"I thought you were going to talk about genders."
"Yes, well…we are not satisfied with nature in that respect either. And so we are changing this as well. Men and women are not only physically different but also mentally different. Their brains are different and are of a different size. Many women will automatically lock onto such a statement and accuse one of having used the word 'inferior' instead of 'different'. Untrue and of course it's not worth wasting time discussing such ludicrous misinterpretations. There are facts and that is the end of it. For example, we will never have a female overall chess champion of the world. As in physical sports, chess has to be separated into male and female championships. Darts also. Snooker also. There has never been a female Formula I champion—in fact, unless I am not mistaken, not even a female Formula I driver. The reflex speeds and the abilities to judge distances and velocities are different. Possibly also the aggressiveness ratios are different, I don't know."
I drank some more coffee, thought it over.
"I think the best way to explain the differences to you would be for me to start off by explaining that everything a woman touches and uses in this world, absolutely everything, has been envisaged, designed and manufactured by men. There may be the odd exception but I can't think of any at the moment. In other words, the cutlery at the table, the table itself, the chairs, the bathroom, the bed, the lamps, the food, the coffee machine, the house she lives in, the electricity supply, the water supply, the sewage system, the heating system, the heating oil and the gas supply, the trash cans and the trucks which empty them, her gardening equipment, the bicycle she uses, the car she drives, the roads she drives it on, the trains she rides on, the planes she flies in, the ships and the ferries and the yachts she sails on, the office she sits in if she works, her office pens and pencils, the tennis courts if she plays tennis, the tennis racquets and the tennis balls, the swimming pools if she swims, the exercise machines if she exercises, the sports arenas if she plays sports, the sports equipment itself, the baby carriage if she has a child or children, the children's nappies, the hospital where she had her children, the hospital equipment, her shoes, her hairdryer, her mobile phone, her computer, her television, and so on and so on and so on."
"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 accountan
ts, 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."
"Yes, you have mentioned several times that conflict is the main trait of your species, and that arguing is the unarmed version of it."
"Yes, well let me get down to the nut
s and bolts. Most of our economies are based on what we call growth. Low growth is a troublesome circumstance, zero growth is extremely bad news, and negative growth produces a poisonous crisis involving, among other things, high unemployment and a corresponding rise in poverty. More and more and more and more is what our system is based on. It is like pushing a snowball uphill. It gets bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier but it has to be kept rolling at all costs. And when it does stop, because it eventually has to of course, we have another crisis. The construction industry is an easy example of the folly of this kind of economic system. Construction forms a major part of most of our economies and it is the reason why we continue to bury our planet under a massive layer of concrete as fast as we can and, like the snowball, this activity must be maintained—forever. If it stops, or nearly stops, thousands of construction companies go bankrupt, their suppliers go bankrupt, millions of workers become unemployed. The economic model then suffers under the murderous dual effect of heavily reduced taxation income coupled with an enormous increase in social benefit costs. So the snowball has to be restarted and we have to begin suffocating our beautiful planet with more and more concrete again. This is the only thing that the masses and their elected clowns—at national, provincial and municipal level—can envisage. More, for them, means better, flap, flap. They don't understand why ‘more’ should mean better, but they can't envisage anything else. And so they proceed to do as their predecessors have done and as their successors, with equal certainty, will continue to do. Flap, flap."
“You frequently use this expression flap, flap, Peter. What do you mean by that?”
“Ah yes.” I answered with a smile. “Definitely not a common expression. It is merely the way in which I picture the birdbrains all over the world as they flap their wings with one new idea after the other, day in, day out, while at the same time squawking ‘more is better’, ‘more is better.’”
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