That was the title of the 1906 eu-topian novel by H.G. Wells. The tail of a comet sweeps Earth and causes everyone to become healthy and peaceful. Earth did pass through the tail of Halley’s Comet in 1910; that led not to peace but to the 1914 war, which led to the 1939 war, the Cold War, and Mutually Assured Destruction.
First, a current comet. I’m bewildered and somewhat appalled by Facebook, but Tilly advises me I must keep up a presence in it, so yesterday I posted a sketch of a cat called Paradiddle, and that led to my seeing a fine photo by Clay Sherrod, in Arkansas, of Comet 29P Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, which led to my making this space diagram of the large comet, prone to relatively huge outbursts of brightness, in its near-circular orbit beyond Jupiter, with our sightline to it.
Better Planet (2051) Department
“Welcome to Cop 56, hosted in this delightful Idlib Conference Center by the Levantine Union [Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Gaza – explanations in brackets for visitors from thirty years ago]. In these leisurely times, many of you, looking forward to the camaraderie of these annual gatherings, have arrived early by solarboat and solartrain, and there have been friendly football, golf, and chess matches between the delegations of the East Asia Union [Tibet, Uyghurstan, North and South Mongolia, China, Taiwan, North and South Korea] and the Caribbean and Cameroon and Inner Asia Unions and the Anatolian Union [Turkey, Kurdistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan]. The first item on today’s agenda is the workshop on forest cover increase offered by the Union of the Nile [Somalia, Ethiopia, Tigray, Eritrea, Sudan, Nubia, and Egypt]. I need scarcely remind you that this is the thirtieth anniversary of the Glasgow Cop 26, at which China and the American Union put aside their differences and set a common example that warded off climate disaster. And that next year will see the termination of the twenty-year All-Female Government Agreement, the successful experiment that put an end to the wars and other foolish disputes of past centuries. At Cop 57 in Tonga, we will be welcoming delegations provisionally composed up to one third of males on their best behavior.”
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Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Just some random thoughts:
The idea of female benevolence, might have its origins in the sexist idea of females being the “weaker sex”.
In some pre-Islamic Arab societies, women warriors were not unusual.
The Iroquois were reported to sometimes hand over their prisoners to their women for the purpose pf torture.
As the other commenter pointed out the abortion numbers since Roe vs. Wade in the USA stand at 60,000,000. This is roughly equivalent to the population of South Korea, and exceeds Stalin’s Hitler’s and Mao’s body counts..
Albert Einstein once remarked that as warmongers women were worse than men, I assume because they encourage the men to fight.
Women have proved to make excellent soldiers.
A closing thought: Women AND men are obviously the same species, Homo sapiens evolved from territorial in-group gregarious, out-group aggressive omnivorous primates. Both sexes seem to have inherited those tendencies, which we sahre with Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) our closest living relatives—Jane Goodall observed a female chimp murdering the infants of other chimps after proving inept at mothering her own which died. Only the Bonobos seem to have lessened their aggressive urges—-we have not even after circa 7,000,000 of evolution from just before the time of Sahelanthropus tchadensis.
Wherever “The idea of female benevolence, might have its origins” had no connection with the origin of my idea that female government should be tried; I had at that age never heard of anything similar or of feminism.
All those instances, as you know, are titillating because paradoxical. They are exceptions to what everyone knows is the generality. There could be far more anecdotes in the opposite direction. I remember reading in some history of upstate mining camps in the Carolinas of men fighting and tearing each others; eyes out; they were “without the civiliizing influence of women”.
In social anthropology we learned that in hunter-gatherer societies men went out to hunt and women stayed around to gather, and then to cook and nurture; and that was the fairly obvious cultural, rather than genetic, conditioner of behavioral differences between the sexes. I imagine that is still the doctrine.
Perhaps—they were random thoughts—observations might have been a better word. I would still say that the Jury is still out—but Women’s Suffrage did not make US or British politics any less contentious in the twentieth century even if we leave out questions of war and peace.
The division of labor which you cite may be accounted for by the differences in average strength between men and women—we are rather sexually dimorphic as a species, but I would NOT question the potential ability of any individual woman to best any individual man in feats of strength, (except maybe the most exceptionally strong men). Child rearing cuts two ways—it can bring out the nurturing instinct—or unfortunately resentment towards the child which now demands so much time and effort—-guys need to help out here—but some will still have to work this out.
Human nature is ugly up close sometimes—it is also sometimes grand noble and altruistic.. I guess it all depends on whether culture can overcome genetics. Experience so far would put me in the pessimistic camp on this question. Yes women ARE different—except when they are not .
The question of the method of setting up and maintaining such a female led Utopia I will not address at this time. I will recomend the Polish Utopian Novel from the 18th Century Which has been translated into English in the following edition:
Title: The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom
Author Ignacy Krasicki
Editor: Northwestern University Press, 1992
ISBN 0810110148, 9780810110144
148 pages
I forgot to mention that the novel I referred todoes NOT address specifically the idea of a femake ked Utopia, rather it describes a Utopia — with a rather buried negative side behind its idyllic day to day life. Utopias can be problematical due to unpredictable , sometimes ornery humans!
There would seem to be no biological reason for female humans to be more passive than males after all female lions and tigers will kill you just as dead as male ones.And do female dogs have a lower rate of biting humans than male ones?Do,for example,the police use male dogs rather than female ones for say crowd control?Hard to know as you can’t tell what sex a dog is unless you inspect it closely.
Ah, I see the mythology (Freudian wish-fulfillment, rather?) of female benevolence continues apace. I know you have heard of the Amazons! And the idea was ablated in 1997 … https://www.amazon.com/When-She-Was-Bad-Innocence/dp/0670859257 Another nail in the eu-topian fantasies of female beneficence, alas.
Sure, women can sometimes be violent. But anyone who goes through or expects to do through the mighty ordeal of childbirth, and then nourishes and develops a child, is likely to have a deep sense of the value and fragility of a human being. I have believed since the age of thirteen that women in government would be less likely to start wars. Golda Meir etc. did, but in an age when women have to make like alpha males to get to the top. The Amazons were invented by male Greek mythographers such as Apollonius Rhodius.
I note the ablation of 60 million lives by abortion in the USA alone since Roe vs Wade in January1973 and suggest that is in opposition to your supposals. In deed, that history would seem to negate the supposal of an innate understanding of the value and fragility of human beings and out-males the male in dealing death. Beneficient female governments are as mythical as Amazons, it would seem! It seems to me that the human propensity for violence is both male and female.
Yesm one of the probable benefits of female power would be symoathetic treatment of victims of raoe and marita abuse.
It is look at Golda Meir(various conflicts),Mrs Thatcher (Falklands),Indira Gandhi (Bangladesh and Golden Temple) and going further back Katherine the Great who,I think took New Russia, which in a way has directly lead to the present Donbas problem….well her, Lenin,Kruschev, Putin and a few others.
Yeah sorry, this idea that female-led governments would be less violent, I’d hesitate to say it, but …it’s naive.
Don’t forget the Hale Bopp Comet which lead to the demise of the Heavens Gate cult near San Diego!