Why Men Don't Grow Up (Hint: Evolution)
Ever wonder why it is that have the term "Man-Child" in our vocabulary but not "Woman-Child?" It's not that the latter archetype doesn't exist - they do, but they're so rare as to not warrant their own nickname. Conversely, the former is quite common indeed and is (obviously) most often used derisively despite being, as I will soon explain, the sad natural order of things.
Now you can rant about "the patriarchy" all you want and I won't say that you're wrong. There are a lot of social constructs and pressures involved in things like this, to be sure, but that's not all there is to it. Evolution is also a major part of it and we can't discount those factors, either. Both play their role in our world is shaped. So right from the start we can bring two factors into play: While society & its rules definitely favors men, Mother Nature definitely favors women. When it comes to evolution, men didn't just draw the short straw - they drew the absolute shit straw.
Simply put, as far as evolution is concerned, men are expendable. Completely and utterly disposable in every way. According to Mother Nature, the job of the human male is to get one or two women pregnant and then drop dead, and the sooner the better. Once baby number two is on the way he's just a waste of resources and needs to go. What's worse, he knows it. This awareness of his own lack of value is wired right into his DNA and is the root, evolutionary cause of all the reckless, self-endangering behavior that men are so known for. Whilst women are genetically programmed to be natural survivors, men are genetically programmed to get themselves killed.
Look no further than the military for proof of this. You can certainly train women to fight and kill - and they're damn good at it (Pavlichenko's body count puts Zaitsev's to absolute shame) - when it comes to jumping onto hand grenades, well, sorry but that's more of guy thing. Yes, you could train a woman to do that to, but we're talking some MK-Ultra level conditioning to a degree that would make Imperial Stormtroopers look like liberal arts majors. Why? Because training a man to die is just a matter of focusing that already implanted death instinct. Training a woman to die goes directly against all of her instincts. It's a complete contradiction to that "built to survive" design philosophy. "But wait," I hear you say, "it's well known that a woman will not hesitate to run into a burning house to save her own children" and you're right. However, the operative word here is "her" children and not some random stranger's children. Again, Mother Nature decided that the only thing more important than preserving her own life is protecting her own offspring, which is fair, but everyone else in the world who aren't exactly that... not so much. Which is why you don't see fire departments flooded with female firefighters. Other people's children are just genetic competition. They can burn.
It's not your fault. Mother Nature is a cold-hearted ruthless bitch that way. She also still lives in the Stone Age. Whilst we humans have more modern values & sensibilities, Mother Nature does not, and while I fully endorse humanity pushing these modern values & sensibilities forward I also understand that Mother Nature has had a four billion year head start. To deny her advantage and her control over our instincts in favor of just writing everything off as a "social construct" is to ignore & dismiss a problem that will absolutely sabotage all of our efforts to keep moving forward if we don't acknowledge that it even exists.
Now all this is just context to make you aware of what comes next, in which I finally get to the damn point:
When a woman hits her 40th birthday, Mother Nature says "Alright, so now that we're almost done with the first half of your life, here's what happens next. In about five more years or so you'll hit menopause and transition into your kindly, loving grandmother phases for the next twenty years. After that you'll become the village wise woman for another twenty years and then continue on being pampered raisin for the next, oh, three centuries until you finally get too bored of living to go on."
When a man hits his 40th birthday, Mother Nature says "Huh? What are you still doing here?" Then she checks her clipboard, flips a few blank pages, then shrugs and says "Crap. I wasn't counting on this 'medicine' thing happening so I didn't really have anything planned past this point, sorry. I guess you can just keep doing what you've been doing up to now."
So, yeah, she didn't really give men any real job past that point because she never expected men to last that long. Like I said, as far as Mother Nature is concerned men serve no predefined purpose after either two kids or the age of thirty, whichever comes first. Some dig down, get introspective and discover some kind of utility to their lives after that but that takes work and opportunity. For the rest, well... yeah, they're going to end up trapped in their own past youth. They've got nothing else to go on. It's all just meaningless, blank pages until their eventual deaths in about, oh, ten more years. Why not keep collecting comic books, playing with RC cars or whatever? You're job is over. You're done. From here on out it's just waiting for cancer and it won't be a very long wait, either. So fuck it. Act like a teenager until you die, because the odds of you ever reaching that level venerable age of ancient wisdom that woman get to take for granted are pretty damn slim.
So thank (or blame) evolution. But don't worry, someday we'll outgrow it... in about four billion years.
Now you can rant about "the patriarchy" all you want and I won't say that you're wrong. There are a lot of social constructs and pressures involved in things like this, to be sure, but that's not all there is to it. Evolution is also a major part of it and we can't discount those factors, either. Both play their role in our world is shaped. So right from the start we can bring two factors into play: While society & its rules definitely favors men, Mother Nature definitely favors women. When it comes to evolution, men didn't just draw the short straw - they drew the absolute shit straw.
Simply put, as far as evolution is concerned, men are expendable. Completely and utterly disposable in every way. According to Mother Nature, the job of the human male is to get one or two women pregnant and then drop dead, and the sooner the better. Once baby number two is on the way he's just a waste of resources and needs to go. What's worse, he knows it. This awareness of his own lack of value is wired right into his DNA and is the root, evolutionary cause of all the reckless, self-endangering behavior that men are so known for. Whilst women are genetically programmed to be natural survivors, men are genetically programmed to get themselves killed.
Look no further than the military for proof of this. You can certainly train women to fight and kill - and they're damn good at it (Pavlichenko's body count puts Zaitsev's to absolute shame) - when it comes to jumping onto hand grenades, well, sorry but that's more of guy thing. Yes, you could train a woman to do that to, but we're talking some MK-Ultra level conditioning to a degree that would make Imperial Stormtroopers look like liberal arts majors. Why? Because training a man to die is just a matter of focusing that already implanted death instinct. Training a woman to die goes directly against all of her instincts. It's a complete contradiction to that "built to survive" design philosophy. "But wait," I hear you say, "it's well known that a woman will not hesitate to run into a burning house to save her own children" and you're right. However, the operative word here is "her" children and not some random stranger's children. Again, Mother Nature decided that the only thing more important than preserving her own life is protecting her own offspring, which is fair, but everyone else in the world who aren't exactly that... not so much. Which is why you don't see fire departments flooded with female firefighters. Other people's children are just genetic competition. They can burn.
It's not your fault. Mother Nature is a cold-hearted ruthless bitch that way. She also still lives in the Stone Age. Whilst we humans have more modern values & sensibilities, Mother Nature does not, and while I fully endorse humanity pushing these modern values & sensibilities forward I also understand that Mother Nature has had a four billion year head start. To deny her advantage and her control over our instincts in favor of just writing everything off as a "social construct" is to ignore & dismiss a problem that will absolutely sabotage all of our efforts to keep moving forward if we don't acknowledge that it even exists.
Now all this is just context to make you aware of what comes next, in which I finally get to the damn point:
When a woman hits her 40th birthday, Mother Nature says "Alright, so now that we're almost done with the first half of your life, here's what happens next. In about five more years or so you'll hit menopause and transition into your kindly, loving grandmother phases for the next twenty years. After that you'll become the village wise woman for another twenty years and then continue on being pampered raisin for the next, oh, three centuries until you finally get too bored of living to go on."
When a man hits his 40th birthday, Mother Nature says "Huh? What are you still doing here?" Then she checks her clipboard, flips a few blank pages, then shrugs and says "Crap. I wasn't counting on this 'medicine' thing happening so I didn't really have anything planned past this point, sorry. I guess you can just keep doing what you've been doing up to now."
So, yeah, she didn't really give men any real job past that point because she never expected men to last that long. Like I said, as far as Mother Nature is concerned men serve no predefined purpose after either two kids or the age of thirty, whichever comes first. Some dig down, get introspective and discover some kind of utility to their lives after that but that takes work and opportunity. For the rest, well... yeah, they're going to end up trapped in their own past youth. They've got nothing else to go on. It's all just meaningless, blank pages until their eventual deaths in about, oh, ten more years. Why not keep collecting comic books, playing with RC cars or whatever? You're job is over. You're done. From here on out it's just waiting for cancer and it won't be a very long wait, either. So fuck it. Act like a teenager until you die, because the odds of you ever reaching that level venerable age of ancient wisdom that woman get to take for granted are pretty damn slim.
So thank (or blame) evolution. But don't worry, someday we'll outgrow it... in about four billion years.