I Can't Imagine Just Watching The Story and Not Being a Part of It

“I can remember, still, the life of The Agrarian Era - which was for most of human history - The Agrarian Era, where there was The World of Men and The World of Women.

And the sexes had very little to do with each other. Each had power and status in its own realm. 

And they laughed at each other, in essence. 

The Women had Enormous Power. 

In fact, The Old Women ruled, not the young beautiful women like today. 

But the older you were the more you had control over everyone, including the mating and marriage. 

There were no Doctors, so The Old Women were like midwives and knew all the ins and outs and [had] inherited knowledge about pregnancy and all these other things.

I can remember this. 

And The Joy that women had with each other all day long. 

Cooking with each other, being companions to each other, talking, conversing. 

My Mother remembered, as a small child in Italy, when it was time to do The Laundry they would take The Laundry up The Hill to The Fountain and do it by hand. 

They would sing, they would picnic, and so on.

We get a glimpse of that in The Odyssey when Odysseus is thrown up naked on the shores of Phaeacia and he hears The Sound of Women, young women, laughing and singing. 

And it’s Nausicaa, The Princess, bringing The Women to do The Laundry. 

It’s exactly The Same Thing. 

So there was. . . Each gender had its own hierarchy, its own values, its own way of talking. 

And the sexes rarely intersected.”

Operations Officer's log, supplemental. 

We've been on full sensor alert looking for signs that anyone else has detected Voyager. 

As a precaution, I've also asked Neelix and Kes to monitor all media broadcasts.

[Mess hall]

(A wall screen has six displays constantly changing.) 

KES: 

We've set up a computer algorithm to search for key words and phrases. 

Anything that might indicate Voyager. 

KIM: 

Anything so far? 

NEELIX: 

Not yet, although we have come across some very intriguing televised broadcasts. 

Take a look at this : —

It's a Form of Entertainment called a 'soap opera'.

The exploration of Human Relationships is fascinating. 

KIM: 

I can't imagine just Watching The Story and not Being a Part of It. 

KES: 

That's because you've been spoiled by The Holodeck. 

There's Something to Be Said for non-interactive stories like this, being swept away in The Narrative. 

NEELIX : 

Oh, I can't wait to see if Blaine's Twin Brother is The Father of Jessica's Baby. 

KIM :

Good Work. 

Keep me informed, and don't get too swept away. 

NEELIX :

Er, aye, sir. 

SHARON 

[on monitor] : 

Nobody'll know the difference. 

JACK 

[on monitor]: 

I'll know, Sharon. He's My Brother. 

How can I face him knowing that Our Son is His Son? 

SHARON 

[on monitor]:

 All you need to know, Jack, is that I love you!

Peterson:

Well the first thing is that the agreeableness trait that divides men and women most. . . 

There’s three things that divide women and men most particularly from the psychometric perspective.

One is that women are more agreeable than men, and so that seems to be the primary maternal dimension as far as I can tell. 

It’s associated with a desire to avoid conflict.

But it’s associated with interpersonal closeness, compassion, politeness. 

Women are reliably higher than men, especially in the Scandinavian countries and in the countries

where egalitarianism has progressed the farthest.

So that’s where the difference is maximized, which is one of the things James

Damore pointed out quite correctly in his infamous Google Memo. Women are

higher in negative emotion. So that’s anxiety and emotional pain. That difference is

approximately the same size. And again that maximizes in egalitarian societies, which

is extremely interesting. And then the biggest difference is the difference in interest

between people and things. And so women are more interested in people, and men

are more interested in things, which goes along quite nicely with your car anecdote.

But the thing about men interacting with men again is that it isn’t that they respect each

other’s viewpoints. That’s not exactly right. What happens with a man. . . I know a lot

of men that I would regard as remarkably tough people for one reason or another. And

everything you do with them is a form of combat. Like if you want your viewpoint taken

seriously, often you have to yell them down. They’re not going to stop talking unless

you start talking over them.

It’s not like men are automatically giving respect to other men, because that just

doesn’t happen. It’s that the combat is there, and it’s expected. And one of the

problems. . . And so, this is one of the reasons I think men are bailing out of so much of

academia and maybe the academic world in general. And maybe the world in general.

Men actually don’t have any idea how to compete with women.

Because the problem is that if you unleash yourself completely, then you’re an

absolute bully. And there’s no doubt about that, because if men unleash themselves

on other men, that can be pretty goddamn brutal, especially for the men that really

tough. And so that just doesn’t happen with women ever. So you can’t unleash yourself

completely. If you win, you’re a bully. If you lose, well you’re just bloody pathetic. So

how the hell are you supposed to play a game like that?

I’ve worked with lots of women in law firms in Canada, for example. And high achieving

women, like really remarkable people I would say. And they’re often nonplussed, I

would say, by the attitude of the men in the law firm, because they would like to see

everyone pulling together because they’re all part of the same team. Whereas the men

are like at each other’s throats in a cooperative way because they want the law firm to

succeed, but they want to be the person who is at the top of the success hierarchy.

And that doesn’t jive well with the more cooperative ethos that’s part and parcel of

agreeableness. So we don’t really have any idea how to integrate male and female

dominance hierarchies.

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Paglia: Exactly. Exactly. That’s exactly right. This is why I love this show Real

Housewives, which is [inaudible]. And just last night I was watching an episode where

the women were at each other at a party and recounting. ‘But I said this to you, but

you said this to me.’ And the men got together there and said ‘Well this is the way they

communicate with each other. And we men just will have a fist fight, and ten minutes

later we’re going to have a beer at the bar next to each other.’ I have observed that my

entire life.

Peterson: My daughter used to be really irritated about that because she, like most

people, was the target of feminine conspiratorial bullying at one. . . She’s no pushover,

my daughter. So it wasn’t like this was a continual thing or that she didn’t know what to

do about it.

But she had observed these girls conspiring against her and blackening her name on

Facebook, which is part and parcel of the typical female bullying routine, which is often

reputation demolition. There’s a good literature on that. And then she’d watch what

would happen if my son would have a dispute with his friends. And maybe they were

drinking, and there was a dispute. They’d have a fight, and the next day they were

friends again.

That’s another thing that’s strange is that men have a way of bringing a conflict to a

head and resolving it. And it isn’t obvious to me that women have that same, perhaps

you might call it, luxury. But it’s also the case that men don’t know what to do when

they get into a conflict with a woman. Because what the hell are you supposed to do?

Mostly what you’re supposed to do is avoid it.

Paglia: Well I’ve seen - I don’t know if this crosses into other countries - that there’s

a certain kind of taunting and teasing that men, that boys do with each other that

toughens them, where they don’t take things seriously. But a girl’s feelings become

extremely hurt if she hears something that’s very tough, sarcastic against her.

So I do feel that there are profound differences between the sexes in terms of

emotions, in terms of communication patterns. My father used to say that he could

never follow women’s conversations. He said women don’t even finish sentences, that

women understand immediately what the other woman is saying. And women tend to

be more interested in - or have been traditionally more interested in - soap operas. It’s

not just that the women were home without jobs. It’s that honestly, I believe that soap

opera does reflect, does mirror, the way women talk to each other.

These communication patterns have been built up through women - the world of

women, which. . . It made sense that there was a division of labor. It wasn’t sexism

against women that there was a division of labor. The men went off to hunt and did the

dangerous things. The women stayed around the hearth because you had pregnant

women, nursing women, older women, that were cooking and so on.

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So I feel that these communication patterns that we’re talking about have been built

up over the centuries. Men had to toughen each other to go out. The hunting parties

of Native Americans. . . They could be gone for two weeks when the temperature was

below zero. Many of them died. The idea that somehow. . . ‘Oh, any kind of separation

of the sexes, or different spheres of the sexes, is inherently sexist’. . . That is wrong.

Peterson: And inherently driven by a power dynamic.

Paglia: The answer to all of this, everything that we’re talking about, is education into

early history. Until people understand the Stone Age, the nomadic period, the agrarian

era, and how culture, how civilization built up. . .

In Mesopotamia - the great irrigation projects. Or in Egypt where you had. . .

Centralized government authority became necessary to master these. . . You had a

situation, an environmentally difficult situation like the deserts Mesopotamia, or the

peculiar character of Egyptian geography where you can only have a little tiny fertile

line along the edges of the Nile. Otherwise, desert landscape. So [understanding]

civilization and authority as not necessarily about power grabbing but about

organization to achieve something for the good of the people as a whole.

Peterson: That’s exactly the great symbolism of the Great Father.

Paglia: By reducing all hierarchy to power, and selfish power, is utterly naive. It’s

ignorant. I say education has to be totally reconstituted, including public education,

to begin in the most distant past so our young people today, who know nothing about

how the world was created that they inhabit, can understand what a marvelous

technological paradise they live in.

And it’s the product of capitalism, it’s the product of individual innovation. Most of it’s

the product of a Western tradition that everyone wants to trash now. If you begin in the

past and show. . . And also talk about war, because war is the one thing that wakes

people up, as we see.

Peterson: And as we may see.

Paglia: Yes, war is the reality principle. My father and five of my uncles went to World

War II. My father was part of the force that landed in Japan. He was a paratrooper at

the time of the Japanese surrender. And a couple of uncles got shot up and so on.

When you have the reality of war, when people see the reality, the horrors of war -

Berlin burned to a crisp and so on. Starvation and all. . . Then you understand this

marvelous mechanism that brings water to the kitchen. And you flip on a light and the

electricity turns on.

Peterson: I know, for me, and I suppose it’s because I have somewhat of a

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depressive temperament. . . I mean one thing that staggers me on a consistent basis is

the fact that anything ever works. Because it’s so unlikely, you know, to be in a situation

where our electronic communications work, where our electric grid works. And it works

all the time, it works one hundred percent of the time. And the reason for that is there

are mostly men out there who are breaking themselves into pieces, repairing this thing

which just falls apart all the time.

Paglia: Absolutely. I said this in the Munk Debate in Toronto several years ago. All

these elitists and professors sneering at men. It’s men who are maintaining everything

around us. This invisible army which feminists don’t notice. Nothing would work if it

weren’t for the men.

Peterson: A professor is someone who’s standing on a hill surrounded by a wall,

which is surrounded by another wall, which is surrounded by another wall - it’s walls

all the way down - who stands up there and says I’m brave and independent. It’s like,

you’ve got this protected area that’s so unlikely - it’s so absolutely unlikely - and the

fact that people aren’t on their knees in gratitude all the time for the fact that we have

central heating and air conditioning and pure water and reliable food. . . It’s absolutely

unbelievable.

Paglia: Yes, I mean people used to die. . . The water supply was contaminated with

cholera for heaven’s sake. People don’t understand. To have clean water, fresh milk,

fresh orange juice. All of these things. These are marvels.

Peterson: And all of the time.

Paglia: All of the time. Western culture is heading - because we are so dependent on

this invisible infrastructure - we’re heading for an absolute catastrophe when jihadists

figure out how to paralyze the power grid. The entire culture will be chaotic. You’ll have

mobs in the street within three days when suddenly the food supply is interrupted and

there’s no way to communicate. That is the way Western culture is going to collapse.

And it won’t take much.

Peterson: Single points of failure.

Paglia: Because we are so interconnected, and now we’re so dependent on

communications and computers. . . I used to predict for years it’ll be an asteroid hitting

the earth, and then we’ll have another ice age.

Peterson: Do you know how the solar flares work? This happens about once every

century. So back about 1880 - I don’t remember the exact year - there was a significant

enough solar flare. . . So that produces an electromagnetic pulse like a hydrogen bomb

because the sun is a hydrogen bomb. An electromagnetic pulse will emerge from the

sun and wave across the earth, and it produces huge spikes in electrical current along

anything that’s electronic, and it will burn them out.

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It lit telegraph operators on fire in the 1800s. One of those things took out the Quebec

power grid in 1985 and knocked out the whole Northeast Corridor. So they figure those

things are about one in a century event.

My brother-in-law, who’s a very smart guy. . . He designed the chip in the iPhone. We

were talking about political issues the last time I went and saw him in San Francisco,

and his notion was that all that the government should be doing right now is stress-

testing our infrastructure the same way they stress-test the banks. Because we’re so full

of these single points of failure.

And I think you’re absolutely right. Luckily we’ve been, what would you call, invaded

by stupid terrorists instead of smart terrorists, because a smart terrorist could do an

unbelievable amount of damage in a very short period of time. And it’s just God’s good

graces that that hasn’t happened yet.

Paglia: What will happen is that it’s the men. . . The men will reconstruct civilization

while the women cower in the houses and have the men go out and do all the dirty

work. That’s what’s going to happen again. Only men will bring civilization back again.