COVID19 AND A POSSIBLE LEGACY

by Ruth A. Sheets

Sitting at home nearly all day gives one time to listen, read, and think.  A deadly virus has struck every part of the world, yet warmongering governments and other militarized groups had to be begged to stop fighting, and as one might expect, many have chosen to keep up the fight.  I suppose the hope is they can make some ground while the virus is causing harm and distracting folks.  Alas, they might be right.

Perhaps, at this moment, we all should use this pause in normality to begin to take a good look at war and conflict in general.  Disagreement among people is probably endemic, so the chance that interpersonal conflict will end any time soon is not great.  But that does not mean we can’t use the time out during this pandemic to rethink what we are doing related to war and why.

First of all, war is a stupid, wasteful, disgusting, hateful, expensive practice.  One can’t help but notice that it is clearly a male activity.  Of course some women participate, usually as the victims, but we all can name women who have served in some capacity, usually honorably, but war is predominantly male and males often shape their lives by war.  Why do so many men depend on, even crave war?

Let’s face it, a lot of males need to prove their manhood.  It does not seem enough that male voices deepen, they develop facial hair and have other physical changes as they enter adulthood.  They must prove they are bigger, stronger, smarter, more clever than other men, and of course they must be better than women in all categories.  It is indeed a reminder that human beings are mammals and experience the impulses that other animals have.  On the other hand, we humans can do things other mammals can’t do, like thinking through things, making personal decisions, and more.

It seems in this time of COVID19, when we are in a kind of pause, we can come up with ways to cut the need for men to prove their manhood by destroying others.  We can dial down the ridiculous nationalism that also promotes male quest for manhood, while dragging whole societies down with them.

The whole concept of having to prove one's manhood is outrageous and sad.  Can't being human be enough, whether male or female or whatever one chooses to identify oneself as?  Parents, both mothers AND fathers need to raise their boys and girls to believe in gender equality rather than that boys are superior to girls and that being male is the highest achievement of humanity.  It isn't, but our cultures drip with testosterone.  Most major sports are male.  Most people in authority are male, even in professions like teaching where more women than men are employed.  Male voices are louder, so are seen as having more weight.  Most first responders in the field are men.  The military  has respect in communities far beyond other professions and the military (as mentioned above) is seen as male.  Men run the banks, the corporations, the economy at all levels.  Men run most religious institutions which of course, proclaim male as God and female as inferior, in need of male guidance at every level.

The COVID19 is raging and it is women who are on the front lines this time.  They are the nurses and doctors in the hospitals.  They are the family members who now minister to the entire family while everyone is shut in.  They are the outspoken politicians who are working hard to alleviate the suffering and develop plans of action.  It is the male leaders who are often incompetent, fearmongering, and unworthy of the positions they hold.

My concern is that when the virus has run its course, men will jump right back into war as though there had never been a break.  This should not be acceptable to anyone.

We need a plan to move quickly away from war, all over the world.  To begin, we all must elect more peace-loving women and men at every level of government.  Corporations that promote maleness as a prime virtue need to be either eliminated or made smaller and less powerful.  The military industrial complex (as Dwight Eisenhower called it) should be dismantled, redirecting weapons manufacturers into other production.  For example, we need no more tanks, no more battleships, no more bombs.   We have plenty of these.

Movement here will take a lot of effort, but with the COVID19 stalking, we could make some major changes immediately.

Such change will be especially hard with so many authoritarian governments led by men who just keep needing to prove how wonderful they are and how much better and stronger they are than anyone else.  We as a society need to stop trading with them, selling weapons to them, and start communicating peace with them and the need to work together on halting global warming, ending poverty, managing population growth, providing meaningful work for everyone, using as much creativity and commitment as we can muster.

Women and men who want something different need to stop encouraging manhood proving and participation in the war machine, the machine that manufactures weapons and hate, sends our children to fight and possibly die, allows our tax dollars to be siphoned off to rich warmongering manhood provers.

COVID19 is horrific and has taken many people around the world as its victims.  We could make a legacy of this pandemic, a worldwide commitment to ending war and learning to grow peace.