiefs who trespass on his borders. It is even possible to make out a case for genocide using this argument. Lions will kill cubs that are not his when he takes over a pride. So it would also be “normal” for conquerors to kill and wipe out those who are not the same race as themselves. Which is what happened when Europeans invaded the Americas and Australia, where the native people were slaughtered and very nearly wiped out.
So that’s all right then. It is “normal” for men to fight each other, have wars between countries and even practice genocide. Which is great if you are a psychopath and enjoy killing other people. You can kill as many other people as you like, and it’s all right, because it is all about the survival of the fittest! If you are the sort of person who is a bit of a wimp, because you actually care about others, then there is a real problem with these theories.
In recent years neo-Darwinism has used genetics to back up theories of the selfish gene. According to his theory the whole of life is basically selfish. Now this as a purely erudite theory confined to ivory towers of the academic world. Unfortunately such theories tend to leak out into real life. Where it tells people it is perfectly all right to be selfish. Then we have social Darwinism, which can be used to justify all sorts of selfish and brutal behaviour. It was taken to the extreme by the Nazis who used the concept of the “survival of the fittest” as one of their justifications for practicing genocide on Jews, Slavs and Gypsies.
The problem is that men who do take a very masculine point of view invent these theories. We hear about, “man the mighty hunter” theories where at one time scientists claimed that it was Stone-Age hunters that caused the extinction of Mammoths and other giant animals of the Ice-Age. Now this theory has changed and it is accepted that it was rapid climate change that caused this mass extinction. At one time when male palaeontologists found the sites of human settlements in the Stone Age they would concentrate on flints used in hunting. It was only when female palaeontologists also began to excavate these sites that they began to notice other stones that would have been used to grind up seeds. (Stones that male scientists had previously discarded as being of no importance). So we can see that the masculine attitudes of male scientists and academics can greatly influence their theories and what they discover.
As men are naturally competitive and think that the whole of life is a game of winners and losers. It would make sense that men see evolutionary theory the same way. They would concentrate on any competition they see like a predator going after a grazing animal, and totally ignore any example of co-operation. Like the way bees and plants work together, in that the plant gives the bees pollen, while the bee fertilised other flowers by transporting the pollen from flower to flower. Or plants producing fruit for animals to eat, then the fruit has seeds inside them that are planted in the ground when the animal defecates. Or birds that feed off the hides of large grazing animals, who allow them to do this, as the bird get rid of troublesome insects. There are as many observations in the wild of life co-operating with each other, as there are of life competing against each other. Also in any competition, no forms of life can afford to become winners. Predators that become too successful can end up making extinct the animals they feed on, and in turn will become extinct through starvation.
Neo-Darwinian theories tell us that male animals have an instinct to impregnate and pass on his genes to as many females as possible. This then makes sense of young men’s desires to “sow their wild oats”. It also makes sense of why many young men have a very cavalier attitude towards birth control. Where many men claim that, “having sex with a condom is like having a shower in a raincoat.” I know when I was a young man in the 1960s I was told of a trick to fool young women. Apparently these young men would cut the bottom off condoms. Then in the half-light of having sex in the back of a car the girl would see him put on the condom ring, not realising that the bottom half was missing. The problem with this was that illegitimate children were still a very big issue in the 1960s and abortion was still illegal. I do wonder about the tragedies caused by tricks like this with young pregnant girls being thrown out of their homes to fend for themselves, for “disgracing” their parents. But then as explained to me, “any girl who has sex before marriage is only a whore or slut”. So that’s all right.
Its strange how people never worked out the inconstancy of this? It was a taboo then that young women didn’t have sex before marriage, but the attitude also was there was something seriously wrong with a young man who was still a virgin by the time he was 18. With whom were young men supposed to have sex with? Prostitutes, “sluts” and “whores” of course. These women made young men feel like “real men” and were rewarded by being treated with contempt and derision.
These sorts of attitudes are even more tragic in Africa. Many young men in Africa refuse to use condoms, which allows Aids to flourish in that continent. Causing deaths to millions of people. But not to worry, these young men have found the prefect solution to the Aids problem. Apparently if you have sex with a virgin, it cures Aids. Yea really! What is more, the younger the girl the better it works. You don’t say! So of course it means men with Aids are perfectly justified in raping pre-adolescent girls. I mean you wouldn’t want to stop men from being cured of Aids would you? All right it didn’t work the first few times they tried it, but perhaps they haven’t done it enough times. Or the girls weren’t young enough, but keep at it and it will eventually work. Won’t it?
In the meantime, what about the young girls being given Aids by these men before they are even teenagers? There is a deafening silence about this, but then as evolutionists will explain, men have a powerful instinct to pass on his genes to as many women as possible. So the poor boys can’t help it. There, there. (Though it has to be admitted that condoms as not as easy to obtain in the African bush as they are in any Western town or city. Also recent research shows that Aids also may be carried by contaminated needles when vaccinating the population for other diseases).
The irresponsible attitude of many men is also fuelling the Aids epidemic in the West. It seem there is a type of man who has the mentality of a psychopath and will use their penis as a genuine killing weapon. In that, they are aware they have Aids or HIV and yet will knowingly infect other men and women and will get very offended if it is suggested they use a condom.
The very irresponsible attitude of many men towards women, children and other men puts doubt on another theory invented by academic men about the Stone Age. The theory was that, not only was man, “the great white hunter”, (even in pictures of Stone-Age men in Africa he was painted as white up until very recently), he was a good husband as well. The man went out killing Mammoths and presumably carried it to the cave on his back to feed his family. He also protected his wife and children by fighting off Sabre Tooth Tigers and Giant Wolves. (What a man). The reasoning why Stone Age man would do this is because he had this instinct to pass on his genes so he needed to protect his women and children to do so. This attitude doesn’t seem to have been passed down to many modern men, who do their best to get out of paying child support. Also this theory assumes that men in the Stone Age were married or pair bonded. Marriage, and pair bonding, is an idea invented by religions like the Christian Church, (The Muslims allow men to have many wives as did the Chinese up until the communist take-over). The Church also need laws, taboos and social censor to enforce marriage. If marriage or pair bonding was natural for us, the Church wouldn’t needs to force us to marry and stay faithful. (Which large numbers of people don’t do). The reason religions enforce customs that women remain faithful to one man, is that it is the only way a man can be sure that the children of women he lives with are his.
With the break down of marriage in recent years we find men who are happy to live with and support women with children who are not his. Clearly this in another case where these men need to be re-educated about their desire to pass on their genes. Perhaps if they are taught neo-Darwinian they will, “naturally” kill the children their partners previously had with another man and then force her to become pregnant with this sperm.
Now anyone reading this book might get the impression I disagree with Darwin’s theory of evolution. I am not against the theory that says that one species of animal evolved from another. That has been proven in the fossil record. The problem is the means by which this happened. Theories like, “the survival of the fittest”, “nature red in tooth and claw”, or “the selfish gene” are just reflections of a very competitive, masculine point of view. If a man is competitive, aggressive and selfish in his attitude then he will naturally want to claim that the whole of life is like this, as it justifies his belligerent behaviour. In much the same way as a bigoted and intolerant priest will want to claim that god is very judgmental and punitive, for the same reason.
“The survival of the fittest” and “selfish gene” theories are not the only shows in town. There is another theory around that doesn’t go against evolutionary theory but takes it from a completely different point of view. This is called the Gaia hypothesis.
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Chapter Three - The Theory Of One
When Dawkins presented his selfish gene theory one section of the population very much disagree with this theory and that was the homosexual community. The foundation of the Dawkins’s theory is that all genes are programmed to want to reproduce themselves. This means our basic instincts are to, “go forth and multiply”. That is of course, unless you are gay. Homosexual relationships do not produce children. This has caused a big problem for the selfish gene theory, more so when some scientists have claimed to have found “gay genes”. Because of this, supporters of Dawkins have made claims that homosexuality is not caused by genetics. Even fundamentalist Christian have since become supporters of the selfish gene theory as it more or less “proves” that homosexuality is unnatural.
The problem with this is that homosexuality is that it is not exclusive to humans. Same-sex activity has been observed in 450 species of birds and mammals. This includes the macho lion, where males have been observed to sodomise each other. So does this mean that, “The king of the beasts”, is a queen after all? In species as diverse as the Japanese macaques, the mountain sheep, the giraffes and flamingo homosexuality is more commonplace than heterosexual behaviour. Unfortunately zoologist and ethnologists have kept quiet about this because even today animal homosexual behaviour is not seen as “natural”. This is why in wild life films, although they like to show the violence of animals killing each other or having heterosexual sex, homosexual behaviour is still censored.
The point is that it doesn’t matter if homosexuality is caused by genes, environment or choice. If people and animals are involved in same sex relationship to the degree it interferes with their ability or desire to reproduce. Then it undermines the theory that the only purpose of life is to reproduce it’s genes.
Then there is the problem that not all heterosexual people want to multiply. With the freedom that Feminism has given women some have made a deliberate decision not the have children. While other women who have problems in reproduction are happy to adopt children. If passing on their genes were the most important instinct in people, then these women would have no interest in bringing up other people’s children. The same is true for men, not all men get to become fathers and many men today are happy being stepfathers. So do we then condemn these people as unnatural perverts because like homosexuals they don’t have a powerful desire to reproduce?
This is true for other species of animals. It is true that some male lions will kill the young of pride he hasn’t fathered, but not all lions do this. Other lions have been observed to accept cubs fathered by other males in the pride. So it is not a hard and fast rule that all males are obsessed by wanting to pass on their genes. This is true of females as well. Yes female animals have been observed to ignore young that have be orphaned. Yet there are many other cases of females mothering young that are not hers. There have even been cases of mothers of one species caring for the young of another species. As in the case of wild-children where human children have been cared for by female animals. So it seems that there are many humans and animals that are not conforming to Dawkins’s theory. Perhaps we need to employ animal trainers for wild animals to train males to murder young that are not theirs and train females to ignore any young that is not hers. To make the theory work.
If there is a real problem with the selfish gene theory what is the alternative?
Mystics have for centuries claimed we are all one mind, one spirit. This concept has never caught on as it seems to go against all our personal experiences of competition and conflict with others. So is seen by ordinary people as to be a unrealistic fantasy. Then a scientist called James Lovelock developed a scientific theory that claimed the whole of life on this Earth is simply ONE ORGANISM. Which at first sight seem incredible but his theory answers many mysteries about the nature of life.
Back in the 1960s James Lovelock was employed by NASA to find ways a space craft could discover if there was life on Mars. So he started by examining the atmosphere of Mars to see it that would give a clue to signs of life. To understand this better he decided to examine the atmosphere of Earth and compared it with Mars. What he discovered was that the atmosphere on Mars was very stable and inert. Unlike Earth which had an unstable and dynamic atmosphere, because life itself was continually changing the gases within it. He then realised that you don’t have to send a spacecraft to Mars to find out if it had life. You could do it by simply examining its atmosphere. Which is not what his bosses in NASA wanted to hear, because they needed a reason to convince politicians to fund a space mission to Mars. This resulted in him and NASA parting company, but he continued to develop his ideas further. As his studies of the Earth’s atmosphere presented him with a number of scientific puzzles.
Every school child knows that there is a cycle where animals convert oxygen into carbon dioxide while plants convert carbon dioxide back into oxygen once again. But Lovelock took this concept even further, he looked at a mystery that no one had addressed, and that was although life began 3 - 4 billion years ago, the temperature of the Earth has changed very little in that time. The problem with this is that the sun 3 billion years ago was 30% colder, than today and has since been steadily heating up. The answer seems to be that 3 billion years ago the Earth’s atmosphere had more carbon dioxide in it. Even though the sun was cooler the CO2 created a greenhouse effect and so keeping the temperature the same as it is today. Since then the levels of carbon dioxide have slowly fallen to keep the temperature of the Earth stable. So that’s all right, problem solved.
Then Lovelock went on to ask a further question. How was it possible for the carbon dioxide to decrease over a period of 3-4 billion years AT EXACTLY THE SAME RATE THE SUN WAS WARMING UP. This is a real a problem, when you realise that by just making the Earth a few degrees colder can bring on an ice age. Also it only needs 10 degree increase or decrease in the earth’s temperature to make the vast majority of life extinct. So how has the Earth kept in the very narrow range of temperatures to make life on Earth possible? There was no answer to this and to say it was just a lucky fluke was stretching credibility a bit too far.
Then Lovelock came across other amazing coincidences. At present 21% of the atmosphere is oxygen. Now oxygen is a very dangerous and volatile gas. If it was to increase to 25% (only 4% higher) and a fire was to start, through a lightening strike, it would be impossible to put it out. Even green and wet vegetation will continue to burn causing all vegetation on the earth to quickly burn up. Yet lower levels of oxygen would seriously effect the energy efficiency of animals. This means the oxygen levels on the Earth are about the most effective we need for life, without it increasing to a dangerous level. Yet life is continually taking oxygen out of the atmosphere and putting it back again. So how does life get it so right? In that it doesn’t take too much oxygen out of the atmosphere thereby reducing the efficiency of animal respiration, or get it too high and create a worldwide disaster. What is more, life has been able to do this delicate balancing act for billions of years.
Lovelock realised that as it was life itself producing both carbon dioxide and oxygen and it was life that was regulating temperature and oxygen levels of the Earth, within the parameters to make life on earth possible. He was to find many more coincidences like this. Life also needs a chemical balanced world that is either too acid or too alkaline. Which is what we find on Earth, unlike both Venus and Mars who have environments that are too acid to support life. It seems that Earth has many forms of microorganisms that are working away to keep our world chemically neutral. He presented all his ideas in a scientific meeting about the origins of life but his ideas went down like a lead balloon. Only two scientists took a interest in his ideas, one being Lynn Margulis who had a background in Life science and was able to later help him to present and develop his ideas even further.
It took about 20 years for the scientific community to take his ideas seriously. (After all only theories that nature is very savage, brutal and selfish make sense. The idea that all life works in harmony, is the stuff of fairy tales) As the evidence piled up in favour of Lovelock, many scientists are now very reluctantly accepting his hypothesis, though he still gets his detractors, and guess who is one of his biggest critic? It is not a surprise to learn it is Richard Dawkins. A man, who tries to prove that life is basically selfish, is not going to be sympathetic to any idea that the whole of life is one organism.
Though Dawkins himself even admits that many species of animal do co-operate with each other for their mutual benefit, like the aphids who live in ants nests. The aphids get the benefit of being protected by the ants while the ants milk the aphids for food. Yet in when discussing life that helps each other he prefers to see it in terms of manipulation. He would rather use the word “bearers” instead of “carers” when writing about animals who care for the young. Hinting perhaps that bearers are suckers or losers. While the idea that any form of life could possibly give or help others because they love and care for them is completely ignored.
Another criticism of the Gaia hypothesis is that there is no very large brain laying around the place directing life and telling it what to do. Yet this problem is the same we have about social insects like Ants, Termites and Bees. They live in complex societies with different insects having very different roles, (like workers, queens, drone and soldiers). Yet what makes these nests and hives work is a mystery because these insects have minuscule brains and no obvious leader. (The queen is seen as the leader, but her role in directing what goes on in the nest is still a mystery). The Gaia hypothosis just treats the whole of life on this planet as a far bigger and more complex version of a beehive, with different species of animals, plants and microorganisms all having different roles in keeping the planet going. This is similar to the concepts of the Collective Unconscious that was put forward by the psychologist Carl Jung. Who discovered that the unconscious minds of his patients were remarkably similar. This means, we don’t have to have an enormous brain lying around somewhere, to make the Gaia theory work. The whole of life can be the brain and intelligence of the planet.
If this is true then what is the role of human beings? After all we seem to be busy destroying the earth with thousands of species of animals and plants becoming extinct through the actions of men. Also we now have global warming where we are heating up the planet. Yet the planet has even got a bigger crisis than the meddling of a naked ape. As pointed out earlier the sun is slowing heating up, and life counteracts this by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The problem is now carbon dioxide is down to just 0.03% of the atmosphere. So it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the planet will not be able to take much more CO2 out the atmosphere if the sun continues to warm up. So the strategy of using carbon dioxide as a means of regulating the temperature of the earth is coming to a end, as there is only a small amount of this gas left. This means life has to devise a new system in which to do this. So perhaps the creation of a clever monkey like humans with hands that can manipulate the environment, is part of this new strategy. Hopefully we will in time produce technology that can keep our planet cool, as the sun heats up. Or we can transport life from our planet to others planets or moons or even other stars with planetary systems. Admittedly at present we are not doing well, in that we are heating up the planet through industrial pollution. Yet even this may be part of the plan. In that an environmental catastrophe caused by global warming may make us human being realise the importance of looking after the planet. We now have the technological power to destroy the Earth, which we might do through thoughtless and irresponsible action. Because we still have a attitude of wanting to plunder and exploit the environment for our selfish gain. Once we wake up to the fact that to damage and destroy the world is to also to destroy ourselves. Then we may change our attitude and use our science and technology to save Gaia instead of trying to attack her.
Now an intellectual argument between Lovelock and Dawkins is not going have much effect on the lives of normal people. It only happens when these ideas are taken from the ivory towers of academic debate and are used by people like politicians and businessmen. We can see this clearly with the ideas of Social Darwinism that has been popularised by people like Andrew Carnegie. Which advocates competitive individualism and a market economy unregulated by government. I also have to say the Nazis used Social Darwinism as a justification for the genocide of “inferior” races. This then means that academic debate on the nature of life can be used as political tools in the hands of politicians.
So how have the theories of Lovelock and Dawkins been used? Clearly Dawkins’ ideas are just another support for Social Darwinism, and conservative politics. While Lovelock’s ideas have been taken up by the New Age movement. Though Lovelock himself is clearly not a New Ager in that he was a scientific adviser to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. He advocated then that Britain builds far more nuclear power stations and not worry about radiation contamination. He claimed that we receive enough radiation poisoning from the Sun so a little more is not going to harm us. (This was the position of many scientists until very recently. Then it was discovered that life has as much radiation poisoning from the Sun as it can cope with and even a small increase will greatly escalate the amount of cancers and other illnesses.)
So what effect has the Gaia hypothesis had on the public? Not a lot it seems, perhaps the idea that we are all one mind and one organism is too boring. Concepts like, “nature red in tooth and claw” is far more exciting and dramatic. While the Selfish Gene theory and Social Darwinism gives us license to behave as selfishly and badly as we like. If we were to think in terms that we are all One, we would have all the problems of caring about others and worrying about things like world poverty. Not a good idea. If we go down that route, we might think we need to take a more responsible attitude to the planet and all the life forms that live on it. When it’s far, far easier to ignore all this and dull our minds with drink, drugs and consumer goods, to escape the suffering we create for others and ourselves.
The Gaia hypothesis also reflect many ideas in mysticism that we are all one mind, one spirit, but ideas like this only appeal to a minority of people. The problem for Gaia is that Oneness is a very feminine concept in much the same way as Social Darwinism is very masculine. So masculine competition is the foundation of Social Darwinism, while Gaia is about all of life co-operating with each other for the good of the whole. Feminists and other women see co-operation as being very feminine and the ideal they all want to achieve. Something they see as completely impossible while we live in a male dominated society.
Also the idea that life is dominated by masculine principles is the same as the concept, that a male god created our world. So it means neo-Darwinist and patriarchal religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam have in one way a similar view of the world. While the Gaia theory says that the whole of life is dominated by the feminine. (So it is of interest that it was named after a Goddess). This means that a person’s individual bias of wanting to live in either a masculine or feminine world, can greatly influence the religion or scientific theory they want to belong or subscribe to.
We all live in a masculine world that Feminists have pointed out is created by men for men. Just by reading history or reading today’s newspapers we can see clearly how a masculine world operates. Where the three Cs, conflict, confrontation and competition is the name of the game. The problem is that the masculine world is the only world we know. Read any history books and you don’t find it describing societies ruled by women, neither do you find equal societies. It is true that there are Ancient Greek and Roman stories of the Amazons but they are just myths, aren’t they? So it is natural for us to assume that the masculine, patriarchal society is normal and natural.
Likewise if you read books about pre-history and the Stone Age you will also get the impression that men have always been the dominant sex. Which is used as a powerful argument against Feminism in books like The Inevitability of Patriarchy. Because if it was always the case that men were the dominant sex, even as far back as a million years ago, then we have to see Feminism as just a passing phase, a social experiment that will inevitably fail. Because the natural assertiveness of men will in the end win through and women will lose, and once again to be confined to the job of homemakers for their lords and masters. So it is only going to be a matter of time before we go back to a natural world, “where men are men and women love them for it”. Right?
Now the foundation of this powerful argument is that women have never ruled society. If we find that this is not the case and women did once rule the world, and rule communities even today in many parts of the world, then the foundations of this argument is destroyed. Women ruling the world? Surely not! You show me a history book that says this! Well yes, in official history you will never find any reference to that very taboo word matriarchy. Matriarchy has been a taboo, in our world for the last two thousand years and more. Even today it is a very controversial subject within academic circles. There are many books about matriarchal or matrifocal societies and other books tell you that pre-history matriarchal is a myth. Yet there is a lot of evidence around that says that it did once exist. As we can see from the following examples
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