The Problems Facing Modern Civilization

“People know me as a good man. I own my own business. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t chase other women.” In spite of all such contrary indications, he repeatedly beat his wife. Reader’s Digest gives many instances of wife-beating by Americans in an article entitled, “Why Men Hurt the Women They Love.” According to one survey, in America a woman is battered by a husband or boy- friend every 18 seconds. And every year, it is estimated that more than a million of these need medical help. Every day, four die.14 Why should the developed and civilized society of America be infested with the evil of wifebeating? A great deal of research has been done on this subject and its findings have been put in a nutshell by Mrs. Susan Schechter, a researcher at the Women’s Educational Institute in New York, when she writes, in her book, Women and Male Violence: “It is a pattern of coercive control.” Ellen Pence, Director of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs says, “Any batterer can tell you why he hit her. He wanted control over her. He wanted his way.”15 The above statements underline the state of affairs which has resulted from modem western civilization having formulated its own principles of human conduct. Its major mistake was to give its approval to the concept of male-female equality. It opened the doors of the workplace to women, thus giving them the opportunity to earn their own livelihood which, in turn, made them economically independent of men. This, made women feel strongly that they were equal to men. They did not realize how artificial this notion was: in spite of the improved economic situation of women, western civilization could not, with all its powers, alter the dictates of nature — that men are the stronger and women the weaker sex. As a result of this artificial equality domestic life as a whole has met with a contradiction. The women living in these western homes were physically as fragile as ever before, but psychologically (in their temperament, thinking) they had come to consider themselves as equals of men. Men being the stronger of the sexes wanted to hold their control over women. But women due to their artificial/unnatural temper refused to accept their control. The result of this contention proved very bad so far as women were concerned. “You need to feel powerful as a male. I don’t know why, but it is true,” says Chuck Wilder, a one-time batterer and now a counsellor for men at HAWC (Help Abused Women and their Children) in Massachussets.16 But women, thanks to their artificially acquired outlook, have refused to go on accepting their control. The consequences of this clash have been universal and are certainly worse for women than for men. Had men and women been biological equals, sometimes the former and sometimes the latter would have gained the upper hand. As it is, modern women have become so oppressed as a result of masculine reaction to their sense of total equality, that they cannot even run away to save themselves. According to the Reader’s Digest report, one woman said, “If you try to leave, your husband may threaten, ‘I’ll find you and kill you.’ Many of the worst injuries — and deaths — happen as women try