A recent dinner conversation centered on equal opportunity for women in
the workplace and education. I support it--with the caveat that earnings
differential does not measure the same thing--but one logical question
came up: What makes the species happy anyway? What are we really
like? Does a nine-to-five job fulfill a male? Would it fulfill a female?
Is the woman's happiness the point or is the equal representation on
some unseen ledger--admittedly inferior--the point. It seems that is the
basic question as equal opportunity of a hateful thing is no bargain or
justice. There is no certainty that a woman--or man, for that
matter--will find happiness in the modern workplace. After all, we are
hunter-gatherers at worst, agricultural beings at best. Why should any
of us, male or female, find reward in the modern world?
In fact, this modern life is an experiment on a gigantic scale. Of course, those experiments are ubiquitous. We get on elevators to live and work high in the air. We drive sixty miles and hour. Is the species built for any of this?
One experiment concerns coherence, proximity. The early cultures were tribal, close knit and homogeneous. The worst punishment in the world was banishment, forced separation from the family and tribe. Socrates chose death as the alternative. Yet now that separation is routine. Families are routinely broken up with divorce and work demands and retirement preferences. Does that harm the atavistic hunter-gatherer within?
More, what are people who chose to leave their friends and families like? In Europe, migration was a slow and deliberate thing. An emigration to America was nothing like it; it was closer to going to sea than a migration. Who did that? What were they like, giving up home and hearth to land on foreign, hostile shores? And who were these people who left that new shore and struck inland, into the forests and across unmapped Comanche plains to...to what?
And what kind of children did such people have?
In fact, this modern life is an experiment on a gigantic scale. Of course, those experiments are ubiquitous. We get on elevators to live and work high in the air. We drive sixty miles and hour. Is the species built for any of this?
One experiment concerns coherence, proximity. The early cultures were tribal, close knit and homogeneous. The worst punishment in the world was banishment, forced separation from the family and tribe. Socrates chose death as the alternative. Yet now that separation is routine. Families are routinely broken up with divorce and work demands and retirement preferences. Does that harm the atavistic hunter-gatherer within?
More, what are people who chose to leave their friends and families like? In Europe, migration was a slow and deliberate thing. An emigration to America was nothing like it; it was closer to going to sea than a migration. Who did that? What were they like, giving up home and hearth to land on foreign, hostile shores? And who were these people who left that new shore and struck inland, into the forests and across unmapped Comanche plains to...to what?
And what kind of children did such people have?
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