Today, I’m starting big. What would life be like if women, the least emotional of the genders, had more power to change the way we live our lives? I doubt if we’d have atrocities at weddings in Turkey, or the UK’s ‘least-wanted’ list, newly published today (99% male, naturally). Or people running over police officers in cars. Or nuclear power. Wishful conjecture, I know. But, when you help organisations who work in the sphere of social and environmental change, as I do, it’s hard to avoid the certainty that the issues we are facing in this world are all caused by one sport and death-obsessed gender. Progress is slow. And we all have to get used to the likelihood that, although we can work towards it, we will not see the change we crave in our own lifetimes. When it comes to the human race, I cannot be an optimist. But I will walk stoically on, supporting the efforts of the more reasonable of the genders. Women have been trying to make a difference for centuries, largely by joining this man-made world of unforgiving, hard-line religions and unrelenting, hard-nosed business. 200 years ago today, one Mary Kies became the first US woman to be issued with a patent. In doing so, she broke a pattern whereby women could not own property independently of their husbands in the land of the free. This was a strike for womankind, but just a perpetuation of a system created by men. And so it continues. To generalise big time, in the developed world, women are becoming more like men and less like themselves. And even Margaret Thatcher (the model for this) knew that this was a pretty poor aspiration. Although I doubt she was alluding to this, human rights has to be the highest aspiration of humankind. And so, today, we celebrate the 60th birthday of the Council of Europe, an organisation that most UK citizens will not have heard of, despite having 47 member states and covering over 800 million citizens. An organisation whose best achievement was the European Convention on Human Rights, enforced by the European Court of Human Rights. While studying for my Masters degree in 1990, I was lucky enough to spend six weeks working at the Council in Strasbourg. I think this was the beginning of my own journey. A journey accompanied by lots of music – the crowning achievement of the male gender. Barely a day goes by without me referring to some musical milestone. Today, 5th May 2009, I honour the achievement of Ian McCulloch, founder of Echo and the Bunnymen, who has reached 50. One question still remains unanswered in my head: were Echo and the Bunnymen actually as good as their reputation suggests? On this day in 1977, when Ian McCulloch was celebrating his 18th birthday, he met fellow musical dreamers Julian Cope and Pete Wylie at a Clash gig in Liverpool. Together and apart, these three set the post-punk musical scene in Liverpool. I would argue that the music of Teardrop Explodes and Wah! reached higher pitches of intensity and brilliance than Echo and the Bunnymen, whose first downbeat single, Pictures On My Wall, was released 30 years ago today, too. While I’m marking the moment, I doubt if I’ll be giving it a spin. Today, I’m ending small.
Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/
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Mark, I am fed up with today's task of reading and writing more about the Credit Crisis. So I took to musing about your question.
ReplyDelete"What would life be like if women had more power to change the way we live our lives?"
I guess my answer would be that it depends upon how long they have that power. As we know power corrupts - and long term female domination seems not unlike the alternative for Lemurs and Meerkats.
Male primates, apart from Lemurs, (strive to) dominate other males and attract/control a harem of females. It strikes me that, for us humans, civilisation struggles to control these urges - but they are programmed deep and the battle rages.
For me the greater influence that I would hope for is civilisation. But just like you I am not an optimist - for now.
Periods when we have made leaps in our journey from primate to civil beings have seemed to come in times (and places) of plenty. In times of strife our more basic instincts come to the fore.
For the sake of my kids and everyone's future generation I hope that my thoughts are clouded. That my fear a darker future and is as inaccurate as my memory of a brighter past (and my once firm held belief that Crocodiles was a masterpiece).