Debra and I are very different in some ways. While we have sufficient traits in common to allow for working together, the way we process information and relate not only to the past but also to our sense of the future differs significantly. Some of those differences are gender based: men learn to process information differently from women. Neither gender has a “lock” on the truth. Both genders have learned based on information available to them, and neither gender has access to all the information.
I grew up playing typical competitive sports played by men and boys: Football, baseball, and basketball. I grew up in California, so (at the time), we didn’t play hockey because we didn’t have any ice. Times change, of course. Sports got their start as training for combat. You can get a good sense of things by reading Shakespeare. There are also a number of old black-and-white movies that will give you a fairly good sense of what combat was like during the “Middle Ages.”
One of the scenes from an old black-and-white movie that has stuck in my mind since I first saw the film in in junior high showed the dead and dying lying in the field while the women from the village go through the bodies of the dead and dying looking for loved ones. Our ancestors were definitely tough. They had to be to survive.
My father and his brother both saw combat in WWII. My father told me about a time he was sitting on a log with a buddy having lunch when they were strafed by a Japanese fighter plane. They fell on opposites sides of the log. My father escaped without harm, but his buddy was killed.
Two of my uncles saw combat in Korea, one as a fighter pilot and the other served in the artillery. I was of an age to go to war during the Vietnam Era and went to Vietnam with the Army. I was lucky and, although I spent time in a combat zone, I did not see combat. I did not see combat only because the major attack while I was there took place in another sector. I knew plenty of people, however, who weren’t so lucky. When I got my orders for Vietnam, my father’s advice was to make friends with an experienced sergeant and stick with him when our sector was attacked.
The military in general, and service in the military in particular, go a long way to explain why men are the way they are. Think about generation after generation of men learning “the warriors’ way” from their older male relatives. To the best of my knowledge, I have only one older male relative who did not serve in the military, and he worked in combat construction—he worked what is known as the “high steel,” the support for “sky scrapers,” both civilian and military. They are the guys who walk the construction beams that hold everything up and together. Most of my older relatives saw combat and/or served in a combat zone. The most popular competitive sports for men are all basically training for combat roles. This isn’t really either good or bad—it “just is.”
You may know the old spiritual, “Gonna Lay Down My Sword and Shield Down By the River Side.” The desire is there for humanity to change and become more peaceful. The lure of the familiar is a major impediment. How soon—and whether—we achieve that goal depends on those of us who desire a more peaceful life for humanity. It is hard to know what will best serve the overall purpose.