If the idea that men are obsolete and will soon be voted off the planet seems curious to you then think back to the last time you had sex. You know, the sweaty wrestling, groaning, grappling and huffing and thrusting on the bed or over the edge of a couch until a swollen organ did its thing with a shudder of violence, and then both parties relaxed (at least, if you had a man involved). The continued survival of the human species has hinged on that little squirt of semen for tens of thousands of years, and in exchange we have had to put up with half our race filled with testosterone, anger and hostility. Men in their daily behavior mirror what Freud called the selfish Id of our subconscious, the dark drive that “has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of instinctual needs.” The Id is useful for hunting food, water and shelter, but those once-scarce goods are now plentiful. Thus men are no longer needed and will soon be gone.

Does this sound unfair?

Let’s look at the problem. Conjure in your mind the image of a “man’s man,” the guy who seems most guy-like. He’s likely handsome but a scoundrel, charismatic but with questionable ethics, married to a beautiful wife but untrustworthy with women half his age in a bar. Real men lead by breaking rules, grab resources from others, and procreate by building empires with lots of followers, an atavistic holdover from cave days when an alpha male’s main goal was to hunt for resources and impregnate as many females as possible.

It is no mistake that men have started all wars, that 1 in 18 men in the United States are in prison or being monitored, or that swords and bullets and nuclear missiles look like erect penises. Everything that makes us men is not desirable in a pet.

So let’s consider why men will be voted off Planet Earth. Males, you see, have been making progress, but — and we’re being honest here, so let’s offend everyone — by doing so are simply migrating along a feminized path to unmanliness. In Western culture, arguably the most advanced of our race’s civilizations, men now shave their beards to keep skin smooth like a woman’s; men no longer carry weapons such as swords or canes or pistols by their sides; men are no longer allowed to fight by law; and the millennium-old habit of ruling society with women as second-string tokens, really objects to be owned, has been tossed aside.

If maleness is hairy aggression, men are becoming women. The most popular men in modern Western culture are young adults with skin as fair as women’s, sharp cheekbones, glossy hair. Women at the same time have migrated toward a slightly mannish persona, speaking out more aggressively, often wearing pants and not dresses, and leading organizations such as businesses, governments and soccer clubs. This is no judgment; rather, simple observation that society has evolved, that the conditions that made maleness a unique separate role no longer exist. Male speed and strength, which outrank that of women simply because of the testosterone feeding our muscles, have been replaced by automobiles and factories and assembly lines and lawnmowers. The male contribution of fighting off intruders and hunting for food has faded as agrarian advances keep grocery stores filled and police sweep bums off your street.

While the pros of testosterone fade, the cons of male aggression continue to screw up the planet.

This last statement seems harsh, but it is a mathematical certainty that we are approaching the limit of what the Earth’s resources can bear. The human population was 2 billion in 1927, 6 billion in 1999, and should top 8 billion in 2025. Society has put the brakes on fertility rates, sensing collectively perhaps that the planet can’t sustain more people, and sociologists predict that the world’s population will plateau before the end of the century thanks to nations such as Hong Kong, Russia and Canada slowing births down to 1 or 1.5 per woman. Yet even then, we will face hunger pains. Oil, the primary energy source for our transportation, food and communications, is expected to plateau as well as the discovery of new fossil fuels begins to tap out the leftover leaves and dinosaurs buried under ground. (See: BP oil wells now perched dangerously in deep ocean waters.) We have no easy replacement for that dark liquid yet; there are no tiny fuel cells ready to power your cars, and there is not enough wood or cloth in the world to replicate the plastics in most of the goods that now fill your home. You read these words on a computer because juice is flowing through a cord in your wall from coal burned in a plant far away, dug from under the ground. Word up: There isn’t an infinite supply of ground left.

Resources are fading because in our aggressive grab for stuff we have not thought two steps ahead. Men have led this push. Our male instinct shouts “More!” Yet as resources run out, humans will need to focus on less. We will learn to share, not take. Instead of investing in markets that always go up, we will need to rebuild commerce to sustain. Women excel in that strategy, and men do not.

Of course, men cannot be banished unless there is both a logic and a way to do so. U.S. demographer Ansley Coale suggested that three conditions are required for any population control: agreement that some reproductive choice is OK, a perception that choice gives you an advantage, and knowledge of how to implement such control. The rise of birth control in the 1960s was the result of those conditions, and helped the U.S. achieve the perfect balance of reproduction rates with 2.05 babies born to every female adult.

So when the world really must stop fighting and begin sharing, which type of reproductive choice will help the species best? Seriously, imagine the world in 2080 once today’s Fox News pundits are dead, if global warming is real, if temperatures create looming disasters of flooded cities, if water and food begin to run out. Which gender’s psychology will stop wars long enough to save us?

Already today 884 million people don’t have access to safe drinking water. It is not the aggressive impulse to conquer ground rich in oil that will solve the problem; it will be listening, learning, and collecting knowledge of ways to ration what’s left. If you had to bet on which sex will fix this, you’d double down on women.

Coale’s third requirement for reproductive control was “knowledge,” and that knowledge is changing fast. The thrust of sperm into egg is no longer required for us to reproduce; cloning is here. Cloning is not science fiction; consider that the U.S. House of Representatives has brought debate on human cloning to the floor on four separate occasions, or that the Catholic Church has condemned it, and you’ll see we’re almost ready to make a copy of you.

And forget the moral choice. If cloning right or wrong? Doesn’t matter, the genie is unboxed. The early protests that human cloning is evil will fade as the advantages become clear, not least of which is the concept that your child could look exactly like you. Egos will drive adoption, because who doesn’t want to live forever? Human cloning will come, just as we learned to accept the advances in knowledge that the Earth revolves around the sun, that rape and weapons are not suited for society, that sperm can be stopped from impregnating an egg every time you have sex.

Human cloning will make it easy to reproduce any of us. But as with all technology, people will make choices — who is best worth duplicating for the future? Women.

Men are poor candidates because in times of stress we leap to war, and the world is entering extreme stress where solutions must be developed to save our species. You may argue there’s a chance global warming or peak oil aren’t real threats, but if a plane had a 10% chance of crashing, would you climb aboard? We’re all riding Mother Earth, and the odds look grim. If male instincts are no longer valuable in a world where resources must not simply be grabbed, and if humans learn to make copies of ourselves, then which gender of children do you think will be perceived as having the most value?

Which clone do you think will win in the end?

Today’s young Hollywood actors could be considered the aspiration of our society. The women speak smartly and take leadership roles. The men are so clean-shaven, they look like young women with no breasts. Our human race really has two species within it, males and females, and those subgroups are converging. They’re leaning toward estrogen. Go get your razor, boys. We’re almost there.

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Ben Kunz is director of strategic planning at Mediassociates, an advertising media planning firm. He has designed marketing campaigns for 3Com, the Centers for Disease Control, Cessna Aircraft, Gaylord Hotels, Navy Federal Credit Union, North American Savings Bank, PURE High Net Worth Insurance, Segway, SolarCity, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the United States Postal Service. Ben is also a columnist for BusinessWeek, where he covers the intersection of advertising and technology. You can read his mind at www.thoughtgadgets.com or on Twitter @benkunz.

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