Shades of Grey

February can seem rather long - especially if you are not into red roses.   

For me, February is what November is to others - a stretch of grey.  Lots of it.  My garden offers quite a variety at the moment and most relationships are nothing but that: Shades of grey.  

No titillating, nail biting rendez-vous with handsome pervs, no deeply fulfilling weekly gatherings with the tribe.  

Most of the time, we muddle through with the ones at hand...an assortment of friends and relatives who have been in our lives long enough that somehow they seem closer to us than the handsome perv or someone not quite so handsome other, with whom we happen to share a seat on the commuter train (probably a perv as well!).  

Everyone is tied to their lot and everyone has stories to tell about them - and so do they....  Can you believe it?  I just don’t understand why...? She is always so....!!  

It’s a bit of a waste of time usually - in fact it is quite boring - and yet deeply fulfilling!!  The same blah about the same stuff - like eating a Big Mac in Damascus.  

You probably don’t want to be in Damascus in the first place, but even if you are a die hard vegetarian and hate Mac Donalds for lots of very good reasons, you will probably still feel that oddly comforting twitch (at least if you are from the US or one of its faithful colonies) ...

family !

Follow Me !

One would think that I have said it all...I mean the stuff about why I truly believe that women are the better humans.

But last year I got joined by an equally vociferous fellow femme who does not mince her words either and greatly bolstered my list of arguments.  

Clearly everyone is aware that 95% of prison inmates are male (and that’s a worldwide average!!), which alone should suffice... And, hey, who invented the atomic bomb and dropped it (ooops), who reaps havoc on civilians whenever they feel justified (Eritrea, Syria, Iraq, Rwanda, Congo, Sebrenica, Vietnam, and the list goes on and on and on....)?!    

In her most recent book (Berlin 2014), “Warum die Sache schief geht” (Why it’ll all go down the drain), the author, Karen Duve, summarizes research from forensics to psychology that reveals that the same qualities, which catapult a human into the upper echelons of power and status, are usually the same ones that get them to be locked away: a charming (often mistakenly taken as “charismatic”) self-presentation that serves as a cover-up for ruthless, selfish actions.  

The clinical term for this type of personality is “psychopath” - someone who fools others into believing that they are superior and therefore entitled to anything they want.  

1% of human beings show distinct psychopathic traits - over 90% of them are male.  Very tellingly, according to Karen Duve’s research, the proportion of psychopathic personality types is disproportionately high among business and government leaders - leaving you to wonder, whom are the rest of us following?  

The class bully!