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Development of Succeeding
Generation is Most Important
Q:
What is going to influence them to give up this idea? [work in industry vs.
motherhood]
Richard:
I think one of the things that I need to clear up is that the need for women
to be educated equivalent to what men are educated is very, very important.
In developing a civilization, it isn’t just developing technology
and making more money and having more comforts that are important, in
the development of that society; it’s the development of young people to new
capabilities, the ability to be happy, to have a grasp of what the Universe
is like because they’ve been developed to have high intelligence. That
requires the efforts of men and women both. Now, women have been driven into
the work place by the fact that you can’t make a
living as a family unless the husband as a professional is making very good
money, and even then, they sometimes seem like they’re not able to make ends
meet. Men don’t like to have to work 45, 80 hours a
week. Twenty hours a week would probably be more comfortable, because then
you could spend time with people whom you like rather than having to be in a
sales position or a manufacturing position day in, day out. I don’t know that women necessarily want to be in industry
or in the professions any more than men do. Most men that I know would be
much happier not having to spend so many long hours doing what they have to
do in order to provide for their families. As a matter of
fact, most of them complain that they’re spending so much time providing for
their families, they don’t have a chance to be with their families, I have
read so many figures from so many places of how much direct taxes, hidden
taxes and interest on loans that people take up, particularity to buy their
home, consume of a person’s income that if those were kept down to a minimum,
then a person would really not have to work more than about twelve hours a
week to support his family, his wife and children, much as it was back in the
early part of this century. Women have every right to be in the
professions, to get all of the education that they want, to work in
laboratories, to be doctors. There’s nothing wrong
with that. It’s just that you do that sort of thing
before your children are born and after your children are grown. With people
living into their 70’s these days, there’s no reason why a person can’t take
off, say 16 years, to raise their children, maybe twenty years to raise two
children, and then go back to what they were doing. I think a person, man or
woman, is more stimulated mentally by actually
getting out and doing things with other people in sort of a professional way.
I don’t know that any man or woman should have to
pick food out in the fields for 16 hours a day, from sun up to sundown;
that’s inhuman, so far as I’m concerned, particularly since there’s machinery
that can be developed to do most of those kinds of things anyhow. I don’t know that people feel all that enlightened banging
away at whatever they’re supposed to do in a factory for eight hours a day. I
mean, that’s fatiguing and it’s almost demeaning in
some ways. The world will never work in such a way that you get something for
nothing. You do have to work, you have to create, you have to gather things
which are available from -
What Will Make Women
Go Back to Being Family Caretakers?
Q: But what
puzzles me in the book, Richard, is the fact that it is implied that women
are going to give up all that they’ve accumulated now, as far as professions,
positions and everything, and going back to being nothing but housewives and
taking care of the family, and I just wonder how women are going to be
influenced to do that when they’re working in just the opposite way now.
Richard:
I think the pendulum will swing back. I think women are getting tired of some
of the stuff that they have to put up with day in, day out.
Q:
They seem pretty, you know, all for the way it’s
going right now.
Richard:
Why should they be in the position where they don’t
get as much money for the same job as their husbands?
Q:
Well, that’s right; I agree with you there.
Richard:
And I think that women have demonstrated that they’re as capable of doing the
things that men have been traditionally doing for along, long time, maybe
even better, more conscientiously, perhaps. I think they’ve
proven all of those kinds of things already. Women I know hate to get up and
go through the same routine and drive to work and do the things they have to
do and then come back again and maybe have to make dinner for themselves when
they come home. It is not all that fun. They are entitled to have the same — they
are human beings, equivalent to what men are. Men are different in some ways;
women are different in some ways. But, mentally we are
created the same, and I think that’s the basic thing. Jews believed up to
maybe 100 years ago that women didn’t even have
souls. So much of our Christian philosophy is based
on the ideas of Paul, who was a Pharisee and spoke primarily of Jewish
concepts to his parishioners, and those kinds of attitudes, I should think
anybody would rankle under. That kind of stuff should be gone forever, I
hope. But, as human Egos, we are all created
identical. God does not see a difference. Jesus ran into all kinds of
criticism because he treated women essentially as equals of men, and even his
own apostles were kind of taken aback by that. They were having to put up with all kinds of razzing from
people who were not followers of Christ about their accepting women as
equals.
Q:
Maybe I haven’t made myself quite clear, I have
nothing against women doing anything they want to, as far as I’m concerned.
The more they do, the better it is for them, mentally and physically. What I
mean is that in the book it states that women are going back to doing nothing
but being wives and family raisers, and I wonder, with this surge now that’s
sweeping the entire world of women’s liberation, will the women accept
anything like that again?
Woman 1: May I answer that? Not everyone is going
to the Nation of God. So in the end, probably the
only ones that will be attracted to it or choose it would be women that could
work into a situation like that. You see this library here?
This is what women with children under six, they spend hours a day working
with their children and teaching their children. There’s
a lot more now to childrearing than there used to be. So that’s
part of the answer right there.
Woman
2: I guess I have something, too. It seems that in the
book, it was stated that women would have only a few
places that they could work. In this one place, it said that they could only
work in the women’s apparel mart, or as teachers and as nurses, and I have a
question about that. However, I would think that nursing, maybe in a more
enlightened society, would cover all of the healing arts, and that’s quite a bit. Almost everybody that I know is into
healing now, and so if that were the case, you wouldn’t
have just male doctors. And also, teaching, I think,
will be elevated to a higher position than it is now. It will be an honor to
be a teacher, and I think men and women will be teachers of the children. So
that’ll take care of a lot of professions, and otherwise, you know, a lot of
business now is nothing but his silly stock market schemes and marketing
schemes that are all pretty much houses built on sand. If you take away a lot
of the technology that’s kind of stupid, like a lot of laboratory testing and
things, then it just—I think there will be women who will want to be
scientists, and I question that, so may they can further that through what
they call nursing or something. I don’t know.
Q:
You mean women shouldn’t be scientists?
Woman
2: No, I believe they should, but I am just wondering how the Brotherhoods would answer that.
Richard:
Well, if you will recall, the Teachers who spoke with me suggested that women
should not marry before their late 20’s and men should not marry before their
early 30’s. So, what were women going to do from the
time that they’re, say, 18, ‘til they’re 28? Just sit around at home and sew
samplers or something like that?
Woman
2: Some may want to be scientists and
botanists and biologists and things.
Richard:
But it’s fun to do that for about ten years , but everything gets old after
about ten years, even raising children, but there’s no way out of that one,
once you get started in that direction.
Woman
1: So what you were saying, essentially
earlier, is that a lot of things they won’t be doing
for pay.
Richard:
Correct.
Woman
1: They would be scientists, but they wouldn’t have to go out and earn their living necessarily,
or be out in the rat race.
Man
1: I was just going to
comment on the same thing that she was saying. My
understanding is that there will be so many activities that aren’t
necessarily tied into what we call the work force and the thing that keeps
the economy going, and that those things that are tied into it, we’re talking
about like 500 years in the future before we get to a civilization, and then
it will hopefully be where the man only has to work two 6-hour days a week or
something like that, so he’s only working 12 hours a week, and the same
cultural forces that are to that extent now certainly won’t be to that extent
in the Nation of God, and at the same time, the wife is supposed to know the
husband’s work just as well as he does?
Richard:
Right, particularly if he is in a governmental-type position.
Man
1: So they can just fill in for him if he is unable to attend or to go work
for some reason.
Richard:
They’re truly equals. (05-19?? TAO)
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