The Collective Psyche of Humanity Becoming Feminine
C. G. Jung pioneered the concept of the collective unconscious and collective psyche in psychology (Jung, 1992). The collective psyche of a group mirrors behavior patterns akin to and influenced by the individuals within that group. Consequently, it may exhibit human characteristics, notably gender-related traits, as the group's behavior can reflect both typically feminine and typically masculine qualities.
As an example of a behavior of the whole collective of mankind we can identify the tendency to wage wars. This tendency, which presently cannot be denied, is typically masculine because aggression has developed in male individuals under the influence of an excess of testosterone (van Vugt, 2006, Eisenegger, Kumsta, Naef, Gromoll, & Heinrichs, 2017, Hashikawa, Hashikawa, Lishinsky, & Lin, 2018), and aggression is ultimately responsible for wars. Violent combative confrontation is a male trait (Wilson & Daly, 1985). Wars, unfortunately, occur everywhere. This would indicate that the collective psyche of mankind is masculine, at least so far.
The suffix "so far" is there because recently there has been an increasing move to avoid war through de-escalation and to use sanctions instead of troops. Confrontations are avoided while dialogue is sought. Conventional wars are made superfluous and are being replaced by hybrid warfare, i.e., covert operations, terrorist attacks, and partisan attacks.
That shift in behavior is true for nations as well as for smaller groups. People are joining forces in alliances instead of fighting each other. Everybody tries to shift altercations from the physical to the communicative level.
The avoidance of open fighting in favor of secret taunts can be characterized as typical female behavior. Women avoid open fighting as much as possible. But for men it is often the option of choice. In dangerous situations, men fight while women flee. That is why men have a stronger physique and women have longer legs.
The roots of such behavior can be traced back to early childhood, notably among young girls. The phenomenon of 'bitching' has become emblematic of female interactions among both children and adults. Interestingly, this behavior, while perhaps not ideal, is seen as a preferable alternative to more violent acts like murder or assault. A comparison can be drawn on the schoolyard, where, in extreme cases, girls may engage in hair-pulling, while boys resort to more physically harmful actions such as causing bloody noses or using knives. Consequently, the shift in the collective psyche towards femininity is viewed as a positive development, eliminating brute force from interpersonal dynamics.
Another example of a group's collective behavior: The rise of democracies. During the last 400 years democracy has been rediscovered and has become more and more widespread. It has been present before in ancient Greece, but has been lost later, a story that will be elaborated on below.
Research indicates the existence of a gender stereotype: Men are perceived as hierarchical, while women are seen as egalitarian (Schmid Mast, 2004). The collective unconscious tends to align with prevailing stereotypes within a group, reflecting the influence of these stereotypes. Consequently, in a masculine society, the collective unconscious may manifest in hierarchical forms such as dictatorship or monarchy, whereas in a feminine society, it may lean towards democracy or anarchy.
In our present world, democracy is on the road to prevail in the world, a clear sign that the world is becoming feminine.
Does this mean that the collective psyche of mankind used to be masculine and is slowly becoming feminine, and, if so, why is this so and what follows from it?
The first question can be answered with a "Yes": Humanity is slowly becoming feminine. Women and men who think like women will rule the future (Gerzema & D'Antonio, 2013). Many aspects support this thesis (Liegener C.-M., 2017).
Apart from the examples already given one might consider that there is a substantial improvement of women’s rights since the Middle Ages up to today which speaks for a strengthening of the feminine side of the collective psyche in that period of time. A more detailed look is possible for the second half of the 20th century.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a notable shift in societal values occurred, marked by a transition from materialistic to post-materialistic values (Inglehart, 1977). Materialistic values, centered around physical well-being, security, and integrity, were traditionally associated with men, reflecting their historical roles in securing tribes and ensuring survival through battles. In contrast, post-materialist values transcend basic needs, focusing on the quality of life—happiness, health, sociability, and culture. These values are primarily associated with women, who historically contributed to creating a livable environment in caves, caring for the wounded, raising children, and nurturing their husbands. The shift in values during this period can be interpreted as a symptom of an accelerated transformation in humanity's values from masculine to feminine perspectives.
The change of humanity shows up already early in the life of each human being. Consider the school environment—there's a noticeable trend where the emphasis on teaching factual knowledge is diminishing, giving way to a greater focus on developing soft skills, particularly communicative abilities . These soft skills are skills that women are better at than men. Men are strong on facts, women on emotions (Christov-Moore, et al., 2014, McDuff, Kodra, Kaliouby, & LaFrance, 2017). Today's students are expected to do better in a female-centric world. Our ancestors would not have understood that you can graduate from high school without Latin and Greek. Today you can. In turn, today's students have more social competence than those of the past.
The emotional strength of women also has a flip side: their emotional vulnerability. Emotional strength and emotional vulnerability can both be found in our world as it is becoming female. The emotional strength of humanity is shown in the care for the weak, the emotional vulnerability in the increase of psychological problems in modern society.
Where else can we see the influence of the feminization of the world? What about the overpopulation of the earth? In the male phase of humanity, people multiplied explosively until the whole earth was populated. Only in more recent times (from 1970 onward) has the birth rate started to somewhat decline again. That is hardly to be led back on conscious decisions. China had tried something like this with its former one-child policy. As is well known, this led to problems and had to be abandoned. However, from a global point of view, forces of the collective psyche are unconsciously at work in the containment of overpopulation.
In exploring the underlying reasons, we observe a desire in men to disseminate their genetic material widely, leading to a preference for having many children, potentially contributing to overpopulation. However, when considering the slowdown in population growth, it becomes apparent that women play a crucial role in child rearing. Moreover, women share a closer bond with their children compared to men. This also means that she only wants to bring as many children into the world as she can provide for. Birth control is a woman's domain.
Feminized humanity that reaches the limits of overpopulation will curb its reproduction. Thus, the influence of humanity becoming female can also be felt here. In her desire to do what is best for her children, humanity is slowing down population growth.
Of course, there is also a much simpler explanation; starting in the late 1960s, there was the birth control pill. This can explain a decline in the birth rate, but it does not refute the psychological argument. It can be argued that the development of this pill may have arisen precisely from the desire for birth control in a society that was becoming more feminine; this closes the circle.
The feminine world seems to be more friendly than the masculine. The friendly side of femininity can already be seen in the comparison of the physique of women and men: The female breast serves the selfless nourishment of the infant, the connective tissue of the body for tenderness in interaction. In contrast, the man's muscles and physique serve the fight.
If the feminine world is the more pleasant one, why then was the world masculine before? Because humanity used to have to fight for its place in the world. For this, a male psyche is better suited.
The choice between male and female behavior depending on the presence or absence of danger has been demonstrated by nature in the fate of the bonobos.
When comparing chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, it becomes quite clear what choices are. These two species have descended from common ancestors and separated two million years ago when the Congo River was formed. They were separated because they could not swim. Apparently, living conditions were more difficult in the north of the Congo. The chimpanzees that evolved there had to compete for scarce resources with gorillas, found only there but not in the south of the Congo. The bonobos that evolved south of the Congo had an abundant food supply that they didn't even have to fight for.
The result of evolution in this case is impressive: chimpanzees are patriarchally organized, aggressive, and the individual ape groups wage endless wars with other ape groups. On the other hand, Bonobos are matriarchally organized and solve their problems with sex. The collective psyche of the chimpanzees is male, that of the bonobos female.
Therefore, it is understandable that humans tended towards a basic feminine attitude when their living conditions had improved to the point where they no longer had to struggle for their daily sustenance.
So, it is quite reasonable for humanity to become feminine. However, reason does not play a role here. It is not possible for a group like humanity to chose its gender consciously by itself. How then does the transgenderization come about?
A closer look shows that humanity's psyche before the transgenderization resembled the psyche of a mother's son (Liegener C.-M., 2017). The problem with this is that humanity as any mother's son was prone to self-destruction (Pilgrim, 1993). This can be understood as follows: Nature is the mother of humanity, and the notion of God serves as the father. While nature is omnipresent, God is perceived as distant. The son of the mother is nurtured by her, yet she struggles to fulfill her dreams independently. So she instills them in her son. Thus, he is raised to believe that he is destined for something very special; it makes him a narcissist. His feminine imprinting by his mother collides with the social necessity that he behaves in a masculine manner. This inner conflict destroys him. As a narcissist, he cannot accept his failure, which, however, is inevitable. He takes refuge in suicide. This fits with the facts: in its masculine past, humanity was constantly working on its own self-destruction; in 1983, it was only a push of a button away from nuclear war (Hoffman, 2009).
Salvation comes by transgenderization as follows: The mother's son becomes the mother's daughter and she is psychologically stable. This is already shown by the fact that the existential consciousness of guilt, which plagued humanity for so long and found its expression in the doctrine of original sin, is in the process of disappearing, a fact that can be explained psychologically: According to Freud, the existential consciousness of guilt is due to the Oedipus complex (Freud, 1930). Humanity as a mother's son suffered from this complex, culminating in the son's desire to kill his father and marry his mother. This complex can only occur in a son, not in a daughter, at least as far as stereotypes are concerned. So the newly formed mother’s daughter is safe from it. From a psychological point of view, humanity can be free of guilt and be happy.
Is the future really happy?
Happiness is a subjectively felt state of mind. However, there is some evidence that feminine humanity currently feels this state of mind more often than masculine humanity did in the past.
The decisive factor here is the circumstance that in a sterotype view women approach a problem in a process-oriented manner, whereas men approach it in a solution-oriented manner (Pease & Pease, 2002). Women first discuss the problem together, then proceed in small steps (think of the stiletto heels), and keep improving the preliminary result, a process they never finish. It is noticeable that this is precisely the procedure of modern science.
On the other hand, men try to solve the problem quickly and then retire. In turn, women never come to a rest. Unfortunately, men's quick solution is never perfect by its very nature, which is why women like to criticize it - and they do so during the men's rest period! In the past, in the masculine world, such criticism interrupting men’s well-deserved break was considered annoying by the men and was called "nagging". Consequently, the women in the masculine world often omitted the criticism and the faults accumulated.
In the feminine realm, positive outcomes emerge incrementally through continuous refinement. Similar to evolution, certain steps are deemed successful in hindsight. Subjectively, it may feel like luck or, put differently, as if fate has been benevolent. Objectively, success is rooted in the ability to recognize early achievements by taking small steps, paving the way for further progress in the same direction.
This effect brings the feminine world to developments being perceived as happy. In the masculine world of the Middle Ages, on the other hand, people often ran in the wrong direction for too long. The subsequent failure was difficult for men to come to terms with. There was a general mood of doom at that time. In the arts, memento mori and vanitas motifs were propagated accordingly. The collective of humanity appeared to have been rather unhappy.
Viewed through this lens, the feminine world appears to be the happier one. In this light, we can consider ourselves fortunate to live in a world that is transitioning towards femininity.