People do not always understand the importance of certain ideas when these ideas have been so internalized as to have become as second nature to them, when they have been thoroughly conditioned by them.

They then tend to consider the analysis of such ideas irrelevant, and prefer to think in terms of what they now define to be human nature, such as they perceive it.

They risk no longer understanding that their every thoughts and actions are rooted in concepts and beliefs that originate in a chosen worldview, and that to change the world, one needs to become conscious of and to change his worldview, to shift her focus and consciousness.

One such urgently needed transformation would nudge humanity to abandon the habit of fierce competition, which has historically been proven to lead to patriarchal forms of religions and governments, and to embrace the more natural and spiritually relevant model of cooperation, which found expression in matriarchal cultures and societies before they were brutally crushed by patriarchies centuries ago.

It is indeed not a coincidence that women have been oppressed for many centuries by patriarchal drives for dominant power and control, and are to this day in too many nations.

Such unhealthy obsession with power is not generated by hormones however, it arises from fear. Unnatural ideas lead to fear, which is an unnatural condition when sustained over a long period of time, and fear inspires the creation of the types of dogmas, ideologies, beliefs that ultimately appear to validate this fear and all it requires, such as greed, control, authority, might, aggression, war, and the subjugation and ruthless exploitation of those who are deemed weak because vulnerable to predation and coercion.

History proves that humanity is capable of temporarily or permanently legitimizing all acts of murders committed by the state or by religious authorities, all genocides, slavery, persecution, torture and war in the name of specific ideas and beliefs. Not so long ago, millions died because they were considered subhuman by those who claimed to be the master race.

Today the air, the water, the land are dying, polluted to the extreme and throughout the world by the highly toxic chemical and industrial by-products of a “master” civilization, because within the context of such a now global civilization power is deemed more important than life itself.

Consequently, anyone who stands for the earth is said to stand against progress, as were said to be the Native people of this continent in the 18th and 19th centuries, and as are still said to be all remaining indigenous populations today.

Indeed those who would rather love than rape and abuse the earth have seemingly no place and are not welcome in a world made into a battleground by the deluded and fearful patriarchal mind, the mind that is so desperately attached to the obsolete and grotesque idea of dominion as to be willing to sacrifice all for power.

That mind also fantasizes that the solution to the central problem of civilization, to the destruction of the natural order by greed, power and insensitive technologies will be found in the second coming of science or religion, in a migration of the human race to another planet or in a rapture.

Our human world will no survive this ongoing assault against nature, against what is called the environment, much longer, and can only be saved if women reclaim their power worldwide, not the power to blindly compete and overcome as men have been taught and conditioned to think and act, but the power to be, the power to live intelligently in cooperation and through communication rather than in opposition and through conflict.

Why should women save the world, why must they take on this responsibility?

Because it seems that, when it comes to killing and dying, men are by far the experts and always willing, but when it comes to nurturing life and living, women are so much more experienced and qualified.

If we are to choose to live on as a species, we then have to collectively choose to place our fate in the hand of the more skilled gender that, let’s be honest, has not yet been given a real chance under centuries of obtuse global patriarchal rule.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport, Calif.