The Subtle Landscape

  In the 7/23/11 Economist there is an interesting article about the evolution of gender roles in societies across our planet.  It cites convincing (to me) studies holding that the nature of agriculture in the land of one’s ancestors determines much about the economic roles of women in that society.

  Up to the fifth millennium BC Mesopotamian women did the farming, tilling their fields with hoes.  The invention of the plow somewhere around 5,000 BC changed things.  Women didn’t have the requisite upper body strength and men took over. 

  “Women descended from plough-users are less likely to work outside the home, to be elected to parliament or to run businesses than their counterparts in countries at similar levels of development who happen to be descended from hoe-users.”

    Things can change and have to some extent in the western world where much farming was done from behind plows, but it took the cataclysm of WWII.  Rosie the Riveter et al moved into jobs vacated by soldiers and sailors headed toward the battlefield.  Still, even now, sixteen per cent fewer adult women than men work outside the home in OEDC countries.

  Makes one think of other long long term ramifications.   Hmmm.  In her book French Ways and Their Meaning Edith Wharton wrote: “…one may safely say that most things in a man’s view of life depend on how many thousand years ago his land was deforested.  And…when…men…are plunged afresh into the wilderness of a new continent, it is natural that in many respects they should be still farther removed from those whose habits and opinions are threaded through and through with Mediterranean culture and the civic discipline of Rome.”

  For example: “There are more people who can read in the United States; but what do they read? The whole point, as far as any real standard goes is there.  If the ability to read carries the average man no higher than the gossip of his neighbours, if he asks nothing more nourishing out of books and the theatre than he gets in hanging about the store, the bar and the street-corner, then culture is bound to be dragged down to him instead of his being lifted up by culture.”

  I’ve recently been entertained by labor strife in France related to an attempt to raise the retirement age from sixty to sixty-two.  But now in light of the likelihood that the leaders of the richest country in the world have squandered our credit rating, the concept of joie de vivre rings with new resonance.  I’m thinking of short circuiting the slow evolution of enculturation by moving to the Cotes d’Azur.

  At the behest of Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark took their “Corps of Discovery” across the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase.  Leaving St. Louis on May 14, 1803 they made their way across the wilderness to the coast of what is now Oregon and arrived back in St. Louis on September 23, 1806. 

  Clark went on to hold a number of governmental positions and fathered eight children (one named Meriwether Lewis Clark!) with two wives.  Lewis became Governor of the Louisiana Territory, had no children, and shot himself on his way to deliver journals of the expedition to a publisher.*  I’ve long wondered what was up with that.

  He’d been leader of the expedition and must have felt exhilaration of uncommon intensity upon journey’s end.  He’d operated successfully through thousands of miles of unknown territory and hardship compiling the first account of America’s west.  There could have been no measure of accolade equal in proportion to having returned with crew largely intact after those many dangerous and difficult months. 

  Perhaps that was just it.  The return to civilization was more than he could take.  Compared with the clear choices of life and death in the wilderness, a desk job and starched shirts must have chafed not only his neck.

  Jungian therapist James Hollis writes: “…whenever we force ourselves to do what is against our nature’s intent, we will suffer anxiety attacks, depression, or addictions to anesthetize the pain of this inner dislocation”.**

  A recent evolutionary rationale for depression holds that it is a ‘healthy’ manifestation of the psyche in response to spiritual/emotional/existential dis-ease.  Some way down a certain path, one finds it problematic, stews for a bit, and then chooses a new direction.  Three years must not have been enough for Lewis to recalibrate.

  He probably should have turned around.  Like at the end of Huckleberry Fin when our protagonist said: “…reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me.  And I can’t stand it.  I been there before.”

*Not all agree that Lewis took his own life.  Descendents of his sister hope to have his body exhumed to somehow prove that he was murdered.

**Hollis, What Matters Most, Gotham Books, 2009

***cf post of 2/20/08

     Sorry to break the news, but your erotic fantasies are but a collective by-product of more important machinations – those of the evolution of consciousness itself.  True, reproduction is the sine qua non of evolution in the first place. 

     It’s just that handcuffs, whips, etc. are not a necessary part thereof.  No prizes for guessing what is.  Furthermore, the sex life of most of earth’s creatures consists almost solely of an instinctual stimulus response arrangement operating strictly within certain biochemical parameters.*

      How did the human analogue of pollination come to be writ so large?  Air conditioning some think, in a manner of speaking.  When our anthropoid bipedal ancestors left the trees for the savanna they left behind shade – protection from the sun’s searing rays. 

Since a primary order of business for a warm blooded creature is temperature regulation, most importantly that of the brain, incremental improvements in an ability to radiate excess heat would be a distinct advantage.  Particularly in the sub-Saharan environment. 

       Thus, an incipient outer bit of tissue might have proven to be advantageous as first a radiator, later a tool designer, and much later “art” film producer.

      Much much later.  Some theorize that it was as recently as within the last several thousand years, citing the chastity of prehistoric murals and sculpture produced before 1000 BC. Soon thereafter an explosion of erotic representations appeared.

      Now, at this point of remove, many of the sensory receptors and inputs which heretofore have led to the horizontal have become vestigial.  Imagination may have become a key component of the reproductive system.

      Think about it.  What would your sex life be without the ability to reminisce, ruminate, and look forward?

*Watch an ‘unfixed’ male dog help sort the laundry of a mixed gender household. 

*cf post 9 3 10 re Hancher.  The U of I selected Pelli Clarke Pelli.  I’m sure they’ll do a fine job (and are thrilled to have my seal of approval) and I can’t wait to attend performances there (construction to start 2012).  Pelli is also the firm signed for an arts building (as yet unfunded) on the campus of Western Illinois University in Macomb…