Women and Immortality

As I conversed with a convalescing young mother nursing her first baby girl, I saw in my mind's eye fleeting glimpses of my past. The nostalgic sounds of the baby rekindled my fascination for new life. And as my young friend spoke of the travails of first birth she went through a few days ago, commenting on how it feels to suffer as a delivering mother, I remembered a similar remark made by my wife and her greater admiration for her mother. And I also remembered my mother and felt feelings akin to guilt, especially when my young friend said in an accusing tone, that men will never understand how it is to be a mother. Even as I spoke, I nearly choked with emotions raised by those poignant recollections.

The moment also brought up something else remotely connected with parenthood. I became enwrapped with thoughts about immortality. It occurred to me that the edge woman has over man is her physical awareness of her own biological immortality. The baby is an extension of her life -- an incontrovertible evidence of her continuity. The baby was part of her body -- all of it. The father? I, man, had but contributed a minuscule part of myself in one brief moment of conception, and that is all I can say of my biological continuity.

Maybe, once upon an eon when society was run by matriarchs, men were just like other males of creation whose function was to inseminate the female and then perish. And maybe the dying off of the male compelled the wise matriarchs (like the Amazons of the Greek legends) to alter society as a human ecological measure. The concession of the matriarchs to transform society to patriarchy was to relinquish visible power. Let man take care of the world -- of governing, of making war, and so on. Women will take care of the home and the purse. And of conditioning the children -- so that their loyalty shall always be devoted to the mother. Let man's name live on in the children of women so that he shall have a sense of immortality, of meaning, of purpose. Of the children, women know absolutely that they are theirs, but, as a cynic once insinuated, men do not have as much assurance that the children their wives bore are theirs. Thus, women subconsciously are aware of their immortality. A daughter's child is a biological extension of the grandmother. Man's line ends with a daughter -- her children no longer carry his name. But a woman's flesh-immortality is not tied up with a name. It does not matter; daughters assure her continuity. Ironically, a woman's line stops with her son.

Perhaps it is this unconscious tragic sense of mortality that impels man to philosophize; there are rare women-philosophers. Speculation -- thinking about the spirit -- seems to be the mental preoccupation of men. Women may participate in such discussions, but eventually their concerns gravitate towards topics about babies, about clothes, about jewelries, about other women -- things that can be touched and seen and heard. Not that they are unfit for metaphysics, but that only the insecure are obsessed with things out of reach. Men cannot help talk about matters that give them assurance of their role and importance in the universal scheme of things. Women instinctively know their power and importance. Let men indulge in their insecurities; women will be around to give them solace and strength during moments of despair.

Women may drum up feminist movements demanding raised status in society. Theirs is the effort to wrest back from men the lost superiority of the matriarchs. If they prevail, we shall have come full circle. Men will again be relegated to the role of mere catalysts to latent lives. Men will then be relieved of the burdens of the world. And yet, wars that may be wrought by women will still be fought by men.

A Capsizing Earth

Have you ever come across the HAB theory? The HAB Theory is actually a fiction novel. However, the essence of the novel is based on a scientific treatise, Cataclysms of the Earth, by an electrical engineer named Hugh Auchinloss Brown. On the other hand the author of the fictive novel, Allan Eckert, used as main character Herbert A. Boardman.

The HAB Theory boils down to the following: Every year the polar regions of the Arctic and the Antarctic accumulate sizeable tonnages of snow which packed to ice and turn into glaciers. The Arctic is predominantly sea and thus the icecap there breaks up into icebergs which float out into the Atlantic and melt. Except for the island of Greenland, the volume (and weight) of ice in that region is not as alarming as the Antarctic icecap. In Antarctica, the icecap settles on top of the land mass and gets heavier every year. Scientists estimate that every year seven hundred thirty three billion tons of ice form there.

As you know, the earth's axis of spin is somewhere in the Polar Regions. Unfortunately, this axis falls somewhere to the sides of the icecaps, resulting in the earth's wobble. In other words, the earth does not spin smoothly. Certain astronomers discovered this anomaly in 1885 and measured it to be a fraction of an inch with a velocity of two feet per hour. By 1970 the wobble had increased to eighty yards.

According to the HAB Theory, once the wobble becomes intolerably large (the quantity is unknown), the earth will capsize. The poles will radically and suddenly shift; the Polar Regions may well become the equatorial belt. When this occurs, civilization will be destroyed. Only the areas where the old and new equators intersect may suffer minimal damage. Nevertheless, there will be earthquakes, tidal waves, and general chaos. The famous Deluge and Atlantis myths may have foundations in this cyclic capsizing of the earth.

The Theory narration states that the catastrophic changes occur every 4,000 to 5,000 years. It is now more than 5,600 years since the last occurrence. The sudden shift, by the way, takes only half a day to complete.

Very alarming indeed, if we go by scientific speculation. And the awesome scenes imaginable have uncanny similarities with those described in Revelation 6:12-14. Perhaps, the Mayan calendar must have pinpointed the apocalyptic date to occur on December 23, 2012.

In order to prevent this universal cataclysm from happening, the author-theorist suggested a drastic solution -- explode thermonuclear devices at the edges of Antarctica in order to break up the Southern icecap and thaw it. The attendant effects, however, will be the raising of the sea level by a hundred feet, which means goodbye Manila. Goodbye Micro Polynesia and hosts of small islands the world over.

The fictive presentation of the HAB Theory answers a few questions. If I am not mistaken, most of the pyramids are located along a narrow band close to the equator and north of it -- from Egypt through Mesoamerica and to Southeast Asia. Probably the ancients realized the capsizing potential of the earth, and to counteract the effects of a growing heavy southern icecap, and to ensure that the bulge created by the centrifugal force of a spinning earth is maintained, they undertook frenzied building of these pyramids. Maybe.

These possibilities are lost to our consciousness. Our time distance from the last cataclysm grows wider and we do not really feel the approaching danger except in a vague way. Perhaps, there is a way to offset the polar imbalance. The Chinese people, and most of Asia, do not know it but they have the advantage of numbers. You'll be forced to appreciate the Chinese power. Although there are thickly populated regions in Europe and North America, these cannot beat the population density of Asia, particularly the coastal areas of the China Sea. Can you imagine, with one billion Chinese all jumping at the moment of maximum wobble they can shake the world and alter the axis of spin! In other words, they can capsize the world! How much more effective if the peoples of the whole Asian mainland and the outlying archipelagic countries unite, and with one tremendous stomp and shout at a prearranged signal (like Joshua and his army around Jericho) capsize the earth in that direction!