8. ABOUT MEN & WOMEN
WTM FAQ 8.2 How do you explain sex as humans practice it, and why is women’s beauty such a powerful force in human life?
The explanation of sex as humans practice it
The biological explanation of the human condition that is presented in biologist Jeremy Griffith’s book FREEDOM: The End Of The Human Condition (see Video/Freedom Essay 3) allows us to appreciate that when our instinctive self threatened to stop our conscious mind’s search for knowledge it was men who took on the role of resisting that threat, leaving women out of the upsetting battle to preserve as much upset-free, loving innocence as possible to nurture the next generation (see Freedom Essay 27).
The immense problem this role differentiation gave rise to, however, was that in not being responsible for, or directly participating in, the terrible battle to overthrow ignorance, women were naive or unaware of the ramifications of fighting the battle, and, as a result, were unsympathetic to both the battle and the frustrated upset anger and power, fame, fortune and glory-seeking egocentricity it produced in men — a situation that placed men in the awful predicament of being misunderstood and unjustly condemned by women.
Men couldn’t explain themselves to women because they couldn’t explain the human condition and defend their immensely upset, soul-corrupted state. Indeed, men have had to endure being completely misunderstood and misrepresented as the villains of the piece because what the explanation of the human condition reveals, now that it has been found, is that men are, in fact, the heroes of the whole story of life on Earth because they had to succeed (and have now succeeded) in championing the cause of nature’s greatest invention, namely the conscious mind’s battle to establish itself on Earth!
Without this ability to explain the all-important role that men were having to play, and thus defend themselves against women’s lack of appreciation of that role, men were left in an untenable situation. They couldn’t just stand there and accept women’s unjust condemnation of their behaviour—they had to do something to defend themselves. So, what men, in their anger, frustration and desperation, did was turn on women and attack them by violating their innocence or purity or chastity or ‘honour’ through rape. Men perverted sex, as in ‘fucking’ or destroying, making it discrete from the act of procreation. What was being fucked, violated, destroyed, ruined, degraded or sullied was women’s innocence.
BUT while sex was an attack on innocence, an act of aggression, it was also one of the greatest distractions and releases of frustration and, on a nobler level, it became an inspirational act of love, an act of real affection derived from a shared faith in the ultimate meaning of their lives. A sublime partnership between men and women did develop, for 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.
However, the perversion of sex tied women’s corruption inextricably to men’s. It has been an extremely difficult situation for women. They have had to try to ‘sexually comfort’ men but also preserve as much true innocence in themselves as possible to nurture the next generation. Their situation, like men’s, worsened at an ever-increasing rate, in that the more women ‘comforted’ men, the less innocence they retained and the greater comforting the following generation needed.
Why women’s beauty is such a powerful force
It can be seen that the innocence of women was two-sided: it condemned and upset men, who, therefore, had to attack it, but it was also an inspirational reminder of our species’ original innocent soulful, true world that they were fighting to reinstate by finding the understanding that would stop the upsetting criticism of them and of the human race as a whole. So women’s innocence could both condemn and inspire men, which, as will now be explained, is why the image of innocence was so inspirational. The image of innocence in women could inspire the dream of the human race’s return to living in a cooperative, loving, upset-free, ideal state, a state free of the human condition; it could lead to ‘romance’. Men could dream that the image of innocence in women meant women were actually innocent and that through their partnership with women they could share in that innocent state; and for their part, women could use the fact that men were inspired by their image of innocence to delude themselves that they actually were innocent. Men and women could ‘fall in love’, let go of reality and dream of an ideal, cooperative, loving world. The effect of the ‘attraction’ of innocence—which has been the preserve of youth because the young were innocent; they hadn’t yet been exposed to all the upset in the world—for both dreaming through and for sexual destruction was that through the course of the 2-million-year journey of humanity from conscious ignorance to understanding the human condition our physical features became increasingly youthful looking or neotenous, as the increasingly child-like, domed forehead, large eyes and snub nose features of the skulls of the varieties of our Homo ancestors who lived during this period (shown below) evidence.
Women were especially selected for their more innocent looking, neotenous, youthful, childlike features of a domed forehead, large eyes, snub nose and hairless body. Just how adapted women have now become to being sex objects can be seen in women’s magazines, which are almost entirely dedicated to instructing women how to be ‘attractive’, which really means just better able to imitate the image of innocence. Women are now habituated and codependent to the reinforcement that men, for over 2 million years, have given their object self rather than their real self—for instance, they love to adorn themselves with beautiful objects, use make-up on their faces to increase their neotenous appearance, and wear high-heel shoes to give themselves the leggy, youthful, ultra-innocent look of pubescents.
What remains to be explained is why the beauty of women came to be so powerfully attractive and inspirational for heterosexual men. In Freedom Essay 21 it is explained how humans’ altruistic moral instinctive self or soul was developed through nurturing. It was explained that while a mother’s maternal instinct to care for her offspring is selfish (as genetic traits have to be if they are to reproduce), from the infant’s perspective the maternalism has the appearance of being selfless. From the infant’s perspective, it is being treated unconditionally selflessly—the mother is giving her offspring food, warmth, shelter, support and protection for apparently nothing in return. So it follows that if the infant can remain in infancy for an extended period and be treated with a lot of seemingly altruistic love, it will be indoctrinated with that selfless love and grow up to behave accordingly. And being semi-upright from living in trees, and thus having their arms free to hold a dependent infant, it was the primates who have been especially facilitated to develop this nurtured, loving, cooperative nature. So this is how our primate ancestor—and bonobos—developed cooperative, loving moral behaviour.
An accompanying development to the love-indoctrination process was the selection of cooperative, selfless, loving behaviour through mate selection. Individuals were selected for as mates who were closer to their memory of infancy; that is, younger, because the older individuals became, the more their infancy training in love wore off. Our ape ancestors began to idolise, foster, favour and select for youthfulness because of its association with cooperative integration. The effect was that we selected for the neotenous (infant-like) features of large eyes, dome forehead, snub nose and hairless skin throughout this early period of our development.
Significantly, what happened around 2 million years ago when the upset state of the human condition emerged is that instead of seeking out or selecting for neotenous features because they signalled a cooperative individual, such features began to be selected for because they signalled an innocent individual who was ‘attractive’ for sexual destruction.
What this means is that while the motivation behind the selection changed significantly, the neotenous features signifying soundness and innocence were selected for both throughout the nurturing of our cooperative, loving soul and throughout the last 2 million years when we became conscious and upset and sought out innocence for sexual destruction.
So the image of innocence has been selected for ever since we were apes, which is a very long time. What is also highly significant in terms of explaining why the neotenous image of innocence in women became so attractive is the fact that this image of innocence—‘the beauty of women’—was the only form of innocence that was being cultivated during the last 2 million years of this long period. Once upset developed 2 million years ago, all other forms of innocence were being attacked because it was seen as unjustly condemning of our loss of innocence. The main point being made is that women’s representation of innocence, their representation of our now lost pure world, has been the only form of that purity that has been continuously cultivated since we were apes, and that is why it is so powerfully attractive—and it’s why it is little wonder that men ‘fell in love’ with women. The following quotes reveal just how inspiring women’s image of innocence became for men: ‘we lose our soul, of which woman is the immemorial image’ (Laurens van der Post); ‘Woman stands before him [man] as the lure and symbol of the world’ (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin); ‘Women are all we [men] know of paradise on earth’ (Albert Camus). (see par. 789 of FREEDOM)
So while it certainly is of little wonder that men fell in love with women, the great ‘mystery of women’ was that it was only the physical image or object of innocence that men were falling in love with. The illusion was that women were psychologically as well as physically innocent. Thank goodness the reconciliation of men and women has finally arrived and all the perverse destruction of women’s souls can end, and instead of dreaming of a loving, ideal world, the real loving, ideal world for men and women can emerge.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Having to inspire love when they were no longer loving or innocent, all the while attempting to nurture a new generation while oppressed by men who couldn’t explain why they were dominating, what they were actually doing or why they were so upset and angry, was, in truth, more than extremely difficult, it was an altogether impossible task—and yet women have done it for 2 million years. Indeed, it is because of women’s phenomenally courageous support that men, when civilised, treat them with such chivalry and deference. Men have had an impossible fight on their hands, but at least they had the advantage of intuitively understanding that battle. To be a victim of a victim, as women have been, is an almost insufferable situation, because while a primary victim knows what the primary source offence is, a victim of a victim does not.
So while men’s situation has been horrible, so has women’s; and, just as men have yearned for freedom from their oppressor, ignorance, so women have yearned for freedom from their oppressors, men.
With the battle to defeat the ignorance of our instinctive moral soul now won, the horror of both men’s and women’s existence can end, and this dreamed-of time where society will be neither matriarchal or patriarchal, but gender-neutral and at peace, can begin. For 2 million years women have stood by and supported their men, just as for 8 million years prior to that when nurturing was developing our cooperative soul, men supported their women. With understanding of the human condition now found, men and women can at last stand side by side.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Freedom Essay 26 explains how understanding of the human condition reconciles the sexes; while Freedom Essay 27 explains how humanity’s upsetting battle to solve the human condition impacted upon the sexual relationship between men and women, and how women’s beauty became such a powerful force in human life. Chapter 8:11B of FREEDOM provides the definitive account of the relationship between men and women under the duress of the human condition.
And for testimonials from women on the power of this information to bring peace to the war between the sexes, we recommend watching/reading the presentations from Dr Anna Fitzgerald in Video/Freedom Essay 9, Stacy Rodger in Transformation Affirmation 3, and Roz Bachl on the Transformation Page here.
