THE LOUNGE

Essay: “The Woman of Tomorrow”
By Angel B. Casillan

I have often wondered about what the woman’s role would be in the distant future. We know that in the past, women carried the big burden of continuing and preserving the civilization of human society. During the nomadic era in human history, she was the family planner, being the keeper of her children. In the current culture of codependency and independence between men and women, however, that role is changing—she is becoming the leader of the family unit and of the community. 

In its natural course, evolution would produce the fittest individual to survive in a given environment. Life had adjusted in the past to the available food supply. At present, however, Planet Earth is now supporting billions of people—an exponentially expanding population that, if left unchecked, could implode under its own weight. When the time comes that Earth could no longer support this population, nature would take its own course to stabilize itself.

Nowadays, human beings are working on ways and means to clean up the pollution that’s being produced by the ever-expanding population. But in the not-too-distant future, when a serious imbalance in population occurs, excessive man-made pollution is likely to cause disasters, warfare, and pestilence. Owing to a food supply that would diminish into serious inadequacy, only the fittest and most adaptable of the population will survive. This scenario could repeat itself several times until a new generation of tough, highly fit human beings emerges. Because this new breed of humans will be a product of a very challenging environment, they are likely to be sizably bigger, with greater body reserves for coping with eventualities like diseases and physical challenges. Genetic changes will then likely ensue, such as a dramatic increase in the intelligence quotient of the human race that it will enable it to cope with the drastic changes in the environment. It took 50,000 years for humanity to undergo the major genetic change that gave it the power of speech; in a fast-moving scientific and technologically advanced society, the human mind and body are likely to need shorter periods of time to genetically evolve more adapted forms. 

By the year AD 25,000, we probably can expect human beings on Earth to have become walking giants compared to their present standard size. During periods of extreme adversity, humans will likely be putting more and more of their unused brain matters to use; indeed, in the history of human evolution, situations like this had led to three major genetic changes, with the human link splitting from the chimpanzees 5,000,000 million years ago and on to the appearance of the modern humans about 100,000 years ago. If more of the human brain has to be used, it requires a bigger supply of nutrition and energy from the cells all over his body. With such bigger supply of nutrition and energy, the brain would grow bigger, which would then necessitate the human body to get bigger to provide more cells for manufacturing the energy it needs. This situation would in turn provoke an evolutionary process that could lead to a very substantial increase in the size of the human body and brain. 

According to a law in science about matter and energy, the total quantity of matter and energy in the universe is fixed. This law should also apply to the fixed maximum amount of food supply that could be produced on Earth. So, when the human population reaches Earth’s maximum carrying capacity based on the maximum food supply available, the optimum population that Earth could possibly maintain will be reached. How to deal with the excess population will then become a major challenge to the human species. A logical evolutionary response to this major challenge is the enlargement of the human brain, which in turn will contribute to the further enhancement of the human intellect. Indeed, mankind’s evolutionary history has consistently shown that with increases in brain capacity, there are increases in innovation and skills that go alongside with that increase. 

Under these circumstances in the future, I think whatever genetic changes will occur in humans would favor and benefit the women more than the men. This is because in the human societies of the future, women would be performing even more multifaceted tasks than ever before. This will likely result in a reversal of roles for men and women, with the latter assuming a greater role than men in the management of society. This will be on top of their natural role of carrying babies inside their bodies and nurturing them after birth until they could fend for themselves. To be capable of assuming their much bigger responsibility in this future scheme of things, women will likely undergo a genetic change that could make them evolve into superwomen. The physical stature of women would then approach or equal that of the men, and the average intelligence of women would get higher than that of men. This would be nature’s way of compensating women for the much bigger responsibilities and work load that they will be assuming in society. So in future, when a woman becomes equal to a man, that would be the time that she becomes superior to him. 

How about courtship and marriage? Since the world would have then become a woman’s world, it would be the woman who would be choosing the man of her life instead of the other way around. With women holding a more prominent role in government, decision-making with respect to conflict and warfare would likely become more conservative, thus minimizing loss of human life. In the future then, the chores and additional responsibilities to be assigned by society to women would make evolution favor women, who have the innate capacity to maximize anything that’s being used and minimizing anything that’s unused. So what would the macho men of today become in the distant tomorrow? In my mind, they are likely to become extinct exhibits of a different era, evolutionary victims of the new society. 

Have you heard about the Amazons in Greek mythology, that race of tall, strong, and masculine female warriors? Although the story was just a figment of the imagination of the Greeks, it was probably their way of projecting what their women might conceivably become in the distant future as they assume ever-increasing roles in society.

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