Chapter four: A more caring and loving world

Today, the world is suffering from a major financial crisis that could be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.  As a result, people all over the world are protesting. Their main focus is the fact that even though jobs and wages are being cut for ordinary people, the rich are becoming more and more wealthy.  In a time of great austerity, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  Those who caused the crisis, seen as bankers and financial organisations, are perceived as having been left untouched by hardship.

For this reason, many people are very angry indeed. Activists in America are calling for extreme measures, a kind of French Revolution, in which the bankers and financiers will be guillotined.  Although the anger people feel about the way bankers might be cheating the rest of us is very understandable, we need to learn the lessons of the French Revolution - why it didn’t work out and why it went horribly wrong.

It's a little known fact that women played a very important role at the beginning of the French Revolution, but then allowed men to take over the leadership. The new revolutionary leaders proved to be as bad, if not worse, than the people they replaced. They began by guillotining the aristocratic class, but it didn’t stop there. The male leaders fought savagely for power and the losers of this struggle were also guillotined. Under the rule of the dictator Robespierre, tens of thousands of people were executed in a reign of terror.  Ironically, France was now being ruled even more repressively and violently than before the revolution.  In some regions, the people rose up against the revolutionary government, but were suppressed using brutal force.  In the end the country became a military dictatorship headed by Napoleon Bonaparte, who embarked on a long war to try to conquer the whole of Europe.  Millions died.

The lesson of the French Revolution is clear. The problem is patriarchy. It doesn’t matter whether you replace one group of male leaders with another, you will still end up with conflict, war and an unequal society.

The Wall St protesters of 2011 point out that only 1% of the population owns nearly half of the wealth of the USA.  This is not unusual. Five thousand years ago, in Ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh and the ruling class also owned the vast bulk of the wealth of Egypt.  Such inequity has been true throughout history in every country in the world.  At times, ordinary people have risen in rebellion against such manifest injustice.  

There have been scores of Peasant revolutions over the last two thousand years, most of them brutally suppressed.  But even the uprisings that have been successful, haven’t made life better for the ordinary person. We only have to look at the French and Russian revolutions to see that the oppression of the common people became even worse.  Even recently, in Egypt, where a popular uprising caused the fall of the government, it still hasn’t produced a better life for the people and may never do so.

Over the years, people have tried many different political systems, like communism, socialism, theocracy, fascism and democracy.  It's true that some systems have been better than others, but all have created unfair societies where there is usually a big gap between rich and poor.  Even in our present unstable world, where large numbers of people are angry enough to revolt against injustice, there is no guarantee that the new rulers will be any better than the ones they replace.  They might be even worse.

So why is it that every political system man has tried, has failed to create a reasonable, equal and fair society?  It's because men are very competitive in nature.  It's completely impossible for those who fight each other for power and wealth, to create a fair and equal society. It's not going to happen. We only have to look at communism to see the truth of this. The avowed aim of this political system was to create equality, yet all communist revolutions have led to dictatorship.  Does this mean that people’s desire for a more equal and fairer society will never be achieved?  We have tried every political system and none of them has brought equality. Apart from one. We have never tried matriarchy. We have never seen what it might be like if we were governed by nurturing women.

In the five thousand years of recorded history it has largely been men who have ruled our world.  It is still true today. Although we are seeing more female politicians, presidents and prime ministers, they are still a small minority. These women have to join patriarchal political parties and rule using the patriarchal system.  The result is that they have to act like men if they want to be a success in a male dominated world.  What women need is a matriarchal political party which allows them to act and behave like women instead of substitute males.  So what, you might say. If we had a matriarchal political party ruling a country, what difference would it make?

The difference is that women are less competitive than men. A woman’s body produces far less testosterone than a male one.  This makes the average woman not only physically weaker than a man but less aggressive as well. It's the reason why men have ruled our world for the last five thousand years. Fighting for power, wealth and status comes naturally to many men and when this is coupled with a lack of compassion for the suffering of others, it's a recipe for the worst excesses of tyranny and cruelty. In a patriarchal world where the dice is loaded in favour of competitive and aggressive men, most women have no chance of having their voice heard and even less chance of gaining power unless they inherit it. Even then they may be married off to an ambitious male and shunted off to the sidelines. It's not much fun for most men either. If they lose out in the dog eat dog world of patriarchy, then they are seen as failures and are used to further the ambitions of the alpha male winners.

It would be different if we had a matriarchal political party. Voters could choose female politicians whose desire is to see a fairer and more balanced society. They would be far less likely to take a country to war, far more likely to see inequities and seek to remove them. No, women are not perfect, but they are far more likely to make decisions which benefit the whole of a society and far less likely to favour the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. There are good reasons why this would be the case; women's maternal instinct and their ability to act unselfishly which springs directly from it.

Most women care deeply about their children's welfare because they have a maternal instinct. Many care about children in general and some care for everyone. It's no accident that the most vulnerable people in our society are largely looked after by women while men generally pursue money status and power. So the focus for any matriarchal government will be on children and those who, like children, cannot fend for themselves in a competitive world. A matriarchal government will spend more of the resources of a country on the welfare of children than any patriarchal government. No matriarchal government will want to see children live in poverty and ignorance.  In the process of helping children, the government will also have to help the parents who are caring for the children live a life which allows them to nurture their young. Eventually, the resources of the country will be devoted to caring for all people in ways that our military-industrial nations cannot contemplate and would reject outright.

To patriarchal minded people, this all sounds crazy. Where does business fit into this dream? Where are the large armies to defend us from aggressive countries? Where would the money come from to nurture all children and help them realize their potential? If we shared out the wealth of a country more equitably, wouldn't successful entrepreneurs simply jump ship and go to where they could keep more of their money? Sensible questions given the world as it is today, but it doesn't have to stay that way. Not all people who set up in business are greedy selfish people whose only interest is in making money. Some care for their employees and for the society they live in.

This can be reinforced by the political decisions made by matriarchal governments. Laws do not have to favour the rich and powerful. It is not inevitable, although we have reached a state of such disillusionment and despair that it seems that way. People living under tyrannical governments often believe that nothing will ever change. Dissidents will always be thrown into prison and tortured. The dictator will always be free to squander the wealth of the country on palaces and guns while the poor starve. Then the revolution comes and a chance to overthrow the corrupt regime arrives. We are in exactly the same position globally. The tyranny of patriarchal power and greed has brought us to our knees. What we need this time is a revolution which empowers maternal women instead of replacing selfish and competitive men with another bunch who are just the same. We can change the world and make it a fairer and more loving place to live if we allow maternal minded women to lead us.