OCCUPATIONAL SPECIES

Personally, I prefer them to wear something different every day, giving me plenty of variety. Too many of them tend to dress in exactly the same boring fashion day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. It's rather depressing to see them, particularly when they dress like men, and thus wear pants or jeans all the time.

Ah, you agree with me! I thought you would. Variety is the spice of life, after all. Well, that's my idea anyway. Someone who knows she's a woman and gives one the maximum experience of what a woman is or should be. These days, however, there are too many women who look and act and think just like men. It's a mark of the times. You can't altogether blame them, though you can't particularly admire them either. They're sacrificing too much of their basic femininity, their sexual distinctiveness. They're victims of the age, forced into the unisex cult. Well, I can assure you that that isn't my idea of the ideal. If I had the good fortune to live with a beautiful woman, I'd make damn sure she behaved like one! And I wouldn't want her to dress in jeans every day.

No, certainly not! Jeans are all very well now and again, two or three times a week, if you see what I mean, but not every day. She might as well be a man as wear them that often.

No, what I would want from her, apart from the obvious, is variety, as already remarked. Not too much, mind you, but just enough to keep me interested, giving me a pleasant surprise from time to time.

Yes, that's it! For too much variety would be as bad as too little, wouldn't it? A woman must have a personality, a temperament, mustn't she? And good looks too, of course. But not so good that she lacks character and intelligence. When there are too many charms on the outside, you can't really expect very much inside, or under the physical surface in the depths of her psychology, can you? That's what I've always found, anyway. Too many charms in one context generally mean too few in another! Take my word for it. A beautiful blockhead isn't the most exciting of people to live with, believe me! You might regret the fact that you had been fooled by her superficial charms into imagining there was something profounder about her.

That's right, I entirely agree! Quite so. For the converse case of a woman who's highly intelligent but relatively ugly is no real improvement, either. You've got to put beauty before brains, admittedly. But not to the extent that you discount brains altogether! That's the whole point. It's a question of achieving a sort of golden mean. After all, who wants to discuss philosophy or psychology or history with his woman every evening? Not I, at any rate! You might as well live with a man as do that!

Absolutely! Of course, it's an advantage if your wife or girlfriend does know something about the intellectual life and can therefore discuss such subjects with you now and again, when you feel like it. But to have them thrust upon you every night - ugh, how revolting! Particularly after you've put in a hard day's grind at your own philosophy or literature or whatever. Then you're only too keen to take a break from your intellectual commitments and sample a little marital relaxation, or something of the kind.

Yes, absolutely! I'm glad you agree with me. A thoroughly Strindbergian viewpoint, I'll admit. One needs to get away from the concerns of man after one has been up to one's eyes in them all day, and how better than by approaching those of woman? And her principal concerns are man and the propagation of the kind. That's the way I see it anyway, whether or not people think me old-fashioned. The world and that which keeps it going, as Schopenhauer would say. Two opposing standpoints. So one shouldn't expect women to have all the same abilities and interests as men, should one?

Quite! But too many fools now do, which again is typical of the times. They see companionship primarily in terms of being able to discuss all the same authors, painters, musicians, etc., and of having the same or similar views on everything. Ugh, could anything be worse? Imagine one's beloved with her beautiful head regularly buried in the works of Nietzsche or Spengler or any other great thinker, in order to be able to discuss them with one and thereby offer one intellectual companionship! Ugh, how awful! One really shouldn't expect women to behave contrary to what they are by nature. It's shameful.

Indeed! Yet all too many of them are obliged to compromise themselves in the most unseemly and unfeminine manner these days, to close their legs and open their mouths, sacrificing their co-operative traditions to compete with men! Quite obscene, in fact. More frigging obscene than anything out of Felician Rops!

Yes, I entirely agree. If things continue as they are at present, there'll be no hope for anyone, men included. And the way I see it, there's scant chance of things not continuing as at present.

Oh yes, I know all about them alright, all about the confidence tricksters and other intellectual charlatans of which the world is currently so well-stocked, but I can't put much faith in their solutions, believe me! It's all very well for some sophisticated Oriental to say that contemporary Western society needs to be changed, if it isn't to destroy itself. But when he goes on to suggest that the only way to change it is by one's undergoing a personal revolution which will similarly influence other people, and thus bring about the desired amelioration, I must confess to a certain astonishment that he should expect such an idea to be taken seriously on a large scale, let alone put into practice under the existing circumstances! One might be led to assume that the world, or at any rate the Western part of it, was populated by people who could be relied upon to indulge in the desired personal revolution at the drop of a hat, and were consequently only too willing to give it a try. But that's nonsense, as I'm sure you'll agree. For in a world where it 'takes all sorts', as the saying rather blithely goes, one can only expect a tiny handful of people to be such as would, through temperamental or other reasons, take it seriously. And they would be unable to influence more than another tiny handful, if, indeed, they influenced anyone at all, which seems to me somewhat doubtful. No, all these exhortations to personal revolution as a means to saving contemporary industrial society are entirely beside-the-point, and simply amount to playing with words on the part of their literary perpetrators, who assume environment doesn't matter, that it can be overcome at will in the interests of one's personal revolution. Typically Eastern attitude to reality or, rather, the traditional Oriental inability or reluctance to give external reality its due and treat it as something more than mere 'maya', or illusion!

Quite, I entirely agree! No shortage of illusion in their heads, though. Main reason why they're so popular here these days. For the truth is becoming increasingly difficult to bear. Fake panaceas generally preferred. Still, you do get the occasional lucid and outspoken writer in the West, don't you? Like myself, for instance. Not afraid to disillusion people concerning the crassly materialistic nature of contemporary reality, and by no means unaware of the soul-destroying influence which this reality exerts on most people, reducing them to the dehumanized level of so many 'scumbags', 'piles of shit', 'cunts', 'pricks', 'assholes', 'bums' and other such denigratory epithets which follow from a materialistic premise.

Absolutely! And that is probably why the name Adrian Holland is never found on the current best-seller list. My writings are generally too depressing for popular consumption. I refuse to be impressed by the fake panaceas. Instead of feeding people false hopes, I give them the truth about their society in relation to the system of things, the sphere of God, or whatever else you would like to call that eternal manifestation of life which stands outside and above the predominantly temporal preoccupations of contemporary man. I don't exhort them to improve themselves with the aid of meditation or self-analysis, and thereby change society for the better, because I know that no amount of hypothetical self-improvement on the part of the relatively small number of people who just might be interested in trying it ... will do a thing to change the attitudes and natures - yes, temperamental and physiological dispositions - of the great majority of people who, indifferent to or ignorant of my writings, will doubtless continue in their well-worn tracks without even realizing that I may have suggested some such self-improvement in the first place. And why shouldn't they, considering that life is an affair of types of people, not of any one type, and certainly not of any one type of person who may imagine his type capable of influencing and changing the other types! No, the self-improving, meditation type certainly has his place in the world, but it's only one place amongst others.

Yes, if they wish to believe that any personal revolution their self-analysis or whatever may bring about will help to change society in general, good luck to them! But I don't see that anyone who isn't of their type should necessarily be impressed by it. Revolutions are going on all the time, and mostly they're anything but personal, as you well know.

Yes, absolutely! Not exactly the most encouraging prospect for anyone who hopes to change contemporary industrial society for what he considers to be the better, is it? Especially when the cost of living is going up and up so rapidly, and the wage demands are going up and up even more rapidly, and the standard of living is going down and down so rapidly that you can hardly keep-up with it!

Yes, I quite agree. It makes you wonder how some people got it into their heads that we're a single species, a nice big family of bipeds whose desire for self-improvement should lead to a rosy brotherhood of man some time in the not-too-distant future. Think of it - the homogeneity of man! Everyone helping everyone else because everyone is the same as everyone else! Really, I can't begin to fathom the mentality of the type of person who imagines that because we all go on two legs - at any rate, those of us who aren't crippled or legless - and have two hands, two eyes, two ears, etc., we must belong to the same species! Is one to suppose that, instead of being a more subtle and sophisticated version of the jungle and its jungle laws, modern society is an institution where everyone cares for everyone else and endeavours to further the noble cause of man? I must confess to being somewhat perplexed by such a supposition! One would think that we were all sheep-like or horse-like or goose-like or even ant-like. Imagine it, to think of man as one might think of goats or pigs or rabbits, that is to say in terms of a particular species rather than of a particular kind! How odd or deficient the reasoning powers of such people must be! Instead of being equated with the animal kind or the bird kind or the fish kind, mankind is regarded by such people as constituting one of the many species which make up the animal kind, only a more sophisticated species of animal than those which ordinarily go on four legs.

You laugh, my friend, but I assure you this nonsense is taken perfectly seriously by many people, perhaps even by a majority of them, who are convinced of their social homogeneity. Never for a moment would they dare think of mankind the way they might think of the animal kind or the bird kind. That would be to betray their long-cherished illusion that, in consequence of having two legs, two arms, etc., their neighbours must belong to the same species as themselves.

No, because their neighbours eat meat with the aid of knives and forks, speak the same language, vote at elections, brush their teeth twice a day, visit the local doctor from time to time, watch television, and wear shoes, they cannot conceive of them as belonging to a different species. And yet, the chances are pretty high that their neighbours do belong to a different species! Unless they happen to live in a neighbourhood where everyone is pretty much alike, or the species vary only slightly, the chances are that their neighbours will belong to such a different species ... that they would be unable to communicate with them on anything but the most rudimentary or commonplace terms, like the state of the weather or the cost of petrol. Yes, if the truth were known, it's likely that mankind contains more individual species, these days, than both the animal and the bird kinds put together.

You laugh, my friend, but I assure you I'm not joking. I take the concept of human heterogeneity very seriously. I see no reason to suppose that all those who go on two legs are necessarily any closer to one another, spiritually or physically, than all those that go on four legs or, like birds, two legs and two wings. On the contrary, it seems more reasonable to suppose that there are even greater differences between them than between all the different species of animals and birds, not to mention insects and fish. Naturally, there's still a basic division between predator and prey. But how much more complicated and multifarious it is in the human kingdom than in each of the other kingdoms, where nature rules supreme and accordingly dictates the exact form the facts of life or survival must take. Believe me, even the most predatory of us regularly ends-up prey, albeit with less serious consequences, as a rule, than would be the case were we not human beings. But there you are, the survival laws of human society are so much more subtle and sophisticated than those of the jungle ... that we often fail to grasp the connection between them, fail to recognize the jungle foundations, so to speak, upon which our society is built. We imagine a homogeneity of purpose akin to that of, say, the ants or the bees, and leave it at that, confident in the supposition that the fellow who sits next to us on the bus or stands in front of us on the subway escalator is essentially of the same species as ourselves, a fellow-worker, it may be, in the glorified nest or hive we habitually refer to as society. But, really, how foolish to equate men with ants or bees or any other homogeneous species of insect! Ant and bee equivalents there may well be among the heterogeneous crowd of men, but they would no more be representative of men in general than ants and bees of insects in general.

Yes, I realize I was speaking of the jungle a moment ago. But the barbarous laws of that ancient institution are no less applicable to insects, indeed are no less applicable to birds and fish as well - at any rate, as far as the predator/prey relationship is concerned. In respect of survival techniques, the laws of the jungle are just as evident in the depths of the ocean or in the heights of the air or in the lengths of one's back garden as in the breadth of the jungle, whichever jungle you care to name.

Absolutely! Life lives on life, whether that life happens to be found at the top of the Telecommunications Tower or at the bottom of the deepest ocean. How could it be otherwise? Only, where human life is concerned the living-on process is generally so much more subtle and sophisticated, as already remarked, that half the time you aren't aware you're actually being lived on. You imagine you're getting value for money and money for value, which is quite often the case. Quite often. But there are times, too, when nothing could be further from the case, and you may or may not be aware of it.

Cynical? Yes, I suppose you could say I'm being a bit cynical. But only a bit, mind you! Perhaps you've had better luck than me recently?

Yes, well, whatever the case, you have to admit that life lives on life, even if human life doesn't always live on human life. It's all very well to eat roast chicken or lamb or beef or turkey, and think of the brotherhood of man. But equating 'living on' merely with eating isn't exactly the most comprehensive of viewpoints, is it?

Quite! You've got to stretch the metaphor as far as you can, so that working and buying are also included. In other words, the means you utilize to earn your living, the methods by which you acquire money, determine the species of man to which you belong, as, to some extent, does what you do with the money once acquired.

No, it's not simply a matter of class. For class is too vague, too

general a scale of reference to be anything but of the most basic use to us. All class really tells you, in the long run, is whether you're predator or prey, not what sort of predator or prey. It doesn't indicate your species, if you see what I mean. You could find yourself in the company of fellow upper-class people who had as little in common with one another as spiders and lions, sharks and eagles, beetles and wolves, hawk and pike, bats and snakes. Or, alternatively, you could find yourself in the company of fellow lower-class people who had as little in common with one another as sheep and cod, chickens and worms, snails and rabbits, sparrows and goldfish, cows and frogs. There are so many different methods, objectively considered, which members of either the upper or the lower classes can utilize to earn a living ... that the concept of class is of little help to us in pinpointing a given species of man. For class is general, species particular. The banker, composer, judge, priest, doctor, and professor may all belong to the same class, but in terms of species they're effectively as far apart from one another as lions, bears, sharks, eagles, hawk, pike, etc. And what applies to the upper class applies no less to the lower, indeed, may even apply more, insofar as it's such a populous class. Of course, we do speak of classes within both the upper and lower divisions, I'll grant you. But does the plural tell you exactly which species of man is being referred to at any given time? I mean, doesn't it usually imply royalty, peers, gentry, priests, politicians, professionals, and businessmen on the one hand, but lower-middle class and working class on the other hand, whether these be white-collar or blue-collar, skilled or unskilled? Again, its use is general, isn't it? Only if the plural was used in a more specific sense, so that, for example, professionals were divided up into the various professions which currently exist, and each profession was ascribed a distinct class, would I be satisfied that the term 'class' was being used to indicate species. Then one could speak of the doctor class, the lawyer class, the teacher class, etc., and the word would signify the human equivalent of species. But is it used like that? Are we really thinking in terms of a distinct species then?

You're not convinced and neither am I, because it seems that neither of us uses the word in anything but a general sense, and has little experience of anyone who doesn't. Still, the idea is interesting! We could speak of classes instead of species, if we consistently intended to assign each individual profession or each type of job a separate class. But it would be confusing, because the usual use of the word to signify aristocratic, upper middle-class, lower middle-class, and working-class distinctions, both singular and plural, would have to be discarded in the interests of our particular occupational divisions. One might speak of upper middle class one minute, upper classes the next, and lawyer or doctor class the minute after, which would, to say the least, be pretty confusing! So I can't see that use of the word 'species' is a bad idea, particularly in light of the immense differences of occupation and ability which do in fact exist between different members of the same class. To a large extent one is born into a given class but not, as a rule, into a given species.

Yes, absolutely! The fact of one's father being a lawyer doesn't necessarily mean that one is destined to become a lawyer as well. On the contrary, the chances are that one will become something else, something which can be equated with the same class but not the same species. One may prefer to become a politician or a stockbroker or a priest or a writer. Admittedly, professions do run in families, but not as often as one might suppose. Thus while there may be little doubt as to the exact class into which one was born, there's certainly no guarantee that one will follow in one's father's footsteps and develop into a member of the same species. The complexities and subtleties of human society are so great that you might find yourself habitually utilizing a method of survival, or earning a living, which is so far removed from your father's as to preclude all but the most trivial or generalized of conversations from taking place between you. The gulf of dissimilar conditioning and knowledge would open-up before you, making you acutely conscious of the fact that, to all intents and purposes, you belonged to different species of men, to men who, while belonging to the same class, had little more in common with each other than different species of animal predators would have if obliged to live together. Indeed, it might even transpire - if one is to take the analogy with other life forms seriously - that you had less in common. For who can seriously deny that human life is more diversified, these days, than the lifestyles of virtually all the other life forms that live on this planet taken together? Is there anywhere, from the heights of the tallest mountain to the depths of the deepest coal mine, from the heights of the air to the depths of the ocean, where men don't venture or exist? Are there not men who, through regular use of aeroplane or submarine, are closer in kind to the birds and the fish, respectively, than to the animals? Where, formerly, men were confined to the land and sea surface, they now have regular access to both the heights of the air - not to mention space - and the depths of the ocean, an access which turns the chief inhabitants of those places into species akin to birds and fish. Thus it may happen that a man accustomed to living in a submarine for months on-end could find himself being transported through the air, one day, by a species of man, i.e. a pilot, with whom he would probably have as little in common as a whale with an eagle.

Yes, you laugh, but it's perfectly true! Even when they speak the same language and have the same colour skin, men can be as environmentally different from one another as are the most dissimilar species of non-human life, indeed even more different from one another! For what bird has ever flown to the moon and walked about on its surface? What fish can travel for miles under the North Pole and go or stay down as deep as the greatest submarines? No, one cannot confine man to a single kind these days, and thereby equate him with or oppose him to the animal, bird, fish, and insect kinds. It would seem that mankind is the most heterogeneous kind, the only kind that can make use of more than three environments by producing species akin to each of the other kinds. For just as some men are closer in occupation to birds and fish, so others exist who are closer to animals and insects, men whose land-based occupations bring to mind connotations with other land-based life forms. And, of course, there are those species of men - undoubtedly the more numerous - who are uniquely human, men whose occupations provide us with no parallels in the non-human worlds whatsoever, and who may be said to constitute the backbone of mankind, the essence of its uniqueness. We have already alluded to spacemen, but we could just as easily refer to writers, lawyers, sculptors, comedians, priests, judges, lecturers, typists, newscasters, taxi drivers, disc jockeys, barbers, etc., who live in a world strictly fashioned by man without reference to other life forms. Yet, even with the relatively few species of men that I've just named, what a world of difference there is between them! Could any two animals be further apart or have less in common with each other than a lawyer and a disc jockey, or a barber and a priest, or a judge and a comedian? Can you imagine such people seeing eye-to-eye with each other on everything, or being able to understand each other on everything? My God, they speak of the brotherhood of man, but, in reality, how tenuous and superficial such a brotherhood really is! A brotherhood, one can only suppose, which distinguishes those who go on two legs, wear clothes, and speak a language, from those that don't, meaning the animals, etc.

Yes, I entirely agree! One might just as well speak of a brotherhood of animals, one which overlooks the fundamental differences between predator and prey in the interests of the fact that, with relatively few exceptions, they all go on four legs.

Absolutely! But, then again, few of us take the idea of a brotherhood of man very seriously in any deeper sense, these days, anyway - least of all in practice. We're generally much too sensible and logical to kid ourselves that all those who go on two legs belong to the same family. Brothers in the battle for physical survival we may well be, but hardly brothers to one another! Only to some, to those, if you like, who belong to the same species as ourselves, to a lesser extent to the same class as ourselves, and to a lesser extent again to the same type as ourselves.

Yes, I was speaking about type a little while ago, mentioning the fact that it took all types to make a world, and stressing the impossibility of any one type being able to change the fundamental natures of the other types in the name of self-improvement, world-improvement, or whatever. Type corresponds to temperament, character, and build. It can be psychological, as in the case of Carl Jung's eight-fold classification of Psychological Types, viz. introverted and extroverted feeling, sensation, intuition, and thinking types; or it can be physiological, as in the case of W.H. Sheldon's three-fold classification of Physiological Types, viz. fat, medium, and thin, which I believe he called endomorphic, mesamorphic, and ectomorphic. Or, better still, it can be a combination of both. However you prefer to regard it, type is something that cuts across occupation and class, the species and the genus. Hence one can speak of the composer species but of different types of composer, the writer species but of different types of writer, the artist species but of different types of artist, and so on. One type may be predominantly romantic, another type classic; one type may be predominantly idealistic, another type realistic; one type may be predominantly intuitive, another type sensual, depending on their respective internal and external, mental and physical characteristics. Thus you may find the romantic type of composer, for example, relating to the romantic types of painter, poet, sculptor, etc., who each pertain to different species of men. And, conversely, the classic type of composer likewise relating to different species of men who yet pertain to the same type. Viewed objectively, however, even the most dissimilar composers are going to be closer to one another, in terms of species, than to men of other artistic species whose types may nevertheless correspond more closely to their own. It's a strange fact, but true nonetheless! Species-specific rivalry is one thing, inter-species rivalry quite another! No amount of quarrelling between brother and brother can alter the fact of their being brothers. Similarly, no amount of professional rivalry between, say, one type of composer and another can alter the fact that they're both members of the same occupational species. In the jungle one lion may attack another over a dead zebra.

Yes, I entirely agree! But I think I've said enough about dissimilar species of men to preclude my having to draw tentative analogies with dissimilar species of animals. In theory, it does seem rather strange that one should think in these terms when the evidence of the senses would suggest that all those who go on two legs more or less belong to the same species. But, in practice, in the artificial way contemporary society actually works, it's apparent that men, no less than other life forms, function as members of different species, their dissimilar conditioning and occupational contexts establishing the essential heterogeneity of mankind, or of the human kind, in contradistinction to any subsidiary or natural heterogeneity based on race or type or class.

Yes, you might think it odd but, irrespective of language barriers or racial differences, a Chinese painter and an American painter are likely to have more in common with each other - as befits members of the same occupational species - than either of them would have with, say, bankers or lawyers or politicians of their own race. You could equate them, in analogical terms, with geographical variations on the different species of elephant or bear or eagle which, while being dissimilar in relatively small ways, nevertheless function according to a uniform pattern of survival, one kind of elephant being pretty much akin to another, and so on. The painter species, then, is universal, not confined to any one country or geographical locality. It supports itself in a given fashion, a fashion we may define as 'the painter's method of survival', whilst all around it, in houses or buildings perhaps no more than a few-hundred yards away, different species of men are preparing for or indulging in their particular methods of survival, much more subtle and sophisticated as a majority of those methods generally are to anything encountered more naturally in the jungle, the ocean, or the air.

But what of women, you ask? Well, I was unconsciously including women under the noun 'men' or 'mankind', insofar as they also pertain to different occupational species, have various methods of earning a living, etc., which enables us to classify them accordingly. But as I began talking to you about women, I suppose I may as well finish by doing so, since it's a subject which is of great interest to us both. Nowadays there are more species of women than ever before, because an increasing number of females are obliged or choose, depending on their circumstances, to indulge in methods of survival which lie outside the traditional framework of family life. Strictly speaking, woman is much less inclined to the formation of different species than man. For her rightful profession, her chief raison d'être in life, traditionally lies in ensuring the survival of the kind, as I think I remarked earlier. Naturally, there are exceptions to the general rule, and they must be tolerated. But I'm sure that most women would be inclined to view any woman who, well-advanced in years, had not produced a child or children with a mixture of pity and contempt, much as though she had somehow lived in vain, not done what she was put into the world specifically to do, and therefore failed as a woman.

Yes, you smile, but I'm pretty confident that, even these days, this is the way most normal healthy women, young or old, would secretly feel towards such a childless woman. Traditionally, then, women belong to one occupational species, which is essentially concerned with producing and raising children. These days, however, society has encouraged more women than ever before to acclimatize themselves to occupational activities outside the family, with a consequence that they've become divisible into numerous species and are accordingly more man-like than ever before. Admittedly, there are still more species of men, more jobs or professions which are exclusively a male preserve - professional football and cricket not least among them - but, even so, the transformation of women into the numerous species which now exist marks a social revolution of an unprecedented nature and scale. Never before have women fallen so much under the influence of men. Not only do large numbers of them work like men, they often endeavour to look like men, dress like men, think like men, act like men, and even talk like men, as was remarked at the beginning of our discussion.

Yes, our technological society has so transformed women that many of them are scarcely recognizable as women! Of course, a large number of them still produce children and thus revert to the natural maternal species to which women traditionally belong, albeit studies usually indicate this reversion to be temporary, confined to the latest months of pregnancy and the earliest years, if not months, of child-raising, after which time financial necessity or occupational enthusiasm may induce them to return to the artificial species of woman they had been before. Naturally, circumstances vary with the individual. But you can be pretty certain that the pressure is on women to behave increasingly like men, to give precedence to the artificial rather than to the natural species to which they belong, so that any woman who has the strength or good fortune to swim against the current of ongoing male domination for any length of time certainly deserves our respect as a genuine rebel in the cause of women's traditional rights! Unfortunately for the so-called fair sex, however, the current is so strong that only a comparatively small number of them remain consistently loyal to their natural species, an increasingly large number falling victim to the contraception/abortion mentality which mainly results, I believe, from fidelity to the artificial species which contemporary society has imposed upon them.

Yes, absolutely! If the present is severe on women, the future will probably be even more so, leading towards a society not all that far removed from the one Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World, where technological expertise will have made it unnecessary for women to live as women even temporarily, thus saving them the time and trouble of having children by mass-producing babies in test tubes, etc., and thereby maintaining a maximum work force for the male-dominated industries of that lopsided age.

You laugh, but, believe me, that's the kind of society we are heading towards and would probably arrive at, were the expansion of contemporary mechanistic trends allowed to continue unchecked throughout the coming decades. Personally, I don't believe it will. For the hardships would be too much for anyone to bear, men included, and would probably culminate in mass suicide. Yet whatever happens between now and doomsday, there's not much possibility of our being able to do anything to alter the course of contemporary Western society, since it would take the greatest revolution the world has ever known to reduce our cities and populations to a scale commensurate with a less unnatural, and possibly more healthy, mode of existence, and that is unlikely to happen. If the small-minded wish to doubt it, let them. But we must stand by our intellectual perceptions and relate to matters as they actually exist. And if we're fortunate enough to possess a woman, a real woman and not just a distorted caricature of one, we must do everything we can to protect her from the pressures increasingly being brought to bear on women to sacrifice their essential femininity to the false idols of industrial expansion and technological advancement. As victims of contemporary society, we may not be able to do a great deal in that respect, but we should at least do what we can to encourage her to dress, behave, talk, and generally live like a woman. After all, it's our loss if she doesn't, isn't it?

Yes, I thought you'd agree with me!