In praise of men and women
|
Reason - according to Immanuel Kant it's
just our own fault if we don't make use appropriately of this wonderful
faculty of ours. But is it? The unfolding of everybody's personal
reason is slowed down by several imponderabilities. In the first place,
its awakening and kindling has been appointed to public institutions.
Not all of them are of high quality. And secondly, most of us have been
trained to distrust 'self-declared experts' of all kind; therefore, many reasonable opinions get never heard.
|
If
Kant was right (and I think he was), no one should
be discouraged to think about everything in a reasonable way. However,
most people seem to prefer to share the opinion of opinion leaders (as
I share the opinion of Kant in that question). This would be no
problem, if people would have come to their conclusions after thorough
deliberation,
finding out in the end that they by and large agree with one or the
other conspecific with reputation. Unfortunately, however, the opinion
of leaders is all too ofter embraced without much deliberation.
|
Be
it as it may. Without fear and favor I continue my investigation into
the nearer and farther reaches of my mind, trusting into the power of
my own reasonable thoughts. Humans are more than just the sum of
billions of individual mammals. They form societies; the degree of
complexity of these constructs surmounts the complexity of bee and ant
societies by far. Complex aggregates of a high number of interacting
partners / competitors follow their own rules, largely beyond the
influence of the individual participants.
|
Nevertheless,
looking back to about 5 millenia of written history and much more
millenia on the basis of indirect evidence, we may recognize
regularities in human history, reflecting conflicting interests
along various axes (see my earlier essays 'On the stability of states', 7/13; and 'Longing for common values',
3/14). A promising strategy to deal with highly complex systems is
simplification by reduction of complexity. In this approach, the number
of unknown variables is reduced by more or less tentative assumptions.
|
One
assumption that has been common for all societies, as far as we can
know for sure, concerns the fact that for biological reasons most
humans are - mostly on first glance - identified as male or female
(whatever that means in detail). Cues signalling this dichotomy are
powerful, practically all members of a human society
spontaneously react to them. On the long term, the result of such
a collective reciprocal awareness may be quite variable across
societies.
|
There
have been claims that in some remote cultures beauty was attributed to
the male half of the tribe, while power and competence to decide on the
more important things of life resided with the women (see in Charles King, 2019). It may be that
both phenomena are linked: If one half of a human society admires and
cherishes the other half, this leads to a higher stability of a
principally chaotic system, if the admired and cherished half 'pays the
price' and surrenders the practical power to their admirers.
|
As proposed in one of my earlier essays (temptation,
5/04), deep roots seem to favor the role models we are more familiar
with, with admiration attracted by the female and power residing with
the male part of society. I dare to predict that any human society will
always exploit the evident distiction of humans into men and women to
create patterns of social behavior. Sometimes, culture and tradition
are
more powerful than biology and may turn the polarity into the other
direction, but I'm quite sure that no complex human society will ever
get along without this evident simplification.
|
Of course, each sector
of a human society (and there are more: the rich and the poor, the old
and the young, the locals and the strangers, just to name a few) must
be heard and must have a chance to influence the situation. All these
labels and tags are precious simplifications and desperately needed to
deal with human societies. They are subject to continuous change and
drift into this or the other direction. And they alway remain parts of
complex equilibria, with every change causing far-reaching consequences.
|
Women should take home
from these considerations: they can't have both sides of the coin. The
more power they have, they
will progressively lose their attractiveness. That may appear paradox
from the actual point of view, but 'beauty' for human eyes is to a
great part a social and cultural construct. For the sake of stability,
cultural constructs adapt over the decades to changing economic and
hierarchic conditions. Which role is the more satisfying and agreeable
one?
|
It is difficult to predict the roles for women and men several generations in the future.
But the distinction will persist, and also the need to control and
influence social developments will stay pressing, especially in light
of inescapably continuing globalization. Clear role models reduce complexity and increase the chances for peace.
|
6/21 < MB 7/21 > 4/22
Gender & society
|
Charles King (2019) Gods of the upper air, Anchor Books, New York
|