I agree with what you say about women. You know that I believe in common sense. As far as I’m concerned, common sense, the collective wisdom born or shared experience, kept us going as a species for some two million years.

Put yourself in the head of a caveman. You wake up in the morning, and your single greatest concern is, “How am I going to survive yet another day.”

Well, we’ve come a long way from that, but in a way, survival is still our greatest challenge. We shouldn’t be fooled by progress. Our survival may be threatened more now, than ever before.

We have no choice but to start believing in what makes sense. If running our economies on fossil fuels makes no sense, than out it goes. If ideological extremism makes no sense, than out it goes. If extreme economic disparaties make no sense, then out they go.

As you suggest, women, and mothers in particular, have a natural sense of what it takes to survive. They have little patience for ideological nonsense. If their kids goes mouthing off, they straigten them out in short order. They know about caring for the environment, because they know what it takes to create a clean and loving home. They know about economic justice, because everyone in the family gets a place at the table, and an equal piece of the pie.

Issues of Extremism, the Environment, and the Economy, seem to come naturally to women. And therefore, if more political and economic power were to be placed in their hands, my guess would be that a greater sense of order will result. You will see a movement toward reform with regard to our greatest challenges. You will see more justice and fair play.

Women are often the victims of men’s ideological nonsense, and sense of superiority. I don’t see that men have brought us to such a great place. Something has to give, and fast. Empowering women is a way of bringing change in the most efficient way possible. They already know what they have to do. They just have to be given the chance to do it.

I don’t know that much about testosterone, but I think that putting women down, which often happens in the Middle East, is not good on many levels: it hurts the economy when you lose half the work force, it creates low self-image for women, it probably puts additional pressures on marriages, and it allows men to go loony with their ideological nonsense.

If women were to become empowered politically and economically then this would act to balance a lot of the ideological extremism in the region. Women, for the most part, are more pragmatic in their approach, having the responsibility to bring life and to care for life. This pragmatism could go a long way to neutralize some of the hate, and to move the region in the direction of economic productivity, and eventually peace.