My other big idea

Just so it's down on paper, this is my second original big idea (see my prevous post for the other one). It's a bit sad how few original big ideas we have in a lifetime that are actually worth something. Those who know me will know that I'm quite good at coming up with original small ideas - but the big ones are way too difficult.

So anyway, America is full of religious fanatics because of all the people with god genes being persecuted in Europe and moving over there.

And... mechanised warfare is in the interests of sexual equality...


How could this be? - I'll start of by stating unequivocally that I consider women on the whole to be far superior to men. Okay, some of them are annoyingly soppy or hysterical or have bad taste in men but, on the whole, y'know, they're clearly better than men.

They're generally more intelligent, better organised, more empathetic, more conscientious, and more beautiful.

For instance, a society could lose 90% of its men and still be viable. As long as polyandry were adopted, the birth rate could remain unchanged. If healthy sperm could be grown in laboratories, men would be basically obsolete. But if a society lost 90% of its women, it is pretty much on the way out.

For this reason, it made perfect sense in prehistoric societies for men to do the energy-consuming, dangerous jobs like hunting for game and protecting the tribe from outside enemies. So whereas women evolved to become nurturing organisers of the campsite, men evolved to be tough uncompromising killing machines with a sense for danger.

So far so good, you may be thinking.

The problem was that becoming warriors enabled men to establish patriarchy over their far superior mates.

And due to competition over land and resources, the warrior side of men has always been needed to protect women and children from external threats.

However, this has been steadily diminishing over time. The history of warfare since the dark ages has been the history of getting as damn far away from your opponent as possible whilst still being able to cause lethal damage. Better to fire an arrow at an enemy than charge at him with a battleaxe. Better to fire hundreds of rounds a minute with a machine gun than crack off a few shots with the musket. And best of all to launch missiles from the comfort of military command, than scrambling about in trenches under mortar fire.

Although this is primarily because it is safer to do things this way, it also has other, unintended, consequences. The role of the bloodthirsty warrior is becoming less and less prominent. It's no longer the case that if you're not macho enough yourself, then you are going to get your entrails ripped out on the battlefield.

Rather, warfare (when it's resorted to, which is less and less these days) is about sitting in heavily armoured vehicles, pushing buttons in the right order. So there is no longer a bias in favour of the brute in natural selection on the battlefield.

It will take a long time for this to have a significant effect but, in the very very long term, the mechanisation of warfare will make men less macho. As long as we don't return to the dark ages of highly prevalent hand to hand combat, mechanised warfare will enable men to specialise more in technological and creative skills. Ultimately this will benefit women, who will assert themselves as the superiors of men, rather than striving for meagre equality.

(and what I find most amusing is that many women would find imagining this process a little bit disappointing :-) )