As we struggle to leave Might Makes Right thinking behind
The dawning of the age of Aquarius
seems to have stalled out numerous times.
It’s been like this for several decades now.
And yeah, it would do us all well to realize
that certainly some of the many efforts
towards prosperity for all
have been purposefully thwarted
by the most stunted and MMR afflicted among us.
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But more hidden from view
is that some of the floundering
seems to be self-imposed
by those who say they want peace and prosperity for all,
but are often pretty blind
to some of the very same biases
that are keeping all of us mired in the mud.
We all have biases we really need to recognize and ditch.
Lots of people are trying to step up
and help us all find our way to “the emerging future”,
they want to help us
take the “evolutionary next step.”
There are a ton of good people out there
who want to “lead us through these trying times”
to the “dawn of a new day.”
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And it seems like those who become the most popular AND listened to
Of all the many folks trying to lead us
into a better world
are men.
Caring men, supportive men,
people who are good, who also happen to be men.
And that’s great, except their movements continue to fizzle out
before they get enough critical mass going,
and I don’t see that changing.
#
Petra spluttered a bit in a corner, then said, “Sharon, I’m not quite sure where you’re going with this.”
Sharon stopped typing long enough to say, “It’s still first drafty stuff, okay? I just want to follow my thoughts through, then I’ll clean them up.” Petra emanated the equivalent of an eye roll and threw some skeptical energies around the room, but said nothing else. She’d run into this mode of reasoning before. Sharon continued.
The road to continued hell is paved with good intentions,
and -as is currently de rigueur-
is also filled with people who are
trying to both save humanity, and monetize the revolution
for their own comfort.
They are looking to monetize humanity’s next evolutionary steps.
Or at least their publishers are.
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This amazing book will do it.
Alternatively, for only $35 a month you too
can bring about a beautiful new egalitarian world.
For this low monthly fee, about a dollar a day,
you’ll gain access to a group of like-minded individuals
We’ll all become enlightened for this low, low price. Isn’t that freakin’ great?
“Sharon!” Petra flitted around nervously. “You have to get serious about actually creating a follow up book for the series. You need to produce stuff that’s easy enough to understand and, uh, a gently engaging pathway for readers so they can get a better understanding of how to deal with MMR. Do you think sarcasm is the best choice here?”
Sharon looked up, blew a strand of hair out of her eyes, sighed and said, “Okay.”
Then she started typing again.
But seriously, plenty of good-hearted men are out there
trying to bring us to better places,
and I’m 100% behind that.
Really.
Even if I can’t muster up much passion for their causes right now.
And really, I don’t begrudge them (too much)
for trying to make a living in this endeavor.
It’s still pretty much early days
for this brave new Anthropocene,
and we all still gotta eat.
But they won’t succeed.
It’s as simple as that.
“Sharon,” Petra barked, “Get serious!”
Sharon looked up briefly, said “I am!” before ducking her head back down. She had barely paused in her typing.
Many of these male leaders will probably have monetary success,
but they won’t fully succeed in changing the world
as much as anyone really wants.
Why? Because they almost all still have remnants of MMR lurking in their mindsets.
The same thought processes
that millions upon millions of people
of all genders are still afflicted with.
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Yes, I’m generalizing here, but bear with me.
For the next several paragraphs
I will continue to generalize
in this first freaking draft, Petra.
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As a result, you will see the phrase: (in general) added to many sentences.
It’s this simple: (in general) dudes need to sit the hell down,
and listen to Others
Who (in general) have insights that they do not.
And I say that with all the love I can muster.
And I say that because (in general)
most men are still infected with MMR
even when they are trying their damnedest to be benevolent.
They still think and lead in ways that are
less than optimal for what the situation really calls for-
which is a -complete- pivoting
to compassion based, collaborative strategies.
Even the most present of present men,
share from the male human perspective.
And a male vision is great, it is fine and necessary,
but it is ONLY half the story.
Meaning: male informed visions
of what would be a truly just society
cannot help but differ (in general)
from those of what most women will envision,
Even if the differences appear to be only slight.
Even when men are trying their damnedest to be inclusive.
After all, wiser folks than me have pointed out:
a one degree course difference
can easily add up to missing the mark
by hundreds, thousands, or millions of miles in the long run.
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And the past ten thousand years have given us patriarchy,
and all sorts of other hierarchy based assumptions.
And (don’t know if you’ve noticed) decisions
based on values that are considered important
in a profit driven patriarchy
have been -directly- responsible for
people starving to death due to the greed and callousness of a few,
the Arctic reaching 100 degrees several times during the summer,
and millions of acres being burned -before- the official start of the California wildfire season.
The year is 2020. It’s a shit storm.
Men have been in charge.
Sorry, boys, that’s simply not a fucking coincidence.
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“Might makes right” mindsets have brought us to this point,
and we’ve been as drunk as skunks to not notice how impaired we’ve been.
We need an immediate and —complete— rethinking of our core assumptions
in order to survive as a species.
In short:
Compassion needs to be
our number one decision making litmus test
going forward.
And
Women have been (in general) socialized to be attuned to compassion,
much more than men.
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But, according to the UN, well over 80% of people worldwide have some bias against
the 3.865 billion female perspectives
on the planet,
so this rant is quite likely to fall on deaf ears.[1]
Because due to that disheartening social fact:
Women aren’t listened to very carefully or given much credibility
when we share our perspectives.
This is reality,
Despite literally billions of us saying that
we don’t want to live in a world of inequality.
We do.
We live in a world of very harmful inequality
along many dimensions
And the only way to change that
Is to…change
WHO we listen to and respond to.
And changing/growing,
is (in general)
Done in incremental shifts.
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Problem is
Certain (in general) male decision makers
have fucked up the world so thoroughly,
we don’t really have a ton of time
to simply let an incremental series of shifts
lead us on out of the messes we’ve made.
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We NEED to change course drastically, NOW.
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Still with me? Good, there’s more:
It’s desperate times and all that.
And because of that,
the good guys,
The save the world guys are on a mission.
And, well, folks on missions
(In general) tend to be convinced of their righteousness
And of their own exceptionalism.
So they (in general) are not gonna stop
sharing their visions of the world,
or leading from their male points of view.
And because they are not gonna stop,
they will continue to muddy the waters
while women are also speaking.
While women are providing the exact kind of input
humanity needs,
and trying to be heard over the cacophony.
Women are already leading in fantastic ways
in many places down on the planet.
But they simply aren’t being noticed as much as they should be
because (in general) men tend to garner more attention
They just do.
Pick your cliche: too many cooks in the kitchen;
too many fire chiefs, not enough fire fighters;
a Tower of Babel of competing ideas result.
And whenever the word “compete” comes up,
Human ego is sure to follow.
And as so often happens down there,
lovely humanitarian visions slowly morph into egoic concerns.
Turf wars result, boundaries are drawn, egos emerge.
And predictably, because they are (in general) more infected by MMR,
males will drown out females.
History has shown this to be true.
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In short, in the US at least,
the likelihood of enough men
sitting down, shutting up, and listening to Others
who can lead us away
from the numerous disasters we face
is close to zero
So we are fucking doomed.
And that is the end of this story.
#
“What? Nope!” Petra’s reaction was immediate. She tsked at Sharon loudly, and brightly flitted her energies around the room. “Won’t do! Try again!”
But I’m tired! Sharon said, getting up from her keyboard.
“Obviously, and more than a little bit crazy, and cranky. But it’s long past time to do this. You need to just sit your ass back down in that chair, and take it in a different direction. You hear me?” Petra barked the words out, but then quickly added a flash of friendly energy, and fluttered sparks around the room. Sharon watched sourly as little sparks seemed to jump around randomly. Then Petra said much more mischievously, “Ha, see what I did there?”
Sharon looked puzzled.
Another shower of sparks occurred. “I took my energies in different directions. I’m modeling for you!”
Sharon shook her head humorlessly at Petra’s antics, and sat down, scowling. But she had apparently listened. Because her fingers began to bang on the keyboard again.
#
Honestly, a huge bunch of humans are infected with MMR mindsets,
So why does gender matter?
What does it matter who leads us
out of the messes we’ve created?
Well, gender matters a great deal at this point in time.
And, while the main differences
between “men”and “women”
are rooted in the differences in socialization,
there are two major considerations
that are rooted in biology,
of all things.
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Clearly, the utterly massive
massive
massive effects of socialization [2]
are responsible for the vast majority
of how humans think about life and their places in it
but we are also vessels endowed with certain biological realities.
And I think two huge biological realities are often overlooked
or conceived of in ways that are not terribly helpful.
So, let’s take a look at them, shall we?
First, in the aggregate,
women are less afflicted by MMR mindsets because they are smaller
and an MMR mindset is less advantageous to them.
Imagine women being like giraffes for just a moment,
and men being shaped more like grazing animals that live closer to the ground,
javelinas or pigs maybe, just for the sake of argument.
Javelinas are cute as all get out. Pigs can be too.
Not trying to diss on men here, just drawing out the analogy, really.
The pigs are happy enough rooting around in the ground for roots and truffles and stuff.
And because the pigs were in charge for most of known history,
both giraffes and pigs have learned to get sustenance from grazing low to the ground, or even in the earth.
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But if a giraffe were given a real choice between eating leaves from a tree,
or picking a diet of roots-
it would be just all kinds of stupid for a giraffe to pick the root diet, really.
Even if it had been socialized to do so, or its ancestors had done so for generations.
And the reality is that throughout the world,
women tend to be smaller than men,
and so “solutions”based in MMR infected thinking
are naturally going to seem less advantageous or “logical”to them.
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And that matters because…
All kinds of horrific “solutions” like
War are based on might makes right.
Authoritarianism is based in might makes right.
Resorting to violence only makes sense
to those who think they can
physically overpower others.
And historically, we have an entire world built on this kind of
Utterly primitive nonsense.
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All of our hierarchy ideas about “superiority”
Just happen to be ones that have been enforced
via
the ability to inflict violence on Others.
These kinds of “solutions,” assumptions and values
quite honestly, make very little intuitive sense
to the smaller half of any species.
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There is no place for violence
In a world full of prosperity and thriving for all
Yet collectively, we keep resorting to it.
In large part
because men have been so over represented in decision making
and many of them are either consciously or unconsciously
adherents to the ideas of might makes right.
Get it?
Please take the time to understand that point.
Because it’s pretty freakin’ important.
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So that is one major reason why
I suggest men get the hell out of the way
while women find real solutions to our problems.
Solutions that will likely be
based higher in space rather than the utterly primitive
and unnecessarily brutal ways of might make right.
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The second way biology creates
a very important difference in escaping MMR infected psychologies-
comes down to nothing less than the ability to give birth.
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So, let’s think about this little idea called “giving birth.”
Throughout the world it is females[3],
not males who give birth to new life.
Across all cultures and virtually all species,
it is females who
give birth to new life,
And what is new life,
but quite literally a new way of being?
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In humans, men help, obviously with the fertilization and all,
and truly they can help -a lot- or be uninvolved louts- with the gestation period as well.
They can even be great midwives, if they learn
the intricacies of
how to help in this matter.
.
But women do the heavy pushing, they do the hard work, the grunt work,
and it’s the most important and difficult work that humans engage in-
far more so than any stupid warring or commerce based ideas.
If war stopped, humans would have a better quality of life.
If we changed our conceptions about commerce,
life would go on probably for the better,
but if women stopped giving birth?
Well, I’m not gonna go there.
Here’s another aspect of it,
No matter how much
a new life is wanted,
bringing new life into the world,
always and unavoidably involves
pain and suffering.
and it is a dangerous time as well.
Plenty die when birthing goes wrong.
.
While some say that it is the human species
that suffers the most during birth,
I certainly wouldn’t want to be a javelina or a giraffe giving birth
with all those sharp hooves and stuff…
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Anyway, the point remains,
giving birth is a dangerous time and it causes pain.
And if all goes well,
it results in something glorious-
new life, new ways of being.
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And guess what?
We are collectively living in a very dangerous time
and in a shit ton of collective pain right now-
if you haven’t noticed.
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So?
So we’re having contractions, that’s what!
Obvious fucking contractions!
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And men need to stop thinking they can be the ones who give birth.
They need to stop pretending they can do the same work, or better.
They simply can’t.
When it comes to fertilizing eggs and gestating and giving birth,
we have some biologically based realities on this planet.
and it’s women [4]
who. give. birth.
to new life.
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And if the contractions are any indication at all,
Birth is imminent- as in: it’s happening now!!!
So, anyone not involving in birthing a new entity or world
should just sit the hell down,
shut the hell up,
and. do. what. we. say.
when we bark out orders
during these currently very trying times.
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It really becomes quite obvious and simple
once the hubristic entitlement is banished
out of the heads of all MMR infected folks.
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If you’re not literally able to birth new life,
then just sit down, listen to those who are temporarily steering the boat,
and. do. what. we. say.
Screams are completely natural at a time like this,
and even in the best of times when birthing new life.
But- we are not in the best of times.
Do you see how many problems the world is facing?
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Dudes, if you want to help, focus on the wealth inequities first
Go after the fucking billionaires, the oligarchs
who have taken over the governments,
even in “good parties”
and even in the so called “democracies”
where millions live in stunning levels of inequality.
They are literally killing the planet,
and they are buying politicians,
while they use god and culture wars to distract you
from noticing that.
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Back to birthing: Screams are natural.
We are living in scary times,
and we’re having a friggin’baby.
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There are a whole host of motherducking disastrous environmental,
economic, civil rights, and health issues
surrounding our giving birth.
And, I really do hate to keep pointing this out,
But it matters
that by and large these artificially imposed issues
were created by folks with might makes right mentalities.
And mostly those folks have been men.
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Dudes too greedy and selfish to notice other humans.
We’ve had all of recorded history
to see what dudes can do
when they are in charge.
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And, well, here we fucking are:
War is endemic, people routinely starve to death
because of the greed of some
and it is estimated that only 20% of humanity is anywhere near thriving.
Plus, it now reaches 100 degrees in the fucking arctic circle in the summer.
So, dudes can sit down, listen closely, and follow our leads.
#
Using compassion and love,
women[5]need to be doing the leading,
giving birth to the new ideas and new ways of living,
thank you so very much.
The computer keys were silent for a couple of moments. Finally, Sharon squinted into the corner where she’d last felt Petra’s presence and yelled, “How’s that?”
“Better.” Petra’s energies could be easily felt hovering over Sharon’s shoulder as she read over a few more lines. “Actually, it’s not half bad. Needs a bit of cleaning up though.” Petra finally declared.
“I think I’m gonna scream.” Sharon muttered grimly.
“Makes sense, you are birthing stuff….. Hey, maybe you could call it ‘Size Really Does Matter’ or something like that?”
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[1].This link will take you to the 2020 UN Gender Norms Index landing page…so yeah, that means plenty of women don’t listen to women as much as they should either. And here’s the link to that statistic found on page 9 of the report. It’s a big assed problem. Men have been shown to listen more carefully to other men, talk over women, etc. you can look all this stuff up yourself. These are simply part of our collective realities and social facts right now. They are ugly, damning, and completely true and incredibly relevant social FACTS.
[2].As far as the nature/nurture debate goes, at this point, the wide variety of cultures, languages, values, beliefs, sets of knowledge, and huge differences in norms, customs and ideologies should show us that while nature has given us thumbs and the ability to walk on two legs, nurture (aka socialization into various cultural norms, values and assumptions) has given us basically any and everything else. You can go to this article if you want further reasoning on that point.
[3].Oh come on now: do not attempt to spin this as a transphobic talking point. It’s not. I am in no way -reducing- the concept of “women” to birthing machines. As a woman who is in menopause, I am still a woman. As a woman who has at times felt quite non binary, I am saying if a person is giving birth on this planet, they will be endowed with certain biological realities, even if they do not identify as a woman. Got it? Good, let’s move on.
[4].Oh come on now: do not attempt to spin this as a transphobic talking point. It’s not. I am in no way -reducing- the concept of “women” to birthing machines. As a woman who is in menopause, I am still a woman. As a woman who has at times felt quite non binary, I am saying if a person is giving birth on this planet, they will be endowed with certain biological realities, even if they do not identify as a woman. Got it? Good, let’s move on.
[5].Oh come on now: do not attempt to spin this as a transphobic talking point. It’s not. I am in no way -reducing- the concept of “women” to birthing machines. As a woman who is in menopause, I am still a woman. As a woman who has at times felt quite non binary, I am saying if a person is giving birth on this planet, they will be endowed with certain biological realities, even if they do not identify as a woman. Got it? Good, let’s move on.