I recently wrote a short essay, which should be published soon along with other contributions, where I speculate on what would happen if in the blink of an eye we all found ourselves in a Stone Age condition. No electricity, heating or fuel for transport, no internet line, closed shopping centres and supermarkets with empty shelves, closed shops, including pharmacies, and zero public services such as schools and hospitals. A hypothetical and absurd scenario I used to set up an argument aimed at demonstrating the fallacy of the theory of ‘patriarchy’, the name feminism gives to the cruelly competitive basic setting intrinsic to the very nature of things, in order to obtain, through ideological distortion, power and privileges for a specific part of humanity (other than for those who promote it). In the crisis scenario I have outlined, men and women would find themselves in the condition of having to resort to their basic natural inclinations in order to deal with two alternative situations: a widespread anarchy where ‘jungle’ rule dominates, or the formation of cooperating communities capable of self-regulating and organising mutual support among their members.

Today, I browse through various economic information sites, read academic studies and statistics, and discover that the dreadful scenario I proposed as a absurd hypothesis may not be so hypothetical and so absurd at all. The widespread consensus is that we are just a few steps away, here in our West, from a period so traumatic that it stands as a watershed in the history of our civilisation. Here I do not want to analyse how we got to this turning point (historians will take care of that in about fifty years’ time), I am more interested in understanding what the consequences will be in the short to medium term. These are topics that are much talked about outside the Italian borders and that our mass media, on the other hand, are almost totally ignoring, being completely occupied in accompanying, each according to their own sectarianism, the soloists of what could be the last electoral campaign of our comatose democracy. So it is in Great Britain, Holland, Germany, the Czech Republic, the Scandinavian countries and the United States that one finds reflections on the abyss before which we hover. And the resulting picture is bleak.

Energy crisis and inflation.

In Great Britain it is predicted that one in seven elderly people will be forced to keep the heating off this winter, as they cannot afford to pay the bill. The various British care associations have already sounded the alarm, addressing their political leadership: ‘there is a risk that winter will claim more victims than covid’. But it’s not just a matter of heating: the fear is of electricity rationing (already implemented, perhaps as a form of test, in tiny Kosovo, where power is cut off to everyone for two hours every six, while in greater California there is now open talk of planned blackouts), together with an astronomical rise in the prices of goods, especially food, which in the UK are already registering unprecedented increases. In Germany, the winter is known to be particularly harsh, and the authorities are preparing to turn indoor sports facilities into ‘public heating zones’, where citizens can shelter from the cold in their homes, where they will be forced to keep radiators and water at low temperatures, perhaps warming themselves with an alternative use of candles and earthenware tea warmers (which are in fact selling like hotcakes on Amazon, despite the increasingly prohibitive prices), with a related forecast of an increase in house fires. Everywhere, however, there are not only private citizens: there are also small, medium and large companies and businesses, most of which will be more likely to close than to continue their activities when faced with bills. This will lead to job losses, a decline in the production and distribution of goods, and the inability to provide most services. Those few who will keep their jobs will be shipped off to smart-working, where possible, based on a lock-down model that was widely tested during the pandemic. It will happen not because of a public health issue: this time the lie will be ‘to save energy’. In reality it will be because if home becomes an office, the heating bill will be the responsibility of the worker and not the company.

According to a broad consensus, there will be consequences on the most indispensable supplies: medicines and especially food. In this respect, the frontal attack on agricultural activities throughout the western world is striking. The news can only be found by scouring the media in the various countries: in the USA, Canada, France and the Netherlands (some news about the latter has actually leaked out) farmers are suffering the aggression of their respective governments who, under the pretext of wanting to implement green policies, are in fact trying to put them out of business, forcing them to sell their activities and land to large international corporations. The mobilisation of farmers is strong, growing and determined in some countries, e.g. the Netherlands, while elsewhere (USA and Canada) much less so: Trudeau’s institutional violence against the truckers is well fixed in the memory and works very well as a disincentive to protest. Then, among the very fibres of this scenario, there is a widespread and very harmful phenomenon: inflation. Even more dangerous because, since it does not derive from an excess of demand but from the cost of energy, it cannot be resolved by an increase in interest rates by the various central banks, whose decisions will then make the general scenario even worse, if possible, because at that point borrowing money will have unfeasible costs. Even more: the banks will no longer give any and will directly close the taps.

Men and Women together.

A disastrous scenario, in short. That is why one speaks of a watershed in the history of Western civilisation. That is why that absurd hypothesis I made in my short essay suddenly takes on new meaning. Assuming that all these Cassandras are right in their predictions, the question is: what to do? What can we do when faced with an extreme condition such as perhaps even our grandparents did not experience? As said, we will have two options: total anarchy or community collaboration. In the first case, which I instinctively discard, the strongest and most ruthless will prevail and survive, full stop. In the second case, Men and Women will be called upon to face, accept and legitimise each other’s respective inherent natures, engaging them for what they can give in a common survival perspective. There will be a need for Men to ensure the organization, the defence and protection of communities, to do the physically demanding or more dangerous but indispensable work to ensure the conditions of livability; there will be a need for Women for the physical and emotional care of people and for a rational capitalisation of what men have achieved, as well as, of course, for the gestation of new generations. In the extreme conditions feared by many, they, both with capital letters, will be distinguished from those men and women who for far, far too long, have been lost in ideological sectarianism. In the face of cold and hunger, nonsense and falsehoods such as schwa, equal pay, forced victimisation of the feminine and forced criminalisation of the masculine, and all the other phoney paraphernalia we know so well, will appear for what they are: useless poison.

The social body will instantly expel that poison in the face of the crisis and the associated need to cooperate each for what, by nature, it knows and can best give. And it is also in this that we see how deep the divide will be between today’s degradation and the next human re-foundation: covid and war have already helped separate the wheat from the chaff, the imminent future will be the ultimate sieve. That re-foundation, however, must be carefully prepared. So far we have been talking about tomorrow, a tomorrow that is tremendously close. The call to Men and Women is, however, absolutely topical. In the (highly probable) hypothesis that the predictions circulating come true, it is already necessary for Men and Women to look around today, to identify the possible components of small communities in solidarity and cooperation, and to begin to connect the parts and divide the tasks, after having gathered the available resources and skills that can be pooled. Look to your families (an institution that will suddenly become crucial again in times of crisis), neighbours, friends and acquaintances, forgetting any possible differences or divisions, old rusts or dislikes: find the red thread that connects the individuals around you and that can work to sew the bond of a small living and resilient reality where men are Men and act as Men, and women are Women and act as Women, as it happens and as it needs to be when the superstructures built over the intrinsic physiological basis of the two genders collapse, as is about to happen. Men and Women, together, move now while there is still time. In the enjoyment of the results of their action today, that is, in future survival, there will be a small but important satisfaction: seeing the other men and women (in lower case) succumb, along with their unhealthy ideas, or finally come to terms with reality.