Thunderdome
Active Member
I wanna preface this with saying I don't believe any individual is better than another for anything beyond their control. This simply about the social evolution of species and connecting the dots.
I've been researching things lately and been having a think about why human males dominated society for so long. Patriarchy is actually very rare in nature. It requires very specific circumstances to occur which those circumstances for humans have begun to change recently.
First circumstance is birth rate and the mechanics of conception itself. The males of nearly every species is designed to be expendable. The rate at which the females give birth is determines a lot too. A spider laying hundreds of eggs vs an orca giving birth ever 3 to 10 years is very different. This alone does not mean a patriarchy will form in low birth rate species because orcas are a matriarchal, but patriarchal species are almost exclusively mammal. So i believe patriarchy requires low birthrate as a fundamental core mechanism for it to be possible to form.
The second ingredient for a patriarchy is danger of the natural world and what natural attributes a species has. So before I mentioned orcas with an incredibly low birthrate, but on the flipside orcas have no natural predators and sea creatures can not avoid illness from the ocean environment like us land dwellers can from our environment. So for orcas the natural world is much safer than dolphins. Dolphins are not apex predators. Sharks and orcas eat them all the time. Also male dolphins will group up to protect groups of females from predators as well as for mating purposes so they are patriarchal. As stated earlier males are designed to be expendable. You don't need as many males as you do females to continue a species. So the more dangerous the environment it would also be logical to send males out to get food. Hence humans sent their males out into danger to keep their females safe. A simple cut could kill you in 10k years ago.
The final piece of this puzzle is intelligence. Now dolphins, gorillas, and chimpanzees are all patriarchies, but us humans have far more intelligence than the others. With the discovery of fire and invention of tools we broke our natural biological confines. We could kill larger beasts for food. Discovered farming, ranching, and fishing. Built homes and walls around settlements. This combination of safer environments and more sustainable food sources changed our birthrate rapidly. Our intelligence caused rapid evolution and not by physically changing us, but by terraforming the world to our needs. It's quite an amazing thing we have accomplished.
With population growth came the need for more territory and caused humans to clash. The less successful human tribes being conquered and absorbed by the more advanced ones. Once again it was mainly males who fought wars. They needed to keep their female population high for a higher birthrate to recover. Due to being expendable males naturally became diplomats and leaders because going out into the world was our specialty. This does NOT make us superior or more important to the human race than females. Both genders worked together to build the world we have today. Leadership is not a gender specific trait. It was a gender specific role originally which made for a bunch of terrible male leaders too.
Looking back now it's simple mathematics. A tribe with 50 women and 10 men can have up to 50 babies in a year. A tribe with 50 men and 10 women can have 10 babies a year. One will outgrow the other rapidly if both tribes prioritize female over male safety.
Another way to put it. Let's say you have a tribe of 50 men and 50 women. You send out 10 men to hunt and 5 die from whatever. Nothing changes. Now flip it. You send out 10 women and 5 die. You lose 5 potential births that year alone.
In 10,000 BC infant mortality rate was between 27 to 40%. Today it is around 3%. We have no natural predators anymore. We are curing diseases and infections that were fatal before. We're living longer.
With all that being said i haven't met anyone who talks about patriarchy that either completely hates it or says men did everything so they belong in control. The extreme of one side calls for matriarchy while the far other side fights for patriarchy. I think in the end we'll end up in the middle.
The previous conditions that put men in the role of leadership are gone. We don't need to hunt for our food anymore. Women can protect themselves with a gun as easily as a man. Also what gave women their natural biological value is gone too. We can literally choose the gender of babies now like bees through IVF. If we need more of one gender or another we could incentivize women to have that gender. Women earn as much money as men do. Before anyone mentions the pay gap I ask you to reference a study that takes into account years with the company, education, job type, where they live in the country, and hours worked. The real pay gap is 1 penny when you compare apples to apples. My point is women don't need men to provide for them anymore. They do need a partner though. Two income household is the metric now.
The two big sticking points today are certain, but not all, blue collar jobs and the military. The 2 areas really left that are dangerous and physically devastating. As we evolve technology these things will become safer or robots will do them. Sorry, but in a physically demanding job nobody is gonna outwork a robot eventually. Men hate women in the military because the truth is they have hero complexes from growing up watching too many WW2 movies.
My point of this thread is to help heal some of the anger in our society about this. It doesn't excuse the crimes of humanity, but it does explain it somewhat. Looking back on humanity you can't apply the wisdom and knowledge we have today to the past. The world was different back then. Humanity was younger.
We've made leaps and bounds in the last 100 years alone. Imagine what it will be like in the next 100.
I've been researching things lately and been having a think about why human males dominated society for so long. Patriarchy is actually very rare in nature. It requires very specific circumstances to occur which those circumstances for humans have begun to change recently.
First circumstance is birth rate and the mechanics of conception itself. The males of nearly every species is designed to be expendable. The rate at which the females give birth is determines a lot too. A spider laying hundreds of eggs vs an orca giving birth ever 3 to 10 years is very different. This alone does not mean a patriarchy will form in low birth rate species because orcas are a matriarchal, but patriarchal species are almost exclusively mammal. So i believe patriarchy requires low birthrate as a fundamental core mechanism for it to be possible to form.
The second ingredient for a patriarchy is danger of the natural world and what natural attributes a species has. So before I mentioned orcas with an incredibly low birthrate, but on the flipside orcas have no natural predators and sea creatures can not avoid illness from the ocean environment like us land dwellers can from our environment. So for orcas the natural world is much safer than dolphins. Dolphins are not apex predators. Sharks and orcas eat them all the time. Also male dolphins will group up to protect groups of females from predators as well as for mating purposes so they are patriarchal. As stated earlier males are designed to be expendable. You don't need as many males as you do females to continue a species. So the more dangerous the environment it would also be logical to send males out to get food. Hence humans sent their males out into danger to keep their females safe. A simple cut could kill you in 10k years ago.
The final piece of this puzzle is intelligence. Now dolphins, gorillas, and chimpanzees are all patriarchies, but us humans have far more intelligence than the others. With the discovery of fire and invention of tools we broke our natural biological confines. We could kill larger beasts for food. Discovered farming, ranching, and fishing. Built homes and walls around settlements. This combination of safer environments and more sustainable food sources changed our birthrate rapidly. Our intelligence caused rapid evolution and not by physically changing us, but by terraforming the world to our needs. It's quite an amazing thing we have accomplished.
With population growth came the need for more territory and caused humans to clash. The less successful human tribes being conquered and absorbed by the more advanced ones. Once again it was mainly males who fought wars. They needed to keep their female population high for a higher birthrate to recover. Due to being expendable males naturally became diplomats and leaders because going out into the world was our specialty. This does NOT make us superior or more important to the human race than females. Both genders worked together to build the world we have today. Leadership is not a gender specific trait. It was a gender specific role originally which made for a bunch of terrible male leaders too.
Looking back now it's simple mathematics. A tribe with 50 women and 10 men can have up to 50 babies in a year. A tribe with 50 men and 10 women can have 10 babies a year. One will outgrow the other rapidly if both tribes prioritize female over male safety.
Another way to put it. Let's say you have a tribe of 50 men and 50 women. You send out 10 men to hunt and 5 die from whatever. Nothing changes. Now flip it. You send out 10 women and 5 die. You lose 5 potential births that year alone.
In 10,000 BC infant mortality rate was between 27 to 40%. Today it is around 3%. We have no natural predators anymore. We are curing diseases and infections that were fatal before. We're living longer.
With all that being said i haven't met anyone who talks about patriarchy that either completely hates it or says men did everything so they belong in control. The extreme of one side calls for matriarchy while the far other side fights for patriarchy. I think in the end we'll end up in the middle.
The previous conditions that put men in the role of leadership are gone. We don't need to hunt for our food anymore. Women can protect themselves with a gun as easily as a man. Also what gave women their natural biological value is gone too. We can literally choose the gender of babies now like bees through IVF. If we need more of one gender or another we could incentivize women to have that gender. Women earn as much money as men do. Before anyone mentions the pay gap I ask you to reference a study that takes into account years with the company, education, job type, where they live in the country, and hours worked. The real pay gap is 1 penny when you compare apples to apples. My point is women don't need men to provide for them anymore. They do need a partner though. Two income household is the metric now.
The two big sticking points today are certain, but not all, blue collar jobs and the military. The 2 areas really left that are dangerous and physically devastating. As we evolve technology these things will become safer or robots will do them. Sorry, but in a physically demanding job nobody is gonna outwork a robot eventually. Men hate women in the military because the truth is they have hero complexes from growing up watching too many WW2 movies.
My point of this thread is to help heal some of the anger in our society about this. It doesn't excuse the crimes of humanity, but it does explain it somewhat. Looking back on humanity you can't apply the wisdom and knowledge we have today to the past. The world was different back then. Humanity was younger.
We've made leaps and bounds in the last 100 years alone. Imagine what it will be like in the next 100.
