Friday, February 10, 2006

WHATS WRONG WITH MAN?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MAN?
(Warning may offend sensibilities and challenge deeply held preconceptions)

The simple reality of life is that the more you learn the better your life becomes. The more you grow, the more capable you are of overcoming old challenges and dealing with issues. Knowledge is power. It is the power to transform your life and the lives of others. Anyone that explores the spiritual side of life is destined to realise this, sooner or later.

But there is one creature that does not want this improvement, this empowerment.
The man.
The man says do not ask questions, do not disrupt the system. He says here are the rules and you must follow them.

And so forever it was.

Once upon a time, way back in the mists of pre-history, there lived lots of different animals, four legged, and two legged, no legged. Such a diversity of life that in fact that you could not fully count or measure it.

One day, one of the creatures happened upon a branch that had fallen from a tree.

That creature played with the branch for some time, until he discovered a use for it. The creature realises that the branch could be used to as a vicious weapon, to kill another. He tested his theory and it worked a treat. It worked so well in fact that the creature was soon master of all he surveyed, wielding the branch against those that threatened him.

But the drawbacks of his new toy soon dawned on the creature. The branch could often only be used once before it broke in two. And he had also noticed that other creatures had taken up the item and were challenging him. So he gather his group of friends (who of course were his friends because he wielded the branch!) and many long days and nights were devoted to come up with a more efficient method of doing the job. The job being, of course, killing.

This group of creatures finally came up with an adaptation of the branch, a much larger and refined version, and called it a club. The club was much more efficient than before. Often only one blow was needed and the job was done. The group of creatures armed themselves with these clubs and rejoiced heartily as they went around slaughtering other, innocent, unarmed creatures.

But time waits for no man, and the group soon came to see the drawbacks of the club and the brightest amongst them spent long days and nights dedicated to improving the clubs efficiency. They decided that by adding a sharp metal point to the end, narrowing out the handle and producing in bulk, then you would effectively have a way of killing a large number of creatures, all at once. This would be far more efficient.

They were jubilant. They called their killers, equipped with spears, an army, and began to make threatening noises toward their neighbours, who by now had the club and were threatening to catch up and develop the spear.

Years passed, armies grew larger, more animals died, and ever increasingly sophisticated methods of killing were devised. The bow and arrow were declared a great success as thousands were killed. But men had dreams of refinement and when they invented the musket, the whole business of killing became, well, a little more gentlemanly. The death toll rose ever higher, as the killing ceased being confined to other species. The inventor of the club, the spear, the bow and arrow and the gun had turned on his own kind.

But you could not halt progress. The limitations of the musket were readily recognised, because you could only kill one person at a time. Again, the ingenious man came up with a gun that could continue to fire, sometimes in rapid succession. But the machine gun was not the end of it. As man turned on man, the ones with the latest invention held the temporary advantage. But due to the genius of man, for it was always man, not woman, new ways of killing were never far away.

As man looked back over his achievements, he saw that, thus far, the killing had taken place mainly on the ground. An opportunity, he thought, to be exploited, as he applied his innovative skills to include seaborne and airborne weapons. Very soon, no place on Earth was safe.

The tank followed, as did the fighter plane, as did the battlefield missiles, until the male realised that what was needed was a real knockout punch. What he and his friends needed was a tactical advantage. He saw that all weapons so far had required investment of time and money in training the users. He saw that if he could cut this out he could save a both time and money. He liked the idea of the untrained and uneducated doing the killing. They would be less likely to question their orders.

Mans genius was about to enable him to reach the summit of his achievement. Extensive testing, together with previously unknown investments of time and money delivered him the thing he had been searching for all this time - the nuclear weapon. A weapon so awesome and destructive that there would be nothing to match it and nothing to top it.
But man had underestimated his own abilities, and a weapon even more deadly was yet to emerge. The men had realised, from real testing, that the drawback with nuclear weapons were that they did not just kill the enemy, but destroyed all their houses and farms and possessions and assets. A more efficient way surely could be found to leave all those things intact and just kill the people we did not like?

So the search led to the refinement of chemical and biological weapons, where millions of creatures could be killed in an instant, miraculously leaving all their possessions intact.

And here we are, today. Mans genius has delivered him domination of the planet, mastery of nature and to the point where, for the very first time in history, the actions of one group can destroy all the rest.

So who is this murderous group? This group that has dedicated their existence to control and destruction? A group entirely dedicated to the discovery of new ways to kill.

Is it the giraffe? No, of course not. Many giraffes have perished at the murderers hands.
Is it the elephant?
The whale?
Rats?
Snakes?

It is none of those.
It is the man.

Always the man.

Not humans, or humanity, or mankind. The male.

But hang on a minute, comes the reflex reaction. That is too simplistic, surely? Well, answer the following questions.

Who is the whaler?
Who is the hoodlum?
Who is the bully?
Who are the mafia?
Who is the murderer?
The Rapist?
The Paedophile?
The Torturer?
The Fraudster?
The Dictator?
The Terrorist?

They are all MEN.

But what about Myra Hindley or Maxine Carr, or the female suicide bomber I read about the other day, I hear you cry?
Be under no illusion about this. For every 1 Maxine Carr, there are a 1000 Ian Huntleys, for every Myra Hindley there are a 1000 Ian Bradys, for every female suicide bomber there are a thousand males with bombs strapped to their stomachs.

The worlds prison population consists overwhelmingly of MEN. The following are the latest available, official prisoner numbers, taken from individual governments.

England and Wales. November 2003 (source Home Office)
Male 69638 94%
Female 4417 6%

Scotland. June 2002 (source Scottish Executive)
Male 6251 95.5%
Female 293 4.5%

Northern Ireland. 1993 to 2002 (Northern Ireland Office)
Male 97.99%
Female 2.01%

USA. February 2004. http://www.bop.gov/
Male 162377 93.2%
Female 11802 6.8%

Australia. June 2000. http://www.cbs.gov.au/
Male 20329 93.6%
Female 1385 6.3%

Germany. March 2003. http://www.destatis.de/
Male 59819 95.5%
Female 2775 4.5%

Norway. December 2002. http://www.ssn.no/
Male 2598 94%
Female 165 6%

These figures are readily verifiable and the pattern repeats the world over, not just throughout the affluent West. You can undertake further research yourself, quite easily. Buy a newspaper or watch any television news programme. From the Times to the Sun, Newsnight to Jeremy Kyle, the effects of the males actions are clear to see.

So why are men allowed to get away with it?

The male may be murderous and destructive, but he is not stupid. He surrounds himself with those of like mind. He forms clubs, associations and societies which serve to keep dissent to a minimum and to reinforce the status quo, so preventing change and development.

Money, status, class or religion have little impact. The working mens club acts in the same way as the golf club, as the Law Society, as the political party, the trade association, and the committee. The organisation does not want woman involved because women always ask awkward questions. Questions that actually get to the root of the problem. That is not what the society is for. Its purpose is to approve the next scam and nothing more.

Men have many scams, some tried and tested, although they are not averse to trying new ones. An old favourite scam is for men to tell women that they are silly, stupid, not good enough, imagining it, are over emotional or are out of control. Be like us males they say, be more rational and logical and sensible and everything will be alright.

Except that it never is. The scam does not work for the woman. And this situation cannot be allowed to continue.

Recent events make it evident that yet again, history is repeating itself and the men in charge, in control, do not want to learn.

The truth is that every single one of us is a wonderful and unique individual. Each and every one of us can do a certain thing in a certain way that is totally unique to you. But all of us, together with our families and those we love and care for, are under threat.

Under threat by what is ultimately the only evil on the planet. Men.

The largest and longest lasting scam perpetrated by the man is a form of control - religion. Do not forget who runs all the religions on the planet - men. The control that all religions exert is the stifling of the individual. Every single one of us seeks, consciously or otherwise, a sense of fulfilment and completion. That can only be gained your way, by following your path, making your mistakes and learning your lessons. The men of religion, all religions, however, state the exact opposite. They state that to achieve happiness you do not have to do anything with your life. Just believe, have faith, and give us your money.

Through nuclear, chemical and biological weapons the male holds in his sweaty hands the keys to the destruction of the planet, and if he knew where the lock was he would turn them. The club, the society, and the religions uphold and reinforce his position. The conclusions are inescapable and unremittingly grim. The domination of the men will lead toward our destruction if allowed to continue unchecked.

So now really is the time, for the insanity to stop.

Step forward woman. The female offers the greatest and most needed prize of all, balance. She is the creator to mans destroyer, the emotion to mans logic. She is the other side of the coin, the other point of view, the equal and opposite. In all kinds of ways the woman is different to the man. The world has been playing by male rules for thousands of years. The one arena where men always triumph has been the one that has been exalted as the measure of worth. Men are superior to women only in the arena of physical strength. The credence placed upon sport and physical prowess by the male demonstrates this.

Women must set the rules now, for all our sakes, not least the mans. For he desperately needs the balance that the female provides. And occasionally, in private, late at night, he knows it.

What the male does not know, however, is the relationship between cause and effect. He does not understand how his actions impact on someone or something else. If it exists outside of his limited vision then he cannot recognise it. Lack of vision, lack of imagination and lack of common sense are the primary failings of man, but not of woman.

The woman is not perfect after all, and a world dominated and controlled entirely by women would be just as unbalanced. But we are a long way from that. A long way indeed.

The woman is emotional, which when applied, is a strength, not a weakness.
The male however, will deny, or devalue, the existence of the intuitive and the emotional, until he is blue in the face. In fact intuition is a great asset and your emotions tell you are alive. Women know this. Men will never admit it.

The male believes that his greatest asset is his status. The female often thinks her greatest disappointment is her man.

The male cannot cope with change and upheaval. The female deals with change on a monthly basis.

The male spends a huge amount of time and effort looking for short cuts. That time is often spent in vain.

But worse of all, the male has no interested in learning. Our history has repeated itself again, and again, and again, and again. It is doing so again now, and the male will fight all learning every step of the way, even going to ridiculous lengths to avoid it. To the male, learning means changing and changing means their position is threatened. And they cannot have that.

The female offers the only possible balance to all this. She has all the answers that we will ever need. Men need not be exterminated from the planet, but they certainly need putting in their place.

But the male has seen to it, over the centuries, that a woman is a womans harshest critic. Women have a far lower level of self esteem and confidence than their male counterparts. They do not believe that there is a better way, or even that they are the better way. If the men had their way, women would never have been granted the vote in the UK, but recognise that some of the fiercest resistors to universal suffrage were women themselves. Men should congratulate themselves on a job well done.

So while the woman struggles to find her voice, the male continues to butcher, murder and destroy. Every day that passes heightens the need for the balance that can only come from the woman.

Yet this is not the argument that is made. The salvation of the planet, says the man, will be found through competition, the favourite pastime of the male, and possibly the most pointless activity ever invented. In a world full of diversity, different people with different abilities and talents, this is a hopeless waste. In a world with such a variety of uniqueness, competition, challenging someone to fight you on your terms, is pointless. But the male says not. The male says that unless you are as good as David Beckham then you are not good enough. The reality of course is that even the most stupid, infirm or incapable amongst us can do something in a way that no one else can. Everybody can make a contribution and make a difference. The male says no to all this.

But wait, surely women already do the most important job, bringing up children, the next generation. Few would argue with the importance of motherhood, but the imbalance in the world has reached such grievous proportions, where the male is one step away from ensuring there will not be a next generation, that woman now have a larger role to fulfil.

But wait again, are women really any different from men? Women together have a reputation for nastiness, spitefulness and bitchness. This may indeed be true, but no woman would consciously allow her family to suffer, while vast amounts of time and effort are spent developing another innovative and more efficient method of killing. Women might have the capacity to be downright nasty to each other, as I said earlier they can be other womens harshest critics, but to believe that women would allow the current horrors of history to continue is to believe the mans hype.

The first and most direct way for women to make a difference is to fight against the males need for conformity and uniformity. The male uses every opportunity to preach that there is no uniqueness, no individuality. Laws are made by the male that are simply an attempt to catch all cases by the same method, which is a nonsense in a world full of individuals with unique talents and abilities, unique foibles and unique paths to take.

By fighting against this conformity, and by saying and doing what they feel and think, not what the male tells them, or persuades them of, women can bring real changes into the world.

And do we need real change. A change of rules, a new game.

Women have never in history held positions of responsibility and authority for any length of time, and look where it has brought the world.

Women have been borne down upon for thousands for years and look where it has got us.

Women have been told to shut up and to keep in their place. And look where we are now.

No more.

It is five minutes to midnight in the world and time for a change.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Hillary Clinton, President

Hillary Rodham Clinton, sworn in as 44th President of the United States, 20th January 2009.

Once a fantasy of liberal America, is this now possible? Is it even desirable?

As the weekly dose of America as we would rather it be, the West Wing, fades from our screens, a new series stands ready to supplant it as our fix of wish fulfillment. Commander-in-Chief, starring Geena Davis, is a story of a female Vice President who arrives in the Oval Office, in the teeth of fierce resistance, after the former Presidents untimely demise. Once ensconced in the White House, she fights nasty Republicans and foreign crazies alike with a combination of feminine wiles and motherly common sense. But even Hollywood, the Mecca for liberal and progressive America, does not dare elect a woman to that position. So what will the real America do in 2008? Will it be President Clinton the Second?

The most striking example from history, where a major world power elected a female leader was Britain in 1979, and even then it took a virtual breakdown in the fabric of society (the Winter of Discontent), together with a incumbent administration that failed to take the woman seriously, for Margaret Thatcher to just win through.

The reality of those times, without the benefit of hindsight, should be recalled, and applied to measure Hillarys chances.

Thatcher gained the leadership of her party in 1975 through stealth, not merit. The Conservative Members of Parliament who voted for her, did so at the urging of party bigwig Airey Neaves exhortation to "send a message to Mr Heath" (the Conservative party leader of the day, who had recently been defeated at the polls for the third time).

As leader of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, embarked on an immediate image overhaul, with the help of PR guru and TV producer Gordon Rees. She softened her image and reduced the volume and shrill character of her voice. Her detractors will laugh at whether that was effective or not, but listen to any early recordings of her speeches and you will get my point) The Labour government, led by the affable but inept James Callaghan, refused to take the woman seriously and paid the price at the polls, although many argued at the time that Thatchers Conservatives won in spite of, rather than because of, her.

Many more proceeded to repeat Callaghans mistake and during her first term (1979-83) she was beset on all sides by those men (and it was always men), who thought she was no match for them, miners, members of her own government, the media and the Argentine military.

Eventually she won through, and the rest is history. She is now widely accepted as Britains most influential premier since Churchill.

Recently, the Germans elected Angela Merkel as head of a minority government, and although her first months have been somewhat of a honeymoon, no-one should be in any doubt that she means to change Germany for the better, for ever. Her words give little away; her actions tell us everything we need to know. She discarded protocol at the recent European summit in order to get Tony Blair on her side. She has repaired the German / American relationship, after years of bad feeling and back biting between Washington DC and Berlin. And there will be more to come.

Gender aside, Clinton is neither Thatcher nor Merkel. However, that will not stop the most strenuous efforts being put into ensuring that she does not make it to the White House.

Hillary Clinton is loathed, distrusted, underestimated and misunderstood on all sides, before she even starts, not because of her stand on Iraq, or her House voting record, but because she is a woman. Indeed, just to rub salt in the wound, a woman with a loud voice and opinions to match. In this she is markedly different from any that has gone before her.

It is because she is a woman that her candidacy for the most powerful position in the world will polarize and divide an already embittered and embattled country.

It is because she is a woman that she will be turned upon by her own, female Democrats. This has already begun, http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1304. Proof indeed that a woman is a womans harshest critic.

And it is because she is a woman that she must run. For were she to become President then the world would become, overnight, a better place in all kinds of ways.

Fundamentally, women are different to men, whether we choose to recognize this or not. Women have babies and are built for different priorities. Womens bodies undergo changes every month that most men would find too much to bare. Men fight and women love. It is a simple truth, although please be sure to understand that it is not intended as a simplistic truth.

Intellectually, the woman, so long as she is her own person, is generally more likely to employ common sense, to understand the process of cause and effect and to be less restricted by convention and procedure than a man, who of course thrives within rules and regulations.

Materially, the woman, provided she has some security herself, is generally more likely to understand the basic need that all of us have for food, water, shelter and healthcare. Something that the man has demonstrated he possesses no understanding of.

Spiritually, the woman, so long as she possesses some sense of individuality, is generally able to grasp that women look at things differently to men, that the dominance of male priorities over centuries has led us to the chaos we now find ourselves in, and only by being a woman, not a female man, does she stand a chance.

Hillarys greatest strength is her greatest weakness. In government, she speaks as she finds. If it is a lie, she says it is a lie. Her ability to recognise the reality of a situation, not procrastinate about how it should be, will enable her, like women the world over, to get the job done. But like women the world over, she will be berated for it.

A great responsibility rests on Hillary Clintons shoulders. She may not win, but she must run. She must show that a woman can. She must like Geena Davis, make it imaginable.

For as Margaret Thatcher once so presciently remarked, "Men have not done such a good job, all of the time."