"Women tend to be intuitive global thinkers. They consider multiple sources of information within a process that can be described as simultaneous, global in perspective and will view elements in the task in terms of their interconnectedness. Women come to understand and consider problems all at once. They take a broad or "collective" perspective, and they view elements in a task as interconnected and interdependent. Women are prone to become overwhelmed with complexities that "exist", or may exist, and may have difficulty separating their personal experience from problems.
Men tend to focus on one problem at a time or a limited number of problems at a time. They have an enhanced ability to separate themselves from problems and minimize the complexity that may exist. Men come to understand and consider problems one piece at a time. They take a linear or sequential perspective, and view elements in a task as less interconnected and more independent. Men are prone to minimize and fail to appreciate subtleties that can be crucial to successful solutions. A male may work through a problem repeatedly, talking about the same thing over and over, rather than trying to address the the problem all at once."
Michael G. Conner, Psy.D,
Understanding The Differences Between Men and Women
If asked who did the first cloudbusting, almost everyone at all familiar with orgonomy will answer, "Wilhelm Reich". And they would be wrong. Reich INVENTED the cloudbuster, but he was not the first person to do cloudbusting. That honor belongs to his daughter, Dr. Eva Reich, who told me of standing knee-deep in the pond at Orgonon with a pipe in each hand, while her father stood on the bank telling her which way to point them.
Most of the people who have done cloudbusting have screwed up and done more harm than good. I have carefully documented numerous case histories of the environmental damage done by irresponsible cloudbusting. And until it was brought to my attention recently by a woman who had read my blog, it has escaped my attention entirely that in nearly every case, the person who had screwed up was a man.
Following Eva Reich, many other women have done cloudbusting either on their own or helping a man with a project. Mary Lee Poe, Shafia Lau, Linda Giroux, Marissa Del Monaco, Caroline Cooper, Therrie Cook, Kathy Schliening, and many others come to mind. Yet, as far as I know, none of them has made the stupid mistakes that have been made by men in the field. There has been only one case of a weather-related disaster caused by a female operator that I know of, and in that instance, she was acting under the direction of a man who was in charge of the project.
My correspondent suggested that a woman's menstrual cycle predisposes her to accept natural rythyms and cycles, instead of trying to charge into a situation and force nature to give in, as a man tends to do. That may be. But it is also possible that women are less likely to seek power and dominance over nature, and better able to relate to healing a sick and damaged atmosphere instead of trying to control it.
Also, a search on the internet for scientific findings on psychological differences between men and women finds that women tend more to wholistic thinking than men do, and that is the kind of thinking that is needed for doing cloudbusting safely. Wholistic thinking, in fact, is exactly the kind of thinking needed in the study of ecology in general, not just in cloudbusting.
Whatever the reason, and there could be several factors involved, the data available to date indicates that women make better cloudbuster operators than men do.
The Freudian symbolism of the cloudbuster is often remarked upon, but there is another, deepèr symbolism that so far as I recall, has not ever been mentioned in print: The cloudbuster is a passive device. It does not project energy. It acts as a conduit and energy is drawn through it into water, into which it is grounded. Nothing is put into the atmosphere by a cloudbuster. But nearly every man, on first hearing a description of a cloudbuster, asks, "What comes out of the pipes?" or "What do they shoot out?"
I have heard this sort of question hundreds of times, but always from a man, never from a woman. Men seem to automatically make the assumption that the cloudbuster pipes "shoot out" something, and are usually surprised and doubtfull when informed otherwise, while women seem to grasp the concept of "drawing" or "attracting" energy without difficulty. Indeed, some men, usually the most "macho" types, refuse to accept it even when told and instead develop their own theories that claim a cloudbuster "shoots out" energy instead of drawing it, a claim that is easily disproven by observation and experiment and rests on obvious Freudian symbolism instead of rational thinking based on factual observation..
Freud famously said, "Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar". Well, a cloudbuster is a functioning device, and the functioning of it depends on the configuration it has. It has nothing to do with any symbolism. It is not a part of the human body. A cloudbuster is only a cloudbuster. And those who cannot understand that are poorly qualified to operate one.
So, sorry, boys, the girls have an advantage here. You just don't measure up.
