The 2084 Precept (37 page)

"Everything?" asked Jeremy.

"Yes. And also all of the factories which
are needed to manufacture all of these things. And also all of the
machines that are needed in the factories to be able to manufacture
everything. And also all of the mining of the required raw
materials as well. Those are the facts."

"There are no exceptions?"

"Maybe, as I have said. But I don't recall
any at the moment. It doesn't matter anyway, you have the general
picture. Men are the providers."

"And this is because women prefer not to do
any of these things?"

"Yes and also because, as regards most
things, they can't. In general, they are not inventors or
manufacturers. They are users, consumers. Now, I should make you
aware of the fact that you will find a lot of women and maybe even
some men who disagree with this. They will say that men prevent the
women from doing any of these things. They will say that men won't
let the women have any money to do any of these things. Men prevent
them from obtaining all the intricate mental skills and drive
necessary to invent, say, the airplane, or a rocket to fly to the
moon, or a space station. And on top of that, if they did start
inventing things, men would prevent them from manufacturing their
inventions. Men, in these people's views, are to blame for things
being the way they are."

"And are the men to blame?"

"Of course not. Women have the just same
opportunities to attend school and university as men do. It's just
that most of them don't want to be engineers or inventors or
builders or manufacturers. Nor are they interested in the computer
and IT world. A survey this year in Germany by the Allensbach
Institute discovered that only 0.5% of school-age females were
interested in pursuing a career in IT. And a lot of women have a
lot of money, huge inheritances, vast divorce payoffs, or they have
earned a lot by being an actress or a singer. There are female
billionaires. But they don't use their money to build factories and
create jobs and they don't do much inventing either. They either
don't want to or they can't; it is not that men prevent them from
doing so. Not that money is always necessary anyway. Some massive
corporations start in a garage on a penny budget."

"So women do not accept that they are the
way they are?"

"Some do, they don't have a problem with it.
But a lot of women don't. So we now have things like female boxing
tournaments, if you can believe that. And recently they have
discovered that there are other male sports like kick-boxing and
wrestling and arm-wrestling and so we have female versions of that
as well. And we have female politicians demanding female quotas for
highly paid jobs in industry, top positions on supervisory boards
and so forth. But you never hear them demanding that women build
factories themselves and fill them with female personnel and create
their own top jobs. They just want women to be given the icing from
the male cake. You will never hear them demanding quotas for female
construction workers, for female slaughterhouse workers, for female
front-line soldiers, for female coal miners, for female car
mechanics, for female truck drivers, for female bomb-disposal
experts, for—and what could be more logical—female gynaecologists
and female surgeons. And so on. They just want quotas for the nice
fat jobs which men have created and which they are unable to create
for themselves. In fact in Norway, I think the management or
supervisory board of every company already has to comply with a 40%
female quota. And in Germany, 30% is being introduced. By law. And
this is irrespective of whether there are enough female candidates
who are qualified enough, experienced enough and knowledgeable
enough to outperform any available male candidates. The quota,
quite simply, must be filled."

I stopped. I would finish this off by
throwing in a summary of Steve's views.

"As that friend of mine says," I went on,
"if they can't achieve money and power through their own efforts
and in their own factories, their only chance is to shame the males
into agreeing to a law which hands it all to them on a golden
plate. The future is clear, he says. Thanks to the birdbrains, we
will end up on this planet with a lot of Queen Bees supervising
large masses of worker bees, who will all be male. They will need
the worker bees of course, he says, because they cannot themselves
design and build houses, schools, hospitals, factories, machinery,
cars, trucks, airplanes, ships and so forth. Without the males,
their world would unavoidably be an extremely backward one.
Primitive."

"If I may say so," interrupted Jeremy,
"these opinions of yours make you sound immoderately
anti-feminist."

"Now that, Jeremy, is not fair, not fair at
all. First of all, I have only been stating facts. Facts about who
creates what on this planet, facts about who uses these things
without creating them, facts about the demands for quotas, facts
about what the quotas are being demanded for—and also what they are
not being demanded for—and facts about many women complaining that
men prevent them from doing the things that men do. Or from
achieving the things that men achieve. And even my friend's stated
opinion is a fact. That is exactly what he says."

"Hmm…"

"Which is not to say that I don't have
opinions, Jeremy, and in this case they happen to be the exact
opposite of what you are inferring."

"Ah, then I would be grateful to hear those
if you don't mind."

"I don't mind at all. Firstly, I don't think
we need to dispute the fact that men are the physically dominant
inhabitants of our planet. At the same time, women are just as
important as men in our society. They are just as intelligent as
men, although not in the same way or in all of the same things.
They are also better at many things than men, never forgetting
however, that vice versa is equally true. Women are superior in
specific roles such as nursing and caring for other humans, also
animal care, possibly for biological reasons, I don't know. There
are many excellent female doctors and surgeons, there are many
outstanding female authors, there are many outstanding female
accountants, and so on. Women excel in many areas compared to men,
while at the same time being inferior in others including, for
example, the composition of music. There are no female Beethovens,
at least not so far as I am aware. And so in my view our society
has a very well balanced gender mix with some roles being the same
and other roles being forcibly different. These complement each
other in a beneficial and harmonious manner. In a natural way. As
Nature intended it. "

"And so your point is…?"

"And so my point is that I totally disagree
with that friend of mine who describes women as child-bearing
parasites, even if he doesn't mean it as nastily as it sounds. A
parasite is something which lives off something or someone else.
Women however furnish as many beneficial contributions to our
society as do the men, and the male humans depend on the female
ones just as much as the other way round. A perfectly balanced
situation you might say."

"Well that's something positive at last,"
said Jeremy. "I was beginning to wonder whether there was anything
positive at all about your planet."

"Yes, but unfortunately we mess this up as
well. We have a complicated system for the cohabitation of males
and females. We call it marriage. A couple signs a legal document
promising to live together monogamously and which, among other
things, authorizes the state to apply certain laws under certain
circumstances, including financial compensation—usually, but not
always, by the male to the female—in the event of a separation. The
problem here is the naïve assumption that all human beings,
particularly the male ones, are monogamous. Some states, in line
with their religions, have recognized this anomaly, and their laws
permit the male to marry several wives as time goes by, providing
he accepts the responsibility for keeping and supporting them
all."

"So you have created various differing
social structures on your planet?"

"Yes, and my view—and it is my view that you
are after, Jeremy—is that the male human being is not by nature a
monogamous creature. Certainly, some men may be born monogamous but
these would be the exceptions. Just as homosexuals are exceptions,
even if some of them end up marrying women. But whatever…let us
forget my views on this and get back to the facts. This complicated
marriage system of ours is a disaster. If people want to stay
together, they shouldn't need a piece of paper to force them to do
so. But with marriage, we have created a system which is
unworkable, and we have therefore had to create another system to
undo it all—a system for legal separation. We call it divorce. The
marriage system simply does not fit the nature of its participants,
transparently so. There are over 10 million divorces per year on
this planet, each and every year. Non-stop. That is over 27,000
divorces
per day
. Those are undeniable facts and they
support my assertion."

"Not very intelligent."

"No, but the situation is worse still. If we
take the top 20 divorce countries, the divorce rates are between
40% and 68%. In other words, about half of the marriages
disintegrate. There are many reasons for this, but the main one is
compliance with an activity which is part of nature—sexual
adultery. Polygamous activity in other words. However, we also need
to look at the other half of the marriages, the ones which
do
not
end in divorce. Of these, half again are horror stories.
Some are psychologically horrific, some are physically horrific,
and some are horrific in more subtle ways. And if children are
involved, they have no alternative but to participate in these
horrific lives as well. And the reasons such couples remain
together when they shouldn't do are many. Belief in the power of
the legal piece of paper, fear of physical violence, religious
beliefs telling them that to end the horror is a sin forbidden by
whichever god holds sway in their particular culture, and with
fearful godly consequences in the event of non-compliance (most of
our gods are extremely keen on using vengeance as a religious
tool). And then there is the fear of financial hardship for one or
both of the parties, and there is also plain inertia or
resignation, and there are several more reasons as well. In the
end, Jeremy, perhaps only 25% of humans benefit from this
complicated marriage system. And you know what?"

"What?"

"They are the ones who would benefit without
it anyway."

"So the whole thing serves no purpose
whatsoever? For anyone?"

"Correct. As you can see, we are a species
which is not prepared to leave things the way they naturally are.
We have to meddle with it all. And going back to the matter of
quotas for females, that is just another example of our meddling.
We can't leave anything alone, not even, as I described in our
first interview, the animals in the wild. They have to be put into
zoos. They have to be put into laboratories. Or killed, with or
without neck-vices."

"And so to summarize, and as you said at the
beginning, Peter, your species cannot even leave the gender roles
and the gender relationships alone?"

"Exactly.
'Vive la différence'
is
what the French say and that is the way I look at it also; and
without restricting myself to mere matters of sex and sexual
function. But oh no, we can't have that, we have to forcibly
meddle. We have to build an unnatural, strained and artificial
system of cohabitation. There will be more ‘quotas’, Jeremy, take
my word for it. We have only just started."

"Well," said Jeremy, "it is certainly all
very interesting and one could probably use a few other adjectives
as well. But if you agree, perhaps we could leave this subject and
finish up with our last one? Economics? This will be of particular
interest to me of course, being in business here as I am."

"It's a deal, Jeremy," I said. I poured
myself some more coffee, took some more cake, and thought about how
to start.

"Could you keep it short please, Peter? I
need to get back to the office and deal with some important
documents. Perhaps just a couple of items to direct my
research?"

"Right you are, Jeremy."

No problem, I too want to get out of
here.

"Now let me see…” I said, “…I would think
that the dominating themes in economics nowadays would include
'economics based on growth', 'economics based on debt' and perhaps
'social economics'. Given the complexity of the topic, that is a
severely restricted agenda, Jeremy."

"That is understood, Peter."

"O.K. Then I think I will start off by
saying that the human race has never identified an economic system
that works. And it never will. Economics is, in fact, a false
science which only functions partially and only in the short-term.
It is based on theories which are at first applied and then blown
out of the water as soon as new divergent economic situations
arise. The existing theories are then modified to adapt to the new
events and, as new cycles come and go, they too are blown out of
the water. This applies to the theories of even the greatest
economists—I suggest Keynes to you, Jeremy, for the purposes of
your research—and, you guessed it, these are also argued and argued
and argued about whenever they fail to produce the results they are
supposed to."

I poured myself the last of the coffee and
drank it down, my throat was generating Satchmo sounds.

"If economic science were a genuine and
authentic science, there would not be the unforeseen financial
disasters or crises which occur time and again as assuredly as the
moon orbits our planet. These crises occur on a global basis, or on
a country by country basis, or even on a regional basis at
provincial or county level, despite the fact that most of the
world's governments are stacked to the gills with hordes of highly
paid economists. If you trawl a couple of thousand years back
through history, Jeremy, you will find two things. First, you will
find crises throughout. And secondly, you will be able to read
hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of economists' theses and
articles. Conflicting ones of course, arguing away with each other
like starving hyenas fighting over some road-kill. And more and
more theses and more and more theories are being created right now
as we speak, Jeremy, and will be created on into infinity. I beg
your pardon again Jeremy…until our species ceases to exist."