"Which other species treats its own kind with such exquisite brutishness and cruelty?"

Lions, ants, gorillas, whales, preying mantis's, wolves etc ad nauseum.

A revealing comment frenchie, apart from its mind-numbing, namby pamby, wistful political correctness. It reflects the Walt Disney view of nature as being nice and kind and frolicsome unlike the just beastly behaviour of humans.

Nature is a bitch; a relentless, merciless, pus-filled, gore splattered, murderous, mindless, process. But what we have today is a witless [no I take that back, you said something witty on the Prometheus thread], rose-coloured perspective of nature primarily promulgated by those who live in humanity's great cities where the horrors of nature are kept at bay.

The idiocy, the sheer cognitive dissonance of this "isn't nature marvellous" view informs AGW and all the boofhead attendant fads and fancies which the Greens promote as the recipe to a better life.

It's just implacably stupid and as wasteful and destructive as murdering women in atavistic cultures like Islam

Gee Cohenite, why don't you tell us what you really think.
I agree with you at least about nature and it made me think of this classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPriOQkKd6k
I think the Christians were guilty of romanticising nature long before Greenies.
I have no such fanciful notions, yet that we are effecting the the planet's biosphere--and making life even harder--seems undeniable to me.

cohenite,

I "know" nature is cruel in its indifference....but human's are "calculatingly" cruel and barbaric by design when it suits them.

That's the difference.....

(pompous oaf!)

Hi Robert,
<The blame game does not really work, we are all influenced by the values of what we grow up with whilst having responsibility for our own choices. A societies values can't absolve or place sole responsibility on the stoner for their actions while ignoring the actions of the person who instilled those values into the growing child in the first place.>

This is certainly true, there are mothers who are cruel, or just plain afraid to stand against what they have always been told
is true by the surrounding culture.
But the women in these male dominated societies cannot escape the male dominance in the home or in society and children learn more by what they observe than what they are told. For example a parent who smokes but tells the child not to as it is harmful, is very likely to end up with a child who smokes. In this society boys see men as dominant no matter what they may be told.

Young boys at a certain age must identify with the men in their culture to become men or they will quickly be ostracized from the male culture if they show any sign of a different attitude to women than the male culture in that society as a whole .

It happens in our society too, this crossing over to the manhood club and culture, which constantly says to young men,
"you played like a girl or a pussy." It seems as though it is a rite of passage for men to have to reject the feminine side to step
Into the male world.
No matter what influence the mother might try to have on her son growing up he has to fit in
With the dominant male culture or face violence and ostracism himself.
Therefore it is the mindset of the men who make the rules and enforce them in these more oppressive societies that has to be gradually and
constantly challenged.
Another part of admittance to the male club
is pushing down your emotions, which doesn't help them to empathize with female issues.

I would have thought the blame lies squarely with an imbalance of power between women and men, rather than with either women or men per se, an imbalance currently being corrected globally with the enabling of autonomous women’s legislative authority through access, opportunity, quotas, women’s caucuses and bicameral parliamentary reform.

Cherful,
Why does it have to be challenged?
What difference does it make to the lives of Australian women if women in Afghanistan are mere chattels?
Afghans, Africans and all the other "patriarchies" contribute precisely nothing to White Western life nor do they ever seek to interfere in our lives.
Why not just leave them be?
There is no such thing as "Human rights", it's an anachronistic Western philosophical construct, which defies both scientific quantification and simple logic.