In an earlier diary kansas suggested that the reaction to the pie fight might have been in part conditioned by age, with older participants, particularly the older women, ultimately unwilling to indulge the shenanigans of the testosterone-soaked adolescents.
This is something I had noticed as well: A recurring theme among the refugees that they were done with dealing with misogynistic politics, having been there, done that in the Seventies already. Said it myself, in fact, in my introductory diary.
The ongoing discussion in kansas’ diary leads right into what I’d wanted to write more about: The Ancient Order of Crones. There’s been a small current in our culture over the past ten years or so that recognizes the empowering effect of a woman getting old, and the name that has often been applied to those empowered old women is crones.
Now, I know a lot of the Dkos refugees are not quite of an age to be called cronely, and many of them are also men (cronesters?). Nevertheless, there is a unique slot in any human society that’s filled by crones and cronesters, and I think the flight of the crones from Dkos will not be an improvement in that community. Before emigrating, I read a number of diaries at Dkos that expressed shock and grief that so many voices that had supplied valued insight and experience were now gone. In fact, some of those diaries are what convinced me to come over.
Without crones, human society slips back to the pre-Upper Paleolithic age. This is the implication of the “grandmother hypothesis” which postulates that the availability of older people to take on some of the burden of childrearing and to share the fruits of their longer experience of life was a huge boost in the evolution of humans. Not long ago, scientific evidence supporting the grandmother hypothesis hit the news. Here’s the summary from MSNBC.
Basically, the researchers reported a huge explosion in the proportion of bones found from “older” individuals (greater than 30 years old – it was a young time then) exploded in the Upper Paleolithic. At the same time, huge cultural advances also took place:
Perhaps around this time people started to value and take care of the weak and the old, and in turn benefited from their help and experience, Caspari sad.
This could be when the uniquely human condition of menopause evolved and started to have an effect, Caspari said. Women not burdened by childbearing could focus on their grandchildren and other kin.
“We live in a society that is so geared towards younger people. It is nice to realize that it might be older people that make us human after all,” Caspari said.
The Ancient Order of Crones is very ancient indeed, and it’s a major civilizing force. The whippersnappers exclude us at their peril.