Hypothesis: Ancient civilizations were not nearly as male lead or ‘patriarchal’ as we tend to think they were. We are viewing those places through our current patriarchal lens. I was having a chat with ChatGPT about ancient civilizations and was wondering why it wasn’t mentioning some of my favorites. It explained that some of those places didn’t have clear hierarchy, or clear military rule, and so they didn’t count… interesting. So any culture that didn’t have a clear hierarchy or clear military leaders essentially doesn’t count as a civilization? Wow. Have you ever read a history book and noticed that it’s 90% the history of wars? Kinda sad to view the world that way. And our culture seems to equate military might and military decision making with leadership. ...we equate violence with leadership. Very patriarchal, and not at all healthy. And of course men have a natural advantage in violence and we need women to make the babies, and so it’s mostly men in the military. In a world ruled by violence the most violent will rule. Patriarchy. What do you think? Note: As always, "patriarchy" ≠ men bad. Patriarchy is a culture that hurts everyone.

I think most of us were raised with the idea that patriarchy was the way in which the world always has been. But the more we look at humanity, certainly the more I learn, the more we see that that isn't the case. Patriarchy does not seem to be the norm in hunter gatherer tribes, and there is a lot of evidence to suggest that it also wasn't a norm in many early civilizations. Note: matrilocal does not imply matriarchy, but it does signal a likely lack of patriarchy. There is a lot of reason to believe early civilizations like Çatalhöyük, the Indus Valley civilization, the Minoan civilization, etc. were pretty egalitarian.

Intelligence is not the primary factor in competence. Emotional maturity is.

I just got off the phone with my 93 yr old grandma. She called asking me to explain Bitcoin to her. ...top signal?

There are people out there who are using women’s caring instincts against them to intentionally put them in a vulnerable position so that they can be treated like second class citizens. Truly evil. And this idea is on the rise. There is nothing inherently wrong with someone being a stay at home parent and often these setups, single family home, stay at home Mom setup, came about mostly from the logistics of the situation. Certainly there was active repression of women during these times, but the major driving force in this was likely logistics. Gender roles were survival roles. However, these ‘traditional’ roles do put women in a logistically vulnerable position. And the single family home stay at home Mother is not at all a norm, it’s a wild anomaly for humanity. But women get guilted into these roles using some dodgy science. There are some commonly referenced studies that are used to show that children need to be attended to by their mothers alone and used to say that’s it’s damaging to children, and creates adults with attachment issues, when they are not constantly attended to by their mothers. Well, when you look at theses studies, what they did was look at how children respond to their mothers vs a stranger. And, very unsurprisingly, young kids get freaked out by being held by a stranger. That is obvious and appropriate. What these studies did not included is having a child be held by it’s mother vs being held by a know trusted person, an aunt or uncle, the lady at the day care center they have been going to for a year, etc. No where in human history, accept for perhaps pockets of the western world between the years 1945-1965, do we see children being cared for primarily by only their mothers. All thorough out humanity kids were cared for by a collection of people. Generally mother, father, siblings, extended family members, and close family friends. So if you are dropping your kids off at a new random day care center every day, yes that is likely to cause them issues. If you drop them off at their regular day care center, or their uncle’s house, no, that is not going to damage your kid. Here is what I would like you to see so that you can be someone who is capable of looking out for your self and/or the women in your life. There are people out there, certainly the red pill crew and parts of the ‘conservative’ community, that actively seek to return to a world where women are second class citizens. They will say so openly with phrases like “women shouldn’t be involved in the public world”, “women aren’t capable of independent thought”, “Men are the natural leaders and women need to follow men’s leadership”, etc. These people will claim that the single family home, stay at home Mom setup is the natural way of the world and what has always existed, and will tell women that they are abusing their kids if they don’t do this. ...they are using women’s caring instincts against them to intentionally put them in a vulnerable position so that they can be treated like second class citizens. Again, evil. I encounter this, my friends encounter this. People follow me around rooms to give me these lectures and tell me why I should go back home. While again there is nothing inherently wrong with someone being a stay at home parent, pushing women into this makes them vulnerable to those who want to abuse them. And the idea that a stay at home Mom is the only way to do things, and anything else is a “feminist conspiracy” and/or “the destruction of masculinity” is heavily pushed by those who do wish to subjugate women. Please be aware of this. Please help me to push back on this trend in the world.

The single family home, stay at home mother is a wild anomaly in human history.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT - Single Family Home History

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The single family home, stay at some Mother set up is an anomaly for humanity. It's unnatural, generally not very healthy, and serves to hold women back from being full participants in the world. This does not mean that I think anyone who is or has done this is a bad person. Not at all. Quite a lot of people have chosen this because it was a solution that matched the logistics of the time and place there were living. I chose this setup for that reason for years. No doubt for some people this is an optimal situation. But now with more education and perspective, I can see that for most people, the world would be a better more healthy place if we changed the logistics that make this such a prominent setup.

So that we aren’t just tearing into things, here is what I see as a healthy future for humanity. The below is an explanation and description of the world that I am working towards and how I think 'motherhood' should be done! When I was dealing with depression/anxiety I of course did lots of reading and study into why. Why is everyone depressed? Well we can look at what makes humans happy. And over and over again one things sticks out, community. People who have close friends, room mates, family near by, close bonds with co-workers, etc, or even just say hi to the barista in the morning, those people are dramatically more likely to be happy people. In the modern world we live very isolated lives and we tend to not have much support. We aren’t built for that. So what are we built for? And that gets complex because I don’t think we should be going “back” to anything in our history, but we would be silly to not take a look at our past to understand what our bodies and minds are expecting. But when we realize that, depending on which part of the world your ancestors are from, ~99% of our history we’ve been living in small bands/villages/tribes we can see how that conflicts with modern life. We were out doors a lot, we knew everyone, (the famous scene from cheers, “Norm!”, that is what our minds and bodies expect to happen to us everyday!) We had lots of people around us to help with day to day tasks. Someone sitting next to the camp fire to tell little Sussie not to touch it so that you don’t have to stop what you are doing every 90seconds. We had friends that would pick up the slack on our tasks when we were having a bad day and needed to go for a long walk. We worried that the tribe would starve, but we didn’t have to worry that the tribe would let us starve. So, interestingly, communism is a great idea and works wonderfully!… in groups smaller than Dunbar’s number. In a big way communism is our natural state. It just doesn’t scale. So when we know this about ourselves, we can apply this knowledge to how we live now to optimize it. For me, and for quite a lot of mothers, the most difficult part of being at home with kids is the constant interruption. It’s a low level constant mental torment to not have any other responsible people around and to have to have your train of thought interrupted every 90seconds because you have to keep a little person from killing themselves. This shouldn’t be how it’s done. So how can we do it the right way? There is this great line from a stand up comic, Jim Gaffigan. He says his wife loves camping and is always trying to talk him into it. She says “It’s a tradition in my family.” and ya, “It was a tradition in everyone’s family until we invented the house!” I don’t like camping. I enjoy indoor plumbing. So how do we be hunter gatherers or villagers in the modern world? I think we need to consciously chose a local, in person, village to practice some communism and communal living with. I think in the glorious future we will have lots of little villages, which people can freely chose and change, and we will essentially be big communist hippies in those villages, and then engage in more “free market” exchange with other villages. I think young families should live in communal housing with other families where childcare can be shared. I think children should attend mixed age local schools in the little village. Adults will mostly work locally or from home like Me and Erik do. Parents work near their kids, but stay focused on their own adult endeavors. This also allows for women … and thus the tribe, to have more specialization and division of labor. Not all women want to or would be good school teachers. This setup will give kids great community, lots of play with other kids, a quality education, and will allow mothers full community, creativity, and autonomy. A real win win. There are so many ways in which this localized ‘communism’ can be practiced. The Kibbutz model. Very high home owner association fees with lots of local benefits. Very casually in even smaller extended family groups, etc. The really important part is small and voluntary! I think this setup would be wildly healthy for the vast majority of people practicing it. It takes into account the realities of human instincts, respects women’s minds and individuality, and has solid economic theory.

People often reject the praising of motherhood at it is used as a round about way to prevent women from being full participants in the world. It's a shame to disrespect motherhood, but I get it. The idea that women's highest purpose is to be mothers, and that that is the most appropriate activity for women, serves to hold woman back from full participation in the world. Women can, should, and for their own happiness, need, to be fully involved in the world. Indeed parenthood is one of the most beautiful things in the world and we should respect it, but not at the expense of women living full lives. We need more involved fathers, more community, and more balance.

We get "motherhood" all wrong. It isn't really a thing. Human history...pre-history: As best we can tell, as it is all a guessing game, humans are about 200k yrs old. And the vast, vast majority of that time was spent living in smallish hunter gatherer tribes. Civilization began about 10k yrs ago, probably, but that varied by place. Of course some people's still live in those small tribes. So we can look to what happens there to form ideas about our instincts. In those tribes "motherhood" isn't a thing like it is in our world. I've read a number of studies on this one, it's fascinating! One study showed that a new born baby is held on average by 14 different people a day. Mothers take a few weeks to recover, and they stay very close to their baby nursing, etc, but they really don't do much "mothering". Small children are cared for communally and once they are old enough to run around, they join their local kids play group. The mothers stay physically close to their kids, but are engaged in their own crafts for most of the day while conversing with other adults. This is what our instincts are build for. Having been through this myself, I can't tell you wave of relief that hit me when I learned this, it was an "O, that's why it was so hard. I was never meant to do it that way!" The way we do "motherhood" now, with one woman alone in a house with multiple kids all day playing patty cake is unnatural to the point of being really destructive.

Look bro I'm just a pedantic bitc... I'm a very detail oriented person.

The majority of my friends are Bitcoiners and I’ve been pondering that as I doubt that’s very healthy. But I think I’ve sorted it out. It’s not that I don’t like hanging out with non-bitcoiners, it’s that I don’t like hanging out with people who don’t have anything that they are passionate about. Someone who hates their job, resents their spouse, is annoyed by their kids, is overwhelmed by home maintenance, etc, etc, is just really really draining to be around. And unfortunately, that’s the norm.

These red pill bros seem to have this idea that men should rule over women because they are physically stronger… it’s like they really think it’s 'he who has the biggest biceps is the ruler'. And this amuses me as it’s a wild lack of understanding of human evolution and human specialization. With these characters I’ve often seriously wondered why haven’t just gone to join a Chimpanzee troop. And well they can’t because Chimps are dramatically stronger than humans and they would quickly be killed. What this crew doesn’t understand is that humans got to where we are by specializing in social bonds and intelligence rather than in physical strength. It is our social connections and tool making that allowed us to survive and thrive. If you take one human, without social connections or tools and put them alone with a tiger, the human is lunch. But, if you take a human with social connections, a tribe, and tools, the tiger is lunch. So it’s not he who has the biggest biceps survives, it’s they who have the best social bonds and best tools thrive.

Do you have people in your life that actively lookout for you, defend you, and support you? And *active* is the key word here. Do you have people in your life that do these things without you having to ask?

My experience on the internet lately...