Fertility: “You are so deluded.”
Bronze, startled: “Who are you?”
Fertility: “I represent the indigenous cultures that you conquered.”
Bronze: “How dare you contradict me? Let me prove how superior I am by dominating you physically.”
Fertility: “Spoken just like a bully. Your attitude of superiority is so ingrained in your military culture that it is necessary for me to provide some counter examples to enlighten our Reader to the realization that your view of culture is not an accurate assessment, at least by modern psychological standards.”
Bronze: “Whadaya mean? Are you one of those tree huggers who doesn’t realize that power and money are everything.”
Fertility: “Spoken like someone with a lot of brawn but not too much brain. Someone who believes the dream to be reality.”
Bronze: “You’re obviously very confused. We are the superior culture. That is why we are rulers.”
Fertility: “If by a superior culture you mean a society which is dominant militarily then you are the best. However if by a superior culture you mean a society with a high level of arts and crafts combined with social equality and a desire for peace, then your Bronze culture which emerged from the Steppes to dominate the landmass of Eurasia including the subcontinent of India would have to be considered an inferior culture. The arts and crafts of our Neolithic agri-cultures attained a high degree of sophistication. This preceded our enslavement by your cultures from the Steppes. Our pottery designs and our representation of animals and humans had a high level of refinement especially when compared with the stick figures of your conquering Battle Ax cultures.”
Bronze: “You’re mean. Even though my ancestors didn’t draw that well, they did their best to represent their society by including their weapons in their art.” .
Fertility: “Yes, their obsession with weapons was well illustrated in their art - with sharp knives everywhere. Also their lack of respect for human life is reflected in their renditions of the body - childish stick figures. And your Bronze Age cultures inherited these values.”
Bronze: “Yes, human life is cheap, when involved in a battle with the latest weapons developed by our military technology.”
Fertility: “Furthermore our indigenous agri-cultures tended to be egalitarian, as indicated by both our art work and our burial sites. We had graves for men, women and children rather than the kurgans of your steppe cultures, which were nearly always devoted to a male leader with slaves, animals and women buried with him. One of the later and most famous kurgans of this type was the grave site of the first Emperor of China. It seems that in addition to burying women, slaves and horses with him - he also had his craftsman make representations of warriors as well.
Despite our lack of military capabilities our agri-cultures developed a high level of sophistication which was obliterated by your ancestors, the nomadic cultures which came invading from the Steppes. Although your Bronze Age theologies always stress the superiority of your warrior culture over our conquered agri-culture, it was actually the other way around, at least by modern artistic and political standards. Indeed military prowess, then and now, has no correlation with cultural sophistication and indeed may be inversely correlated. However your military superiority allows your leaders to bribe or coerce your supposed historians with materialism or fear to paint them in glowing terms and glorify their barbarism as divinely inspired. For instance the one you call Alexander the Great, we call Alexander the Butcher - because of the atrocities he perpetrated on innocent cultures. Then as now. Some things never change.”
Bronze: “Your portrayal of the class system is too one-sided. Remember that we Warriors of the Ruling Class had an obligation to protect our property, which included our serfs and the freemen.”
Fertility: “As with your horses or herds of cattle you of the ruling class protected your servants and serfs from others of your type.”
Bronze: “My point exactly. The class system was an arrangement that was mutually beneficial for all classes.
Fertility: “To some extent anyway – to the same extent the farmer provides his livestock with food, protection and shelter.
Bronze: “But let’s get real. In the case of the slave, serf, or peasant class they really had no choice between free and enslaved. It was more of a choice between who to be enslaved by. If a cow runs free, someone captures it for their own use. Same with the serf class. The main hope was to be enslaved by a benevolent master. To hope to be truly free to choose a place of residence, career, and travel was a fool’s dream. There were too many competing aristocracies that were attempting to acquire slave labor. Their freedom could quickly become slavery without proper protection.”
Fertility: “Yes, you and your Bronze Age societies, whether Slavic, Germanic, Latin, Chinese or Persian, had a tendency to sell your own population into slavery or to conscript them into armies for your many wars - either on land or at sea. As late as the 19th century the English, when slavery had already been banned in their country, were still raiding wedding parties in search of sailors for their ‘floating caskets’, as their war ships were some times referred to. Indeed the war of 1812 between the England and America occurred because the English were regularly impressing American sailors – i.e. seizing them forcibly from merchant ships to serve on their war ships which dominated the world on their cultural wave.”
Bronze: “But, as usual, we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. The Bronze Age was replaced by the Iron Age long ago.”
Fertility: “While Iron replaced Bronze as the Metal of choice for Weapons, the hierarchical culture devoted to war that was developed in the Bronze Age is still prevalent in modern times.”
Bronze: “Of course. It is the most fit political system. The population pressures predicted by Malthus haven’t gone away and are instead increasing geometrically with time. It is necessary to be strong militarily to protect our limited natural resources and preserve our superior culture.”
Fertility: “This superior culture that you are protecting doesn’t seem so superior to me. It is devoted to creating weapons of mass destruction, not works of art. These weapons which are capable of obliterating the earth many times over only create fear rather than a feeling of security.”
Bronze: “We must attack them in a preemptive strike before they can attack us.”
Fertility: “You are living in hostile world of your own making.”
Bronze: “Kill them before they can kill us. Take the resources before they get to them.”
Fertility: “Your fear and greed have created emotional calluses that prevent you from feeling. And if you can’t feel you are not truly alive.”
Bronze: “But feelings like love and compassion are painful.”
Fertility: “Just like a physical callous dulls the nerve endings so that pain and pleasure are blocked, so does the emotional callous protect us from the pain and ecstasy of life. Feel the pain and know that you’re alive.”
Bronze: “I’d rather give the pain and know that they’re dead.”
Fertility: “As you kill them physically, you kill yourself emotionally. You end up a roboton, a victim of your misconceptions.”
Bronze: “Don’t be naive. It’s a cruel world out there. Without military strength, we’ll be taken advantage of.”
Fertility: “Your concepts are outdated. While applicable to your Kurgan ancestors, they have lost relevance. Your American military budget is more than all the rest of the countries in the world combined. Nobody can attack you, and yet you live in fear of your own empty projections.”
Bronze: “Empty are they? Without me you would not be able to create your art. Trade would cease and the political systems of the world would degenerate into chaos.”
Fertility: “My, my. Quite the imagination. All I’m asking for is balance. It is time for you to protect and support me rather than dominate me.”
Bronze: “But I do protect you.”
Fertility: “By attacking others of my type. Hardly. The point is to be sensitive to me and my values rather than taking the initiative. Defend me and my borders rather than exploiting my brother and sisters for your personal gain.”
Bronze: “But if I don’t get it they will.”
Fertility: “You think having it will make you happy, when all it does is assuage your guilt by intoxicating you with the temporary rush of materialism. Until you address this emotional imbalance you will always want more. Cursed, your cravings will remain unsatisfied. Half alive you will thrash blindly around destroying everything in your path. Thinking that you have won the game when you have lost big time.”
Bronze: “Who are you to talk to me like that. I could destroy you and your kind a thousand times over.”
Fertility: “I am the Woman who you think you own. You don’t even include me in your class system. Instead I am grouped with your herds, as one of your possessions. As you deny me equality, you are denied life. Out of balance you stumble from distraction to distraction - wondering what’s wrong. Never satisfied - always searching - ever craving - something that you can’t put your finger on - And I am right here. All you need to do is open up and let me in. Instead you erect barriers to protect you from some illusory harm. You conquer innocent kingdoms to give you a rise, when I am ready to stroke your member to bring you to life. Wake up. It is time to serve me rather than your misconceptions.”
Bronze: “You’ll never learn. Security is everything.”
Fertility: “Upside down - you think wrong is right. Inside out you think black is white. Open up internally and throw off the shackles of your mental projections. So that at last you can be truly alive.”
Bronze: “Never.”
Fertility: “That’s what I was afraid of. The infection is too deep.”