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Men: who we are, what we have done... and women [1]
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Date: 2022-09-06
Credit: Zdenek Sasek
Have you watched Tosh.0 on Comedy Central? Every episode starts with a person doing something incredibly stupid like trying to jump over a garage on a skateboard. The opening endeavor always goes sideways. Broken bones ensue. That person? Invariably male, never female. That says a lot about us men. We are aggressive, impulsive, strong, and fearless.
It is also indicative of how homo sapiens has arrived at this moment in time on this tiny blue marble on the outskirts of a remote galaxy. We live in complex houses, wear clothing, have built magnificent cities. We invented machines that fly and others that roll on the ground to get us from one place to another. Most things we need to survive are supplied by someone other than me... or you. Our fundamental needs are built, manufactured, and grown by other people, then traded globally, using something as imaginary as elves: money.
We humans read, write, and communicate with one another wirelessly around the globe. We have been to outer space, to the bottom of the ocean, and lifted our species out of the dirt to unimaginable heights. We are singular among the animal kingdom in the civilization we have created.
Although women and others have significantly contributed to the creation of civilization, it is the males of the species, skateboards in tow, who have driven us forward to where we are now. If you do not believe this, ask any man.
Before you abandon this essay as ‘just another misogynistic rant,’ consider where we really are. The water we drink and air we breathe is so polluted it kills 9 million of us annually . In our zeal to achieve, we have screwed up the climate for the entire planet. Weather events that once occurred every 100 years manifest somewhere annually wiping out another 5 million . By 2050 more than 25% of all species that exist today will become extinct. How long can we continue our current trajectory without joining them in oblivion? How hot does it have to get before someone with the proper codes loses his mind (yes, his) and ends climate change with a nuclear winter bang wiping out most of humanity?
We have named the present geologic age the Anthropocene. “Anthro” for man because we have changed this planet more than all the geologic events in the last 4 billion years... combined. We, homo sapiens, are the most destructive event this planet has experienced since life emerged.
If we men take credit for our present amazing existence, then, it is only fair that we bear responsibility for the rest of it as well. The question that begs asking is, “What lunatic put us in charge?” The answer is easy: we did. We just took over subjugating or eliminating any opposition.
We may have driven humanity to build this civilization, fuel it, and launch it to a great height, but now, we collectively are headed into the mouth of the abyss. Meanwhile the richest people on earth (men... again!) continue squabbling over who has the biggest rocket.
On a recent visit to celebrate my sister-in-law's birthday, my wife, sister-in-law, a mutual female friend, and I were in her living room. They were discussing cataracts. I say ‘they’ because I was not part of the conversation.
It occurred to me that being in the same room where a scintillating conversation is happening and being invisible is how we men have treated women throughout history unless they broke a dish, put too much salt in the stew, or the after-dinner coffee was not hot enough: as slaves or property.
While we, by male self-proclamation, have dubbed ourselves homo sapiens, chosen by God/selected by evolution as the be all and end all of the known universe, it is women who have given birth to and nurtured every human life on this planet.
This may come as a complete shock to some of you men, but women are at least as smart as we are, smarter. Marilyn von Savant is in the Guiness Book of World Records, with the highest IQ ever recorded. Where do you think calling someone a savant comes from? The contributions that women have made to our civilization are many. Without Florence Nightingale , there would be no sanitation in hospitals. Had not Dorothea Dix intervened, the mentally ill would still be in brutal, abusive asylums. Smallpox would still be killing millions annually without Mary Wortley Montagu ’s bold experiments. Clara Barton started the American Red Cross. Harriet Tubman was freeing slaves 11 years before the Civil War. Susan B. Anthony , despite formidable male opposition, spearheaded the right to vote for women. In the face of while male opposition, Rosa Parks was at the forefront of the civil rights movement in America. Rachael Carson planted the seeds for Earth Day and our fight against climate change. These are but a few of the women that have moved us toward a more equal and just society. Please note there is not a ‘skateboard’ or ‘garage’ among their accomplishments.
There is only one animal on this planet that rivals homo sapiens for building civilization: ants. They have been farming, ranching, and making alcohol for over 100 million years without destroying the planet. They are, except to procreate, all females.
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