http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3376&page=1First of all - I disagree with Longman's assumption that we are ensnared in the patriarchy only when families are stronger - "The
Return of the Patriarchy" - as if we ever left :shrug: .
Patriarchy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Patriarchy (from Greek: patria meaning father and arché meaning rule) is the anthropological term used to define the sociological condition where male members of a society tend to predominate in positions of power; with the more powerful the position, the more likely it is that a male will hold that position....Finally, the term patriarchy is used perjoratively to describe a seemingly immobile and sclerotic (grown rigid or unresponsive especially with age) political order.
The just of the article strikes me as if Phillip Longman would like for the women of the US to become religious and have more children.
According to him - this would give the men power and create people to fight wars. Fighting wars is good for "advanced civilization" where one group hoards loads of stuff they got from other nations. Only then - to get to the "advanced" part - they need luxury and time to create things like pyramids and art.
The trouble is - when people start getting more interested in luxury and art - they start having less children and families break down and then the civilization collapses until the men decide they want their power back. And then they go getting all religious again and having big families so they have more power and create people to fight wars....
"In our time all Greece was visited by a dearth of children and a general decay of population,” lamented the Greek historian Polybius around 140 B.C., just as Greece was giving in to Roman domination. “This evil grew upon us rapidly, and without attracting attention, by our men becoming perverted to a passion for show and money and the pleasures of an idle life.”
"Patriarchy made the incentive of taking a husband and becoming a full-time mother very high because it offered women few desirable alternatives. To be sure, a society organized on such principles may well degenerate over time into misogyny, and eventually sterility, as occurred in both ancient Greece and Rome. In more recent times, the patriarchal family has also proved vulnerable to the rise of capitalism, which profits from the diversion of female labor from the house to the workplace. But as long as the patriarchal system avoids succumbing to these threats, it will produce a greater quantity of children, and arguably children of higher quality, than do societies organized by other principles, which is all that evolution cares about."
"But what was once the Roman Empire remained populated. Only the composition of the population changed. Nearly by default, it became composed of new, highly patriarchal family units, hostile to the secular world and enjoined by faith either to go forth and multiply or join a monastery."
It seems to me that it shouldn't take that many people to fight wars these days - and of course we are fighting wars whether we need to or not - so that is a complete of people on both sides. It's not like whoever has the most soldiers wins like maybe it was 2000 years ago. I also think people need to reevaluate what "advanced" means and what "progress" is.
Phillip Longman seems determined to use ancient ideas. That is not progress. It is "sclerotic".
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