Thursday, April 03, 2014

Thoughts on men and women

Francis W. Porretto give us some history of male and female human beings.
Men naturally came to respect the initiative and prowess of other men, and sought to learn from one another those elements of knowledge most conducive to the survival and flourishing of the tribe. However, as they were not as closely gathered, day by day, as the tribe's women, they experienced far less pressure to conform to a group consensus. Greater variation in aptitudes and styles followed as a matter of course.

The first of the Western cultures to embed meticulous record-keeping at its core, the pre-Christian Jews, were unabashed about the division of labor between him and her, and the whys and wherefores pertinent to it. Their general orientation toward relations between men and women became that of Western Civilization generally, for a simple reason: it worked. That is, it served the survival needs of Mankind overall while giving each of the sexes the duties it could best handle and had come to prefer. That orientation persisted, largely unchallenged, until the mid-Twentieth Century and the advent of Progressivism.

Adaptation has imbued him with a far greater degree of initiative and aggression. This naturally gave rise to a male preference for undertakings that emphasize those qualities: the military, the "responder" vocations, and the formation of new enterprises. Conversely, adaptation has bestowed upon her a talent for conserving and managing. That embraced the protection and nurturance of children, domestic resources, and what was once known as "women's wisdom," a subject to which we'll return a bit later. Though argument persists as to whether these proclivities are genetic or merely maintained through social continuity, their perpetuation over time should put an end to the notion that they're influences to be casually dispensed with. This is especially important in the case of courtship, marriage, and the family: the one and only venue in which he and she are incapable of proceeding in isolation from one another.

Each side wants the emotional sustenance and satisfaction the other can provide.
He wants sexual access and (more often than not even today) children.
She wants protection, material support, and the stature among other women that comes from having a respected spouse, a decent home, and a stable place in the community.

Read more here.

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