Women Are On A Different Planet Than Men Are

I was working this weekend for a very attractive, young, smart and pleasant woman manager at the hotel. Her husband is a Marine that just got out a 4 year-stint overseas. He plans to be a nurse. They have a 3 year old girl, and the mother is a couple of months along with a new child.

I asked her how things are going for her. She wasn't feeling real chipper, and wished she was able to stay home--she never talks like that. She was so articulate and honest. She described a state of constant nausea intermittent with bouts of quirky hunger pangs for all kinds of food.

It was like a light going on in my head. I really understood something about what a pregnant woman is going through. I just said, "Men have no idea what women are like." I asked her if the first pregnancy was the same, and she said yes. I told her I have had no parallel exposure to this experience, because we adopted our children from Korea.

As an ethicist and egoist, I have made plenty of sweeping statements about human nature, which I am confident do govern the behavior choices of all people: women, men, blacks and white, straights and gays.

On one hand, how can I agree with this manager--and by extension--would agree with blacks and gays who assert that they are so unique that a white, straight male could never understand what it is like to be them, and yet vow that I have uncovered laws that govern their behavior.

I believe that these inconsistent statements of mine can be reconciled.

First my ethical statements about human nature are universal, broad characteristics. They are:
1. All humans are more beast than angel. The Devil is mostly pure beast and God is mostly pure angel. Humans are born beasts, but there is enough of the angel in their spiritual and genetic makeup, that, with hard work and proper upbringing, anyone can become a living angel.
2. As we are born beasts, with angelic intelligence and enough free will to be dangerous, we must live right or our evil natures will swamp us, and engulf the entire world.
3. The trip from personal beast to personal angel is a life-long journey, the trip of self-realization.
4. The trip is an individual one, not a group undertaking.
5. The ethical culture in which to rear up any child is most effective where the economy is private enterprise.
6. The ethical culture in which to rear up any child as an individuator unfolds within a political framework that is a constitutional republic.
7. The ethical culture in which to rear up any child as an individuator must be one that is mostly deinstitutionalized. The civil society for individuators is to be one of lawful anarchist pursuing liberty and doing their own thing at the canton level. Big institutions, lots of crowdism, centralized power--Satan's stronghold. Little institutions, lots of developed individuals, decentralized power, the Mother's stronghold.

This above-list is not exhaustive, but in it I lay out the overarching natural laws that do govern all humans.

This in no way negates their gender, gender-orientation or ethnic perspective that are singular and unique to their naturally assigned identity group. Add to the uniqueness of their natural identity group, their personal eccentricity or personal originality, and these subjective states are impossible for a straight, white male to ever completely emphasize with, let alone understand.

Thus I could never really know what is means to know labor pains or pregnancy nausea.

We all are mysteries to ourselves, and to each other. Add lying, ignorance, absolutist stances, provincial bias, inauthentic group existing, language barriers and garden-variety misunderstanding, and it would seem impossible to understand anyone.

There is hope. We will never understand each other completely, but people of good will can reach out and keep trying to understand others. As long as the other that is not understood is not an evil person, there is not much need to oppose that person vigorously. We can live and let live. We can all go do our own thing, and keep the peace and insist that all live harmoniously with law and order. These simple but powerful steps would alleviate some of the fighting and competing based on a universal, insurmountable lack of commiseration and understanding.