Once upon a time, man ruled...

In the beginning... back in the day... long ago... and far, far, far away... Mammoths, bears, and wolves ruled a frozen Earth, and man, the original hunter gatherer, kept himself warm by killing them and surviving wrapped in the dead animal’s woolly pelts, ‘snug-as-a-bug’ in a cave.

Then man discovered fire, and found they didn’t need the pelts all the time, and snuggling up to a woman was quite nice, when the women weren’t cooking over the fireplace, and cleaning the cave, of course. Well, one thing led to another and of course those snuggles became a bit more serious, and kids were ‘invented.’ Well, that started man thinking, and he thought if we make lots of kids, the boys will grow up to be workers, and warriors and the girls, women, who could do the cooking, cleaning, and washing up, as well as feeding, clothing, and caring for the ever growing tribe of kids. After all, they never had much else to do... a bit of gathering maybe, but they couldn’t be trusted with a spear or a knife... God forbid.

Fast forward a few millennia, and not much had changed, except man had learned to negotiate with other men, rather than fighting and killing each other all the time. Still, mortality was ever-present, and still survival of the fittest led to there being ‘leaders,’ of ‘groups’ that went their separate ways, and became, I guess... societies.

These required their leaders to have more of everything, to look better than anyone else, and to be obeyed... and all the ‘leaders’ were men of course. Now the thing was, that in addition to encouraging their men and women to keep producing kids, who became workers, warriors, and more and more fertile women to make even more kids, those leaders invented levies, otherwise known as taxes.

Those leaders realised this taxation was money-in-the-bank, to coin a phrase, and pushed even harder for increased procreation, more kids, more people, more warriors and workers, blah, blah, blah, and even more taxation. It was a perpetual cycle... and a recipe for the growth of civilization as we know it.

They didn’t need to worry about old people in those olden days, because life expectancy was short, and old people who dared to live past 40 or 50, were usually either staked out as bait for lions and tigers (goats were too precious), or in the case of women, were just made to wash, cook, and clean until they dropped.

Eventually, man evolved an industrial revolution, and a shedload of global military revolutions inspired ‘democratic,’ changes to the generic new civilization. Leaders were voted in, but only by men, as women were way too fragile to understand politics. They were tolerated in a state of sociological subservience for ages, but during the last century their pleas were heard, and they could, after refusing to do the housework, cooking and cleaning, vote.

That was the thin end of the feminine wedge, and times have changed. Today, the even more strident, more demanding, and less tolerant feminine voice doesn’t just need to be heard, but must be listened to. Oh, how the worm, to use a somewhat appropriate turn of phrase, has turned! A clearly evident consequence of this societal about turn has been that, first of all, given the technological and scientific advances of the last century, people are living longer now, and there are a lot more old people about, clogging up the supermarket aisles and footpaths with their mobility scooters... It’s a nightmare! I mean, you can’t just push them out the door and leave them to the lions anymore, can you? Correspondingly, because women have more voice... they’re having fewer kids. Or maybe even the latest, almost traumatic evolution of gender determination means there are more confused males/females who don’t know whether they are meant to be mums or not. So... less kids, less taxes, more problems than ever... It has the potential to make you yearn for the ‘good old days,’ doesn’t it?