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An Unfashionable Look at Fashion
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859.
For the vast majority of humankind, he might as well not have bothered. For every person who actually understands the implications of evolution there are literally millions who either:
(i) don’t know about evolution at all, or
(ii) think it’s merely an idea rather than something that has been supported by every single piece of factual evidence we’ve ever found and which has enormous predictive power, or
(iii) accept it as something that’s true, like the sky being blue, but of no relevance to everyday life.
And that’s sad, because when we bother to think about evolution and its implications we can learn a great deal about ourselves and prevent ourselves from believing in things that harm us.
No, I’m not talking about arrant nonsense like “intelligent design” or gods and goblins, souls and spirits. I want to talk about something more mundane but perhaps just as significant: fashion.
For the last handful of decades it’s been fashionable in some quarters to believe in “the Patriarchy” and its supposed influence on all aspects of our lives. Rather like some secret society, no one can say where the Patriarchy is nor how it operates. It’s just “out there” like aliens with an unhealthy…
