An important part of my project of building a new moral code for humanity has been to sift the codes of the world's major religions with an aim to try to see which parts of those codes have worked well in the past, why they have done so, and in what forms they may be worth keeping in the new code that I am trying to compose. 

However, I also try to watch out for those parts of the moral codes of the world's major religions that are obsolete and that we should therefore write out of our new moral code for the world. 

A glaring and inefficient part of almost all of the traditional moral codes has been the exploitative and illogical attitude that they have had towards women. 

In Buddhism, it is made very clear that no woman can ever be a buddha, that is, an enlightened soul. Wives are to obey their husbands and not make them angry, and they are to rise before their husbands in the morning and go to bed after them at night. But Buddhism is probability the best of the lot as far as the roles that it assigns to woman in society. 







In Hinduism, no woman can be admitted into in-depth study of the holy texts. Men are told that they should approach their wives reasonably if they want sex, but if a wife won't listen to reason, then the man can beat her until she does submit. Wives for centuries were routinely thrown on the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands in a practice called "sati", even when they were very young and could have had long, productive lives ahead of them. Only British rule put an end to this practice, and the extinction of it was long and slow. 

The Hebrews begin their day with a prayer in which they thank God for the fact that they were not born female, and women are assigned, at least in traditional Judaism, a submissive role to their husbands. After all, it was Eve who gave in to the temptations of Satan and who caused the downfall of the whole of humankind. She must, therefore, bring forth her children in pain and be subject to the rule of her husband (say the scriptures). 

Christianity adopted most of these same notions, and, in addition, there is the obvious fact that until quite recently, women were not accepted as clergy, and still are not in the oldest and largest of the Christian sects, namely Roman Catholicism. 

  
      Patricia Sandall and Jeannette Love, ordained Catholic priests (in defiance of the Vatican)  



Islam is widely viewed in the West as being worse than any of the above. Men can have four wives if they want to. Women are treated as commodities, given by their fathers, in marriage, to other men and those men can divorce them simply by telling them "I divorce them" three times. Women are the majority by far in hell, says the prophet, and they can drag men there with them if they are not kept under strict control. They must cover their beauties, refrain from actions that might distract or seduce men, and not go out of their homes unless accompanied by a man that they are related to or know very well. The treatment of women in Muslim countries contains some parts that were probably due more to the customs of the Arab tribes to whom Islam was first offered than to the teachings of the prophet, but the two certainly reinforce each other. The net effect today in most parts of the Muslim world is that a woman who dishonors her family can be killed by brothers, fathers, etc. At that point, most people in the West don't care where the custom originates. It's so plainly wrong that discussion of it is not possible. 

  
                   Noor Almaleki (murdered in Arizona by her father for dishonoring her family) 



All of this patriarchy is long overdue not so much for an overhaul as for abolition. 

I reiterate at this point that the purpose of my blog is to understand why some values and beliefs need to be written out of our new moral code altogether. It is the large view of how moral values link to survival that I try to explore. If we know the truth, it will set us free. 

The misogynist view of women survived and enabled the tribes who lived by it to survive because it made babies. A small tribe or a large nation must have babies if they are to spread and flourish. In the sex act, male arousal and orgasm are necessary for procreation; the female, in the meantime, can be utterly bored or even terrified the whole time. For reproduction of the species, her level of interest and enthusiasm are not relevant. Tribes that taught men to be dominant over women and women to accept that situation had more babies over the long haul. For millennia, that was what mattered in the survival game.  

The final point to make in this part of the argument is that men were needed for centuries to help in the nurture of human babies. Up until very recently, a single mom was facing an almost impossible task. In the meantime, men were simply far more likely to give their support to those children that they were very confident were theirs. Biologically theirs. That confidence is massively increased when men are so dominant in society in general that women who stray into having unsanctioned sex risk everything, including their lives. 

The net effect of summing up all of these separate factors was to make patriarchy a survivor. The whole calculation is just a calculation of probabilities. Patriarchy wasn't fair; but it was a good bet with good probabilities for paying back with interest.  

Today, we have too many humans on this planet as it is. In addition, modern economies make it possible for women who so desire to have babies and jobs at the same time. In most states in the West, they can even stay home with their babies on maternity leave - in some countries for up to two years - without suffering serious financial hardship. Or their husbands can choose to stay home and nurture the kids. Or they both can work and put the kids in daycare.






The question that occurs to us at this point is whether or not modern Western societies that contain more gender equity will prove as prolific and vigorous as those in the World that are still mired in patriarchy. I think the answer is already clear. We don't have the infant mortality rates in the West that we once did. That makes patriarchy less advantageous. In addition, we now are living in economies that can afford to educate all of the kids well. For the most part, in the nations race, the Western nations aren't really winning; they've already won. It's little wonder that for every ten or twenty disturbed young men that ISIS gains from the West, tens of thousand of disillusioned men, women, and children are coming the other way.  

The states that want to stay in patriarchy are going to keep falling further and further behind in the race for power. At the end of the day, they are simply losing because they are missing out on the development of at least half of their human talent pool. Women can't do everything men can. There probably will never be a single, gender-free category in the Olympic Games. But aside from the physical, women have shown they can do, and are doing, anything men can do. All of the professions, all of the businesses, government, the military, and so on. In the meantime, the kids are growing up as good as they ever were and probably a bit better. They now have moms, as well as dads, whom they can see as real heroes. 

I say "Good on 'em." 

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless, have a nice day.