Creative Chaos

 

            Years ago, I concocted the notion of a six day week, with a sixty-week year divided evenly into 12 months, each with exactly five weeks (30 days).  The extra five or six days would be tacked onto the last month, or declared an official holiday period between old and new years.  No more having to check a calendar to determine what day of the week a given date falls.  Every month would have the same number of days and weeks.  Each day of the month would be the same day of the week all year long.  Logic, order, simplicity.

 

            Boring.  That, in a nutshell, is the problem, and the reality.  Chaos is a necessary ingredient in society, progress, life.  Things would be so much simpler and easier if we all did the same things the same way over and over again.  But, if our ancestors had done so, we would never have made it out of the caves, or even into the caves for that matter.

 

            The driving urge to mess things up, the need for chaos, seems stronger in the male of all species.  Compare apartments of single males versus females if there is any doubt.  Rams bang their heads together.  Human males race cars, climb mountains and otherwise waste enormous amounts of time and energy.  For all the talk of hormones, females are in many ways the more logical, preferring to preserve and nurture what is.  Males cause an enormous amount of trouble.

 

            But we do stir the pot.  Biologically, that appears to be our only clear purpose.  Females produce the eggs that become the young that continue the species.  The male contribution seems so minor it could easily be done without.  The only advantage to sexual over asexual reproduction (other than providing most of the plots for soap operas, a minimal benefit at best) is the introduction of chaos.

 

            Most chaos is disastrous.  Look at human history.  Think of all the wars, feuds, demolitions, violent death and needless destruction painted across the vast sweep of human time.  Then consider the infinitesimal crawl of progress we have to show for it.  Rather like a billion sperms wasted so one can penetrate an egg.

 

            Progress requires chaos.  But steady progress requires a balance between conservation and chaos.  Many societies fail to develop for want of significant input from their female halves.  Recent experience suggests the best way to help under-developed countries move forward is to educate the women, give them property rights, "empower" them.  Without equal input from our stabilizing half, chaos spins out of control, no progress is made, and even what was before may be lost.  In one farming culture barely above subsistence, development stalled as long as men owned all the land.  The men tended to take what little profit came from the land (which I think was mostly worked by the women), and spend it gambling, carousing, drinking, etc.

 

            Only when the women were given the right to own and control the land they farmed, did the financial base of the culture stabilize.  This example supports the not uncommon female notion that males are a total waste of time, aside from our reproductive function.  I know of one woman (I am sure she was not the first) to go so far as to express envy of the female preying mantis's power to consume her mate after he serves his fertilizing function.  On the other hand, without the element of chaos, the driving force that sometimes makes men act like idiots, we might all still be subsistence farmers, if we had even made it that far.

 

            The overwhelming case of history, human and genetic, is that we need both chaos and stability.  Chaos brought us the nuclear age, stability may allow us to survive it.  The more women approach parity with men in positions of authority at all levels and around the globe, the better the odds for special survival.  We have only one world (for now) and must preserve it as the mother does her egg.

 

            Of course, too much can be made of sexual distinctions.  The worst and best tendencies ascribed to each can be found in the other.  Pop psychology and jokes aside, we are one species.  Our heritage and our destiny are one.  Humanity has done great things and horrible things, and we are all part of both.  If men fought the wars, women raised the soldiers.  If women treated the sick and injured, men climbed the mountains or cut through the jungles to get the herbs to make the medicine.  At worst, emphasis on sexual distinctions can be used to excuse violence as a male thing and victimization as a female thing.  Just as we all have the capacity to inflict violence, we all have the capacity to not do so.  We all also have the capacity, and the need, to use all of ourselves, just as humanity needs full participation from all of its parts.  We need to understand where our feelings come from, the purpose they serve in the greater scheme of things.  Such understanding helps us focus our energies, control our lives, and ultimately build our destiny together.

 

 

 

 

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