What people need to understand is that technology has completely altered the requirements that must be met to sustain civilisation. If we don't start questioning the rules, norms and methods by which we structure and run society, it may very well collapse. The reality is that if technology advances, then so must our way of thinking. If there is a mismatch, at the very least we will have social problems and at the very worst will bring about our own extinction. The moment we harnessed the power of electromagnetism (think of the motor, the generator, the battery, transistors, electronics et cetera) and started releasing 500 million years of trapped solar energy in the form of fossil fuels from the Earth’s crust, the rules required to run civilisation changed. What we are faced with now, is social and cultural lag behind enormous technological growth. This is particularly acute with respect to gender issues. We need to do away with 19th century thinking in a world with 21st century technology. We have looming population, social, energy, food, water and general environmental crisises, which will come to a head in the later stages of this century or early next century. All of it is more or less the result of a systematic failure by our society to manage technological change and alter our mindset and institutions accordingly. This is why the systems approach I discussed in my article on "The Dangers Of Feminist Ideology And The Need For A Gender Transition Movement", is so important.

Gender issues is merely just one part of that puzzle, but it was a piece that I realised was central to many issues (many of which I am interested in given my scientific background). The core relationship between men and women impacts the relationship between our parents and in turn has a huge influence on shaping the minds of our children and future adults. Therefore when the relationship between men and women suffers, so does the health of future society and it’s capacity to manage many of the problem’s it will face. Furthermore, when we ignore men and boys issues and concerns, we ignore half the population, destabilise our social systems and undermine our own capacity to adapt as a species. For example, how exactly will we manage a world population of nine billion people by 2050, deal with peak oil or avert catastrophic climate change, if we fail to properly educate half the population? This is what the bigots and gender ideologues have not thought through because of their narrow boxed thinking. I am looking at gender issues from a systems perspective and from a much bigger frame of reference, which is the continued survival of civilisation itself. Consult the article linked here for further discussion on this subject.

So what is the solution to our outmoded perception of vulnerability? What is required is for our society to recognise that technology has changed the nature of what vulnerability is (as it has with so many other things). Physical vulnerability has been largely replaced by other forms of vulnerability, such as psychological vulnerability, social vulnerability, legal vulnerability, career vulnerability and financial vulnerability. It is a matter of training the human brain to recognise modern vulnerability through proper socialisation, acculturation and conditioning. Our brain tissue is able to quickly adapt through neuroplasticity and even our genome surprisingly, can rapidly adapt through epigenetic mechanisms (both are booming fields of research). It turns out that we are not restricted to the slow Darwinian model of adaptation.

We don’t have to cull our instinct to protect the more vulnerable, all we need to do is train our brains to recognise a different form of vulnerability and our nerve tissue and even our epigenome will adapt within a generation or two in response to the right conditioning, socialisation and acculturation. Frankly I don't even think it will require that much, simple learning and social reinforcement will probably be enough without any need for profound neurological or genetic changes. We are very psychologically plastic animals and that is one reason for why we have been able to move from a hunter-gatherer modality to modern civilisation so quickly. What we need to do, is convey a public awareness through media, education, politics and other cultural channels, that in modern industrialised society, men and women are equally vulnerable. Importantly, we will need to explain why and how. This will progressively change our culture, social norms and group behaviour.

We will also need to avoid creating conditions that lead to or promote a competition on who can be the bigger victim. We need to realise that we need to be focused on the vulnerability of the social system as a whole and a key part of that will be equilibrating the empathy we express toward men and women. Finally we need to make changes to our laws and courts to address the reality that men can be victims of physical and sexual abuse by women. The gender of the victim should be irrelevant before the law and our sentencing of perpetrators and treatment of victims should reflect that.

I will finish this article by sending a warning to feminists. No doubt you have heard of the boy that cried wolf. Well the girl that cried wolf is a similar sad tale. If feminism continues to keep pressing on the vulnerability button in people’s brains, then eventually the public will become desensitised to it. It is called Weber’s law and it is a real limitation of human perception. If women are constantly portrayed as victims and their vulnerability is consistently exaggerated, then eventually people will stop noticing when women are really in need of help. Indeed there are signs this is already happening with the police.

Recognising that aid and support should be given independently of gender, is an important and critical change we need to make to our social systems. Failing to recognise a need to adapt our mindset with our technology, will sooner or later lead to extinction.

The time for ideological thinking has come and gone.