22. The different roles men and women played in humanity’s journey to find liberating understanding of the human condition

Able to understand the human condition allows us to understand that upset is not an evil or bad state—in fact since it is a result of having been involved in humanity’s great struggle against the ignorance of our instinctive self or soul, upset is an immensely heroic state. This understanding that we humans are all fundamentally good even though we are variously upset and soul-corrupted as a result of our different encounters with the heroic battle of the human condition means we can now explain the underlying principle in democracy—that ‘all people are created equal’, that they are ‘all equal before God’. The Constitution of the United States of America describes this truth as ‘self-evident’, but we don’t have to rely on it being a ‘self-evident’ truth any more, we can actually explain and therefore understand it. The concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’, are removed from our conceptualisation of ourselves. As will be emphasised again later in this book, understanding the origin of our upset state brings the real ‘deconstruction’ of the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and the real ‘postmodern’ or post-the-present-good-and-evil-differentiated era.

Men in particular will now be able to understand themselves and be understood. It can now be seen that the heroic battle to champion our conscious thinking self or ego over the ignorance of our instinctive self or soul posed a threat to humanity and, since the historic role of males has been one of group protectors, they had no choice but to take on the responsibility to fight this battle. What this means is that the matriarchal or female-centric ways that nurtured humanity throughout its primate infancy and australopithecine childhood were superseded in importance during our Homo adolescence by a patriarchal world where men necessarily and unavoidably had to defeat the ignorance of our instinctive self or soul, for if that battle wasn’t won humanity would self-destroy from perpetual ignorance and resulting terminal upset, in particular ever increasing and ultimately intolerable levels of alienation.

So while both men and women have suffered from the corrupted state of the human condition, men in particular have felt guilty about the exceptional angry, egocentric and alienated lives they were beset with as a result of battling so determinedly and heroically against our ignorant instinctive self or soul. For 2 million years men have had the loathsome and upsetting task of defying our all-sensitive and loving, yet unjustly condemning soul. Now, having finally completed their job of championing our ego or conscious part of ourselves over the ignorance of the instinctive part of ourselves, men will finally find peace. It has been a wretched position for men to not be able to explain Page 104 of
PDF Version themselves, explain why they have been so egocentric, competitive and aggressive, as this quote makes clear: ‘One of the reasons that men have been so quiet for the past two decades, as the feminist movement has blossomed, is that we do not have the vocabulary or the concept to defend ourselves as men. We do not know how to define the virtues of being male, but virtues there are’ (Asa Baber, Playboy mag., July 1983). Indeed there are virtues. While women created humanity with their nurturing, men have been the heroes of the great battle against ignorance: they saved humanity.

With men finally in a position to metaphorically ‘put down the sword’, rest and recover, so too will women be finally able to return from looking after, supporting and inspiring men with their ‘attractive’, sex-object image of innocence, to focusing once again on the all-important task now of nurturing of their infants. And men, no longer preoccupied with their task of championing the ego or conscious thinking self, will finally be in a position to support women in that now all-important task of nurturing. The arrival of understanding of the human condition brings the real liberation from the oppressive world of men that feminists have sought.

A more comprehensive presentation of the different roles men and women have played in the human journey to enlightenment is given in A Species In Denial in the chapter ‘Bringing Peace To The War Between The Sexes’ which begins on page 317 of the printed edition; alternatively you can access it online at <www.worldtransformation.com/asid>. What does need to be explained at least briefly here is women’s role of helping men, in particular the inspiring ‘attraction’ of the sex-object image of innocence in women.

It was explained in Section 17 how during the love-indoctrination process neotenous features of large eyes, dome forehead, snub nose and hairless skin were sought after for their youthful association with integrativeness. The effect of this selection of neotenous or childlike features was illustrated with photographs showing how much more neotenous bonobos are compared to common chimpanzees. The neotenising effect was also illustrated with a picture of a seven month old common chimpanzee foetus showing body hair only on the scalp, eyebrows and borders of the eyelids, lips and chin, precisely those places where hair is predominantly retained in adult humans today. Clearly humans are an exceptionally neotenised ape. What happened when men became upset as a result of the emergence of the battle of the human condition some 2 million years ago is that instead of seeking out or selecting ‘innocence’ for its cooperativeness they began to seek it out in order to attack it. We had the example of hunters ruthlessly attacking the innocence of animals because their innocence was an implied criticism of our own species’ corrupted condition. Being similarly unjustly condemned by the comparative innocence and naivety of women, men also retaliated and attacked them; however since women reproduced the species, men couldn’t destroy them as they did animals. Instead they violated women’s relative innocence or ‘honour’ or purity or chastity through rape; they ‘perverted’ the act of procreation, they invented ‘sex’ as in ‘fucking’ or destroying. What was being fucked, destroyed, ruined or sullied was women’s innocence. As feminist Andrea Dworkin acknowledged in her 1987 book Intercourse, ‘All sex is abuse’.

Most importantly, in time the image of innocence in women, their physical beauty, the neotenous, cute, dome-forehead-large-eyes-snub-nose-hairless-skin etc, while ‘attractive’ for sex, also became an inspiration for men. In fact the beauty of women became the only representation in the lives of men of their soul’s lost pure world that they were fighting to have reinstated through finding the relieving understanding of our condition. As Laurens van der Post acknowledged, ‘We lose our soul, of which women is the immemorial image’ (The Heart of the Hunter, 1961, p. 134 of 233), and Teilhard de Chardin said, ‘Women stands before him [man] as the lure and symbol of the world’ (Let Me Explain, 1966; trs. Rene Hague & others, 1970, p.67 of 189).

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This inspirational aspect of the image of innocence in women means that while at base sex was rape, on a nobler level it became an inspiring act of love. When all the world disowned men for their unavoidable divisiveness women in effect stayed with them, bringing them the only warmth, comfort and support they would know. So while at base sex is rape, it also became an act of love, an act of faith in, and affection for men—a sublime partnership between men and women. As it says in Genesis in the Bible, ‘The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him”…Then the Lord God made a woman…and he brought her to the man’ (2:18,22).

Without the understanding necessary to explain themselves men had no choice other than to repress the relative naivety of women, which in turn inextricably tied women’s corruption to that of men’s. It was an extremely difficult situation for women. They had to ‘sexually comfort’ men but also preserve as much true innocence in themselves as possible to be able to effectively nurture the next generation. Their situation, like men’s, worsened at an ever-increasing rate. The more women ‘comforted’ men, the less innocence they retained and therefore the greater comforting the following generation needed. Had humanity’s battle continued in this exponential pattern for a few thousand years more all women would have eventually become like Marilyn Monroe—a complete sacrifice to men. At this point men would have destroyed themselves and the human species, for there would be no soundness left in women to love/ nurture future generations. The great/ exceptionally honest South African writer Olive Schreiner emphasised this point in her 1883 book The Story of an African Farm, when, in talking of men persuading women to have sex, the female character stated that “[men may say] Go on; but when you [men] have made women what you wish, and her children inherit her culture, you will defeat yourself. Man will gradually become extinct…” Fools!’ (p.194 of 300).

For their part, the more men fought to defeat ignorance and protect the group (humanity), the more embattled, upset and corrupted they became and thus the more they appeared to worsen the situation. The harder men tried to do their job of protecting humanity the more they appeared to endanger humanity! As a result, they became almost Page 106 of
PDF Version completely ineffective or inoperable, paralysed by this paradox, cowed by the extent of their self-corruption and its effects. At this point women had to usurp some of the day-to-day running of affairs as well as attempt to nurture a new generation of soundness. Women, not oppressed by the overwhelming responsibility and extreme frustration that men felt, could remain comparatively effective. Further, when men crumpled women had to take over or the family, group or community involved would perish. A return to matriarchy, such as we have recently seen in society, is a sign that men in general have become completely exhausted. However, total matriarchy has not re-emerged because men could not afford to stand aside completely whilst the fundamental battle still remained. They needed to stay in control and remain vigilant against the threat of ignorance. While some elements in the recent feminist movement seized the opportunity to take revenge against men’s oppression, the movement in general was borne out of necessity. As will be explained more fully in the latter half of this book, the tragedy was that like all dogmatic, human-condition-avoiding-but-ideals-insisting, pseudo idealistic movements, feminism was based on a lie—in this case, that there is no real difference in the roles of men and women.

The situation of both men and women in humanity’s journey to enlightenment has been wretched. To elaborate on the situation of women, they have had to inspire love when they were no longer innocent, ‘keep the ship afloat’ when men crumpled, all the while attempting to nurture a new generation while oppressed by men who could not explain why they were dominating, or why they were so upset and angry. This was an altogether impossible task, yet women have done it for 2 million years. It was because of women’s phenomenally courageous support that men, when civilised, were chivalrous and deferential towards them. Men had an impossible fight on their hands, but at least they had the advantage of appreciating the battle because even though they couldn’t explain and thus talk about the battle they were the ones deeply involved and immersed in it. To be a victim of a victim when you are unable to understand what is behind the primary victim’s state, as women have been, was an awful situation to be in.

While men and women have had no option other than to live out their different roles until understanding of the human condition was found, the truth is neither men nor women have liked what they have had to do. Having destroyed innocence men would end up wanting to rediscover it. The truth was that men were having to repress and, as the saying goes, ‘hurt the ones they loved’. As Sir Laurens van der Post has written: ‘I thought finally that of all the nostalgias that haunt the human heart the greatest of them all, for me, is an everlasting longing to bring what is youngest home to what is oldest, in us all’ (The Lost World of the Kalahari, 1958, p.151 of 253).

Olive Schreiner understood the longing women have for an end to men’s soul-destroying battle and its needs when she wrote: ‘if I might but be one of those born in the future; then, perhaps, to be born a woman will not be to be born branded [as a sex-object]…It is for love’s sake yet more than for any other that we [women] look for that new time…Then when that time comes…when love is no more bought or sold, when it is not a means of making bread, when each woman’s life is filled with earnest, independent labour, then love will come to her, a strange sudden sweetness breaking in upon her earnest work; not sought for, but found’ (The Story of an African Farm, 1883).

For 2 million years women have stood by and supported their men, just as for 8 million years prior to that, men supported their women. With understanding of the human condition now found, men and women can at last stand side by side—the great gulf in understanding between the lives of men and women that resulted in so-called ‘war of the sexes’ can finally be bridged—and our species’ attention can at last return to the now all-important task of truly nurturing our offspring.