Tuesday 3 May 2011


Patriarchy is also a danger to the planet in other ways: Back in the 19th century Swedish scientists worked out what would happen if industry kept on pumping out Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere and predicted this would create a greenhouse effect and warm up our planet. Yet this was completely ignored. Then in the 1950s scientists produced scientific instruments that could measure the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere and could measure it increasing and showed direct evidence this was happening through industry, but again this was ignored. Then in the 1980s and 90s there has been increasing evidence of global warming as scientists can now show how the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting. Yet the USA government, the ruler of biggest polluting country in the world is still not convinced. Other governments of the world are convinced but still do very little about it. So why?


To understand this we have to look the mentality of male rulers and industrial leaders. Because men are competitive then what motivates them is being winners, ‘The Number One”. So to male rulers the important thing is to gain or keep power. In democratic countries it means that what happens in the next election is all important.
So he knows that to restrict the use of motorcars or aeroplanes, because of the pollutions they give off, would lose him votes. If he is a dictator then the main focus would be making sure he is not assassinated or any other leader will challenge him for power. So all male leaders will be so caught up in their power games, that global warming will not figure very importantly in their priorities. The same is true of the industries that pollute our planet. As businessmen say; “it is the bottom line that counts”.

In the competitive world of business, businessmen know when they are doing better than their competitors when they generate larger profits than them. So in their list of priorities, profits count for far more than the survival of the planet. This means that governments are only going to do something about global warming if it is going to win them votes, while industry will only change their technology and production methods if it is going to be profitable.


Saving the planet it seems are not high on their list of priorities. What many scientists and industrialist claim is that technology and industry has got us into this mess but it will this that will get us out and solve the problem. And to be fair there is some truth in this. Cleaner technology in producing power without Carbon Dioxide is what could save the planet, but as usual, the motivation is not there. The fact is that our male political and industrial leaders just don’t care enough to do anything about global warming until it is too late. This is because trying to reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions doesn't evoke the competitive instincts of men.

If on the other hands our world was in danger of say colliding with a asteroid or comet, then male leaders would become very motivate because you would have the excitement of sending out a nuclear missiles to blow it up. Though unfortunately scientists have discovered that the best way to deal with a asteroid heading for our planet, would be to land a rocket on it and use its engines to slightly change its course, so it would miss the Earth. Which is very boring solution, compared with the option of sending up nuclear weapons to blast it out of the sky. Likewise there is no excitement, competition or profit in just reducing pollution.



The military cannot go out and blast the CO2 out of the atmosphere. Industry doesn't make a profit in reducing CO2 emissions. And as yet, politicians don’t get votes cleaning up our biosphere, so where is the motivation? The fact that greenhouse gasses could warm up our planet to the degree of destroying most of the life on our planet, it seems, is not motivation enough. It would need female leadership to care about the planet and the life on it to do something about this before it is too late. The masculine world rewards aggression competitiveness, devalue all else, defining co-operation as ‘losing’. So this then is the problem. To the male mind the whole of life is a big competitive game of winners and losers. In our male dominated societies the winners are the rich and powerful while the losers are the poor and powerless. In this ruthless world that men have created we are told; “nice guys come last”.


If we go back to the basic instincts of say two bulls fighting each other for dominance, then it is a fight to the finish. The winner doesn’t show any compassion towards the loser, in this competitive world; “the winner takes it all, the loser has to crawl”. This is true of the patriarchal world created by men, pity and compassion is seen as ‘weakness’. The lesson that pity is a weakness is shown in the last Punic War between the Roman Empire and Carthage. The Carthaginian general Hannibal invaded Italy through the Alps and defeated the Romans in every battle he fought against them. Yet when he had Rome on its knees, he held back and didn’t conquer the city of Rome. This left time for Rome to recover and they fought back to finally defeat Hannibal and the Carthage Empire. So the lesson from this; proves that pity is a weakness, if Hannibal had the killer instinct, he could of saved his country and changed the course of world history. Yet if we were to take this lesson to its logical conclusion, then it would justify genocide. In any conflict, it would be better to completely wipe out the people you have conquered, for fear they will recover and one day inflict defeat on you. So the point is; do we really want to live in a world without pity, caring or compassion? Because this is the final logic of the competitive instinct. Ruthlessness only makes sense in warfare, yet is it natural for us to be ruthless killers?


This is the claim made by some evolutionists, when they claim that evolution is all about; “the survival of the fittest”, some go on to claim that; “nature is red in tooth and claw”. So yes, to survive in our tough and brutal world we do need to be ruthless. The problem with the evolution theory, as portrayed by male scientists, women are hardly mentioned. It is all about how primitive men have bravely fought off carnivorous animals and killed game on the African plains with primitive spears. What were women doing in the meanwhile is never mentioned. Yet in the survival of any species, the role of female, is far more important than that of the male. This is because it is the female that grows the next generation in her body and brings them up when they are born.


This is even more true with the human species, because the human baby is totally helpless in the first few years of its life, it can take a child nearly 20 years before it is fully grown. Within any tribe, if most of the males die it doesn’t really matter, because one male can impregnate and fertilize hundreds of females. But if most females in a tribe were to die the tribe would take a long time to recover, because a woman can only produce one child every year. So the survival of any species of animal relies on the welfare of the women and the children they care for.

Men are basically expendable, as we only need a few of them to survive, to keep the species going. This then means that, “the survival of the fittest” is not about macho men fighting sabre tooth tigers. It is about how well women can survive and protect her young. This then means that competition, violence and warfare is a purely masculine way of seeing our world. The feminine instinct that drives not only human women but most female animals, (except for birds like the cuckoo) is about the protecting, caring and nurturing of her young. This means we have violence, warfare and poverty in our world simply because our world is ruled by men, because they are driven by the competitive instincts. If our world was ruled by women, then we would have a world dominated women’s maternal instincts of nurturing and caring.


Because men’s basic instincts are competitive, men have created hierarchical societies, structured like that of a triangle. With all the wealth and power concentrated at the top of the triangle and at the bottom are the common people who have very little power or wealth in their lives. The reason for this, is that competitive males see life in terms of winners and losers. The rich and powerful are the winners and the poor and powerless are the losers. In the game of winners and losers the winner gets all the prizes and the accolades while the loser gets nothing and is treated with contempt. This then means that in any patriarchal/hierarchical system the vast majority of people are seen as losers. And for this reason are treated with contempt by the winners; the rich and powerful.

There is off course the middle-class who have the paradox of being both winners and losers at the same time. They are winners in comparison to the working class, but losers in comparison to the upper class. This means, in extreme patriarchal societies where women are completely powerless, there is no compassion for the poor and needy, simply because they are losers. While the rulers are acclaimed like gods, because they are winners. In modern western countries we can see a difference, because women do have far more influence. Because of this, there is attempts to care for the poor, through things like unemployment benefits, minimum wage standards and free schooling and hospital care. So feminine influence can erode the macho culture of winners and losers.


If women were to have even more power and rule countries then they would naturally create genuine caring societies because women would be motivated by their nurturing and caring instincts. They would not want to see children in countries they rule, brought up in conditions of poverty and ignorance. This will mean that the wealth of the country will be shared out more equality, because far more of the resources of the country will be focused on children. Inequality will always be the fate of patriarchal countries. Even when men adopted the political beliefs of Socialism and Communism they still fail completely to create equal societies. Equality is totally alien to the masculine mind, because his instincts are competitive and competition doesn’t accept equality. In the wild if two equally matched bull elephants compete with each other for dominance, they don’t suddenly call it quits and share the females between them. They will fight it out, to the death, if both refuse to back down. In other words, equality and sharing goes against the masculine instinct.

The USA won the cold war against the USSR because capitalism is a better system than communism, for men. This is because the attempts by communism to create an equal society eliminated competition. While in the USA there was fierce competition between rival companies to produce better weapons and technology. While in the USSR there was only one company, (the state) making anything, and without this competition the USSR slowly lagged behind the USA in technology. The problem is with this argument is that it only includes men. Yes, men are highly motivated by competition, but this doesn't apply to women, those main motivation is the caring and nurturing of children. These nurturing instincts can go beyond children to women caring for old people, the disabled and the sick. When women become part of the workplace they regard the companies they work for as family, and try their best to nurture the firms they work for. So if women were put into the positions of industrial and political leaders they wouldn't have to be motivated by competition they can be motivated by caring for the people they rule. Which would create a far more caring and compassionate society. War demands that people are dehumanised and seen as simply numbers. This is because a general simply couldn't do his job if he saw the enemy or his own men as human beings.


So in the First World War, generals were not allowed to have any feelings or compassion for their own men when they ordered them to go, “over the top” to face near certain death in the face of machine gun fire. The same is true of the Second World War. British and American airman had think in terms of just destroying a city when they went on their bomber raids on German cities. They just couldn't afford to think about the large numbers of women, men and children they were killing in these raids. One of the most horrendous actions of patriarchy is genocide or ‘ethic cleansing’. What is shocking about men, is that you can convince them it is perfectly all right to murder other people because they are a different race or creed to your own. Admittedly only a minority of men are capable of this. The Germans found this out when they decided to murder the Jews, many of the soldiers ordered to do this, were so traumatize by having to commit murder, that they committed suicide. So it needed a hard core of psychopaths that were willing to carry out this crime. Yet even in peace, patriarchal rulers still treat the people they rule as numbers.

Patriarchal rulers are capable of knowing that people in the country they rule, live in poverty or are even dying of starvation and yet have no desire to do anything about this. Because caring for others is not automatic to men as it is for women. Women have a powerful maternal instinct where she automatically wants to care for and look after others, unless she has been taught through her upbringing to resist this instinct. Men can be taught how to love and care for others, but if no one in his upbringing teaches him how to love and care for others, then he may not learn this. In fact, patriarchy generally teaches him the opposite. Because patriarchal history has been dominated by warfare, then the greatest value patriarchal rulers put on men is their ability as soldiers. What is surprising about men is that they are not; “natural born killers”.


One of the biggest problems generals have had in warfare is to make their troops willing to kill the opposition. In the First World War when they were under attack, officers would walk around the trenches with drawn swords and threaten their troops with it, to make them shoot low. This is because the officers discovered that many of their troops would fire above the heads of the incoming attackers. The Japanese military had similar problems in the Second World War. Japan ranks with Southern Ireland and Switzerland as being one of the most non-violent and crime free, countries in the world. Yet in the Second World War Japanese soldiers were even worse than German and Russian troops for brutality. So how did this happen?

It seems in the 1930s and 40s the Japanese military completely brutalised their troops. The new recruits were beaten up by older recruits at the beginning of their training, then in the second year of training they were forced to do the same to the new intake. Later on many were made to kill prisoners of war, either as live dummies in bayonet practise or cutting off their heads. This total brutalisation taught Japanese soldiers to kill without pity. Yet it is of interest that the Japanese military had to go this far into brutalisation to turn their troops into killers. In very brutal societies as many third world countries, it seems men are so brutalised that they are far more likely to use violence against women to retain male dominance. Where men are less brutalised as in most industrial countries, then they are far less likely to resort to violence. Though I have to say the brutalisation of men in the West seems mostly to come from very violent films and video games. In that it helps to make violence acceptable to many young men. (Perhaps the makers of these films hope it will turn our young men into, “real “macho” men” who will put women back in their place).



The modern military of the Western World has to use clever behaviourist psychology to train their soldiers how to kill. The unfortunate effect of this is that after a conflict there is a very high suicide rate in soldiers who have fought in wars. It seem that of all the British soldiers that experienced military action during the Falklands War, more of them have since committed suicide, than died during the conflict. There is an even more shocking statistic about the Vietnam War. Where THREE TIMES as many ex-soldiers that saw action, have since committed suicide, than died in the war. Though this figure is hotly disputed there is still an agreement that it is still a very large number. So if men do get very traumatised by war where many kill themselves afterwards, it begs the question; is war and violence is normal and natural for men? It is true some individual men enjoy war and enjoy killing as we see in the case of serial killers. Though there is still a high suicide rate in men who have committed multiple murders.

So it seems that men can be made into killers through brutalisation, but do they really want to be like this? If killing traumatises men, it also begs the question whether all the wars and massacres we see in history is also normal and natural for men. This then makes sense of a five hundred year old mystery. The Spaniard Hernán Cortés in the 16th century conquered the Aztec empire of about 5 million people, with just 600 men. So there is a mystery of how he managed to do this with so few men. Some claim that Cortés was helped by the legend of Quetzalcoatl who was worshipped as a white god by the Aztecs. They speculate that the Aztecs thought he was Quetzalcoatl. Which might be true at the beginning but the Aztecs soon realised their mistake and fought back against the Spanish. It is also speculated that Cortés had the advantage of cannon, muskets and horses, but he only had ten small cannon and twenty horses. Also the cannon and muskets of the time were so primitive and unreliable, that the Spanish were still relying on their crossbows. The Aztec went in for human sacrifice and because of this it is assumed that they must be a very brutal, blood-thirty race of people. Yet if this was the case why didn't they put up a proper fight against the Spanish?

The reason could be that the only brutalised people were the Aztec rulers. The Aztec empire was dominated by a small band of psychopaths, who were more than willing to kill. While the rest of the population were peaceful people whom were unable to kill others. So it would be easy for these psychopaths to dominate this society through fear, which they re-enforced by ritually killing members of the population, through human sacrifice. To stay in power the rulers needed to teach their sons how to kill, so human sacrifice was probably they way they done this. The children of the rulers and priests were probably made to kill in these brutal ceremonies to teach them to become unfeeling psychopaths. The problem would come when they met other people who were also brutalised trained killers. Because of the peaceful attitude of the population Cortés knew he didn't have to fight them. He had been part of the conquest of Cuba and probably knew that the Indians didn't know anything about warfare. So the only people he had to fight were the Aztec royal family, who were the only people likely to put up any resistance. Once he defeated them, then he was able to rule the Aztecs in much the same way the previous Aztec rulers had done, through violence and fear.


What is surprising about patriarchy is its unbelievable selfishness. Emperors, Kings and other dictators can have unbelievable wealth and yet rule over a impoverish country, and would never dream about using his vast wealth to help the people he rules. Men like Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte and Hitler, have conquered many other countries simply to have the satisfaction of saying: “Wow look how many countries I've conquered”. The fact that this conquest has killed and ruined to lives of millions of people didn't seem to be a problem for these ‘great’ conquerors. The ego boost of having another country to conquer was enough to drive them on. Though a conqueror or dictator also needs an army of selfish psychopathic men to be able to carry through his conquests. Fierce competition by its very nature is very selfish.



If you are competing against someone else, you cannot afford to have any sympathy with them, because you want to defeat them. So in the world of competition the more selfish you are, the better you become in focusing on winning. This then means that in the political power games of patriarchy, the most selfish person is most likely to get the top-job. Because he will selfishly do; “whatever it takes” to ensure he became the boss or leader. So this means in a competitive, “dog eat dog” world you are very unlikely to have compassionate and caring people fill the top-jobs in a patriarchal society. In fact, in extreme patriarchal societies you are likely to have the very worse types of people fill these top-jobs. In the last hundred years there has been a whole host of psychopaths that had become leaders of countries.

The obvious three are Hitler, Stalin and Chairman Mao, who between them all have caused the deaths of millions of people. But there are loads of lesser known dictators who have inflicted a reign of terror onto their people like: Idi Amin in Uganda, Robert Magabe in Zambabwe, General Pinochet in Chile, Than Shwe in Burma, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Kim Jong-il of North Korea, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, King Mswati III of Swaziland, Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Saddam Hussein of Iraq.



This is only a short list of despotic dictators, and in many third world countries today, where it is unusual not to have a despotic dictator in charge. What is more worrying, is that for these despotic dictators to stay in power and continue their reign of terror they need a army of young men who will willing murder or torture the people when ordered to do so. One of the reasons why we have democracy in many countries is because the armed services or police will more likely refuse to carry out orders to shoot and terrorist the population. So leaders have to adopt more humane ways of achieving political power. In 1991 the brutal dictator of Somalia, Muhammad Siad Barre was overthrown. At first this seem to be a good thing, but no one took his place as leader. Since then Somalia has been ruled by warlords who are gangsters that are only interested in making money and exploiting and terrorising the local population. So in the case of Somalia it is very much the case of; “out of the frying pan into the fire”.

Saddam Hussein and George Bush
The theory is; that in these third world countries; if you don’t have a ‘strong man’ as leader, then the country soon degenerates into anarchy. This is also true of Iraq: Saddam Hussein was probably one of the brutal dictators of modern times. Yet, when the Americans overthrew him the country slipped into civil war and the whole country is now in a state of anarchy. To the degree that many Iraqis were calling for his return, before he was executed. Simply because, whatever you may say about him, he did at least bring stability to the country in contrast to the anarchy and chaos that has happened ever since he was forced out. So that is the choice billions of people have throughout the world, of either anarchy or a strong repressive dictator. Yet it doesn’t have to be like this; most Western countries have democratic governments, so why can’t this happen in third world countries? Patriarchy over years of practice, has found a sure-fire way to ensure men remain the dominant sex; and that is to encourage violence. 


In Western societies up until the 20th century is was ‘normal’ for men to inflict violence, not only on his wife but his children as well. Patriarchal religions and oppressive dictatorships like Nazism and Communism know that it is very important to brainwash children from a very early age. The Roman Catholic Jesuits boasted that, “give us a child for the first seven years and we have him for life”. Children up until the 20th century were basically brutalised in the Western world. It was normal for parents and schoolteachers to cane, birch and whip children. Favourite saying then were, “spare the rod and spoil the child”, “children should be seen but not heard” and “if you see a child look guilty. Hit him. You may not know what it is for, but he does”. 

Children were brutalise even as babies. Male “experts” wrote, that a crying baby was being wilful, and mothers where encouraged not to pick up crying baby. They were also told a baby that cried too much was to be put in a room and lock the door, to let it cry itself to sleep. Then infants the moment they began to walk and talk they were subjected to physical punishment. (Boys in general were punished more severely than girls.) This was done not only to teach children discipline from a very early age. It was also done to make, “real men” out of boys. In other words by being brought up in an environment of violence, the children naturally became violent themselves. They then make good soldiers and they are able to kill without pity, the enemies of the country and they are more likely to, “keep women in their place”. Also the effect of psychical abuse undermines the confidence of women. 



Men respond to abuse by learning to hate others and becoming aggressive. Women don’t find it so easy to hate others and respond to violence by learning to hate themselves. Then as the 20th century progressed, women not only gained power over their own bodies but their children as well. Female child experts and more moderate child male experts like Dr Spock began to write books on child care. The development continued to the point that today what was normal for children in the 19th century would be seen today as child abuse. Children in the past were subjected to sexual abuse as well. That man who was the “whistle blower” was surprisingly, a young Sigmund Freud. 

Sigmund Freud
In the past men have got away with child sex abuse scot-free. Then in 1896 a young Sigmund Freud presented a paper entitled "The Aetiology of Hysteria". In this paper he said he had discovered that the neuroses suffered by his patients stemmed from sexual assaults and violence they had suffered as young children. Most of these assaults coming from their own fathers, brothers or other male relations in "respectable middle class" homes. This paper went down like a lead balloon and his colleges put great pressure on him to suppress his paper. Which was singled out from all the other papers presented in Vienna in 1896 to not be published in psychoanalysis's Journal "Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift". Moreover no discussion of his work was allowed. In the end Freud caved in. To save his career Freud did suppress his paper and then came up later with other theories like "Penis envy" and the "Oedipus complex" to explain neuroses. Which hinted at child sex abuse but never openly said it. These theories explained how the abused child felt and how it will effect them later. Unfortunately because these children were in reality were abused, but this fact was censored, this meant that the blame of the neuroses was put on the abused and not the abuser. 




Now child sexual abuse is out in the open and not even Roman Catholic priests find they can get away with it. The result is that now children are being far less sexually and physically abused in the Western world. This lack of childhood abuse is causing men to be far less assertive, while women are becoming far more confident in themselves. So what is happening today was predicted back in the 19th century, when it was claimed that if you didn't “harden” (brutalise) boys they will become wimps. The degree Western men have become wimps can be seen, as previously mentioned, in the number of suicides of soldier after both the Vietnam and Falklands wars. (This is going on in spite of extremely violent films, TV programmes and video games young people are encouraged to watch.) To some people today it is terrible that our young men are losing their, “manhood”, but if we want to live in a world of non-violence and peace, this is a very good thing. It is of interest that the most violent group of men in USA and UK are those of African decent. Black people seem to have been left behind in the reform of child rearing as many young black children are still routinely beaten by their parents. So it is not surprisingly that young black men still tend to be very violent. Though it also doesn't help that more black people are unemployed or work for low wages, than any other ethnic group in Western societies.

Child Soldier in Cambodia
The same is also true in many third world countries where child abuse is considered to be ‘normal’. And in many African and South American countries guerrillas kidnap children teach them how to kill and become soldiers. You can’t accuse these guerrillas of being sexist, because they use young girls and well as boys. Though as they grow up, the girls try to get out of armies they are in, but the boys continue and become the new guerrillas and continue the cycle of kidnapping more children as soldiers. Another problem for men ruling our world is that men prefer dealing with things than people. Because women have maternal instincts her main focus is on children and family. So they become observers of people as they try to work out why people behave the way they do. Men don’t have the same interest. Because they more focused on competition they will only be interested in the psychology of others to find a way to beat them and overcome them. 




Other ways to beat others is to make and design better weapons or have improved military tactics, and this is what men focus on. So in the competitive game men create, they are not interested in the happiness of others. All they are interested in is how to beat them and become ‘top dog’. On the other hand under female leadership women would see the people of the countries they rule as their family. They would have a big interest in their welfare and happiness. And so they would be strongly motivated to do something about this. Because men are more interested in things rather than people we have made big advances in technology. But women don’t have to ditch men’s problem-solving skills because they have become rulers. They can still leave men happily playing with their ‘toys’ providing these toys are not machine-guns or nuclear weapons. They can still compete with each other create useful things, like finding the best way to produce power that doesn't pollute the atmosphere.