What will it take? — another Hurricane Harvey in Houston? Another Charlottesville? Health-Care log-jams? more climate-change denial? crippling cyber-attacks? food & water insecurity? the reality of our world busily disuniting itself? Will we ever have the sense to apply what we know about the complex human brain—and human-nature—at the root of all this? Particularly the dubious effects when the “extreme male brain” is easily dominant over the “pink collar” empathy factor. Neuroscience after all, can help cast light on what’s so off-kilter that’s going on with us today, and why. And….to figure out what happened to ethics and principles in Washington. Where are they?

A crucial —but hardly surprising — clue is flagged in this article from the New York Times in March this year by Thomas Edsell, titled, The Increasing Significance of the Decline of Men. He writes: “At one end of the scale, men continue to dominate. In 2016, 95.8 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs were male and so were 348 of the Forbes 400. Of the 260 people on the Forbes list described as “self-made,” 250 were men. Wealth—and the ability to generate more wealth—must still be considered a reliable proxy for power.”

What he failed to mention is the pivotal factor that it’s men who make up 81% of our representatives in Washington. Since the New Deal’s examples of more principled, though patriarchal, power, and what’s been tagged as the “legalized bribery” of today’s masculinized politics, it somehow smoothly and skillfully perpetuates itself in and around us. Fordham Law School Professor Zephyr Teachout’s 2014 book, Corruption in America, traces this back to the beginning with Ben Franklin and his cohorts. Sadly, the lack of moral ground in Washington and Wall Street today is nothing new. Among other little details, our life source —this forsaken planet, and we the people on it—continue to pay the price. To say nothing of what we are leaving for future generations. How can we? Really?

When the irresistible lure of big-money, big-oil, and big-pharma drives the good-old-boy motivations of our decision makers— more than ever it is ours to stand for open honest democracy and equality. Something for all women—and men—to be aware of now is the hard-data that measurably affirms the ‘soft-values’ of empathy, more biochemically embodied in—but not exclusive to—women. Alas, would that these six following pointers could be swiftly integrated into the governing of this nation:

• In The Divided Brain, Iain McGilchrist flags our brain’s left-hemisphere’s proclivities as brilliant, but blinkered, authoritarian, fixed, directed and dominant. The right-hemisphere by contrast, more contextual, big-picture, pliable, holistic and empathic.

• Simon Baron Cohen’s Essential Difference, tags the extreme male-brain’s (naturally having more testosterone than women) as inclined to incite more hostility and competitiveness due to less oxytocin, thus less empathy.

• Michael Gazzaniga in his Ethical Brain says “the left-hemisphere will stick to its rigid belief systems, no matter what”.

• Professor James Heckman’s Center for the Economics of Human Development tags the inherent costs of society’s “empathy deficit” valuing cognitive skills over empathy and mutual understanding.

• Sherry Turtle in Alone Together shows the impact of technology on reducing empathy levels thus fewer one-on-one connections and resulting lack of overall relatedness between us.

• Paul Zak’s The Moral Molecule perhaps most significant of all, flags the neuropeptide oxytocin, as most prevalent in women and which fosters feelings of reciprocity, trust, safety and forgiveness. It is empathy which stimulates ethics through which respect for differences emerges.

With this access to a few nuanced gender differences we didn’t know a few generations ago, perhaps we can help restore the moral ground, principles and ethics so sadly lacking in politics today. Perhaps—with women and men working separately, and together—we can better acknowledge value of ‘the other’—be it personal, political or planetary—or, inshallah, all of the above!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~