It’s a new year. A new day. And on this new day, perhaps we, as a collective, are ready to move into a new story. Thank you, World, for being ready to read this.
Things are really fucked up: Dakota pipelines. Plastic pollution. “Honor” killings. Police brutality. The horrors of factory farming. Legal marital rape. Harvey Weinstein(s.) Mass extinction. Radioactive waste. Women lashed for driving. Children walking 5 miles a day to get water. Wars. Deforestation. Ivory trade resulting in elephants heading towards extinction. Climate change. Destruction. Just…. Destruction. And cruelty. Every direction. How did we get here? It’s uncomfortable to look at. It’s gonna be awkward, and that’s okay. We can do it. We need to actually look in order to get out.
All of these things are the same issue, really. Whatever it is in our sensibilities that allows oil to be drilled, despite the ruin to the Earth, is the same damaged part of us that allows women to be beaten. I’m not the first person to say that. There are whole philosophical movements called EcoFeminism exploring these ideas. Our species does not seem to exhibit any respect for life – no matter how life shows up. We will kill things for sport, for profit, because they are tasty, or scary, hell, we’ll kill something for existing in location that we didn’t approve of, or find convenient. The Earth gave us all our lives. Now we are on the top of the food chain on that Earth. Subjugating the Earth, bending it to do our will for our benefit, is analogous to subjugating Women. Our species doesn’t respect life. Hence our species doesn’t respect or honor the life givers. We don’t honor the sacred feminine.
Perhaps, however, this death roll of chaos that we are in, is actually the result of a wound so deep on the collective masculine consciousness that the pain has run wild into destruction as the masculine continues to cry out in his suffering. And perhaps this wound was born of the ultimate sacrifice of care and of love.
From the dawn of our species, and maybe even before that as Homo erectus was learning to tame fire, there was likely a division of survival tasks due to pregnancy. If I’m 7 months pregnant, I probably can not join you for the hunt. I can imagine that early men were, for quite functional reasons, hunting often without their female companions. And so what does that mean? That means that men were looking into the eyes of the creatures whose lives they stole. In one movement, men simultaneously had to crush some of their own empathy while accessing some of their own power. And no matter how badly that hurt them, what were they to do? Let their children, or women carrying their children go hungry? No. Out of love, they probably had to quietly and soberly tolerate the strain. The beginning of the “man up” narrative. For hundreds of thousands of years this has gone on. Men constantly turning away from their empathy while simultaneously amping up their personal power. Only they haven’t done it because they are assholes or emotionally ill equipped. They have done it for survival, care and love; and as a grand sacrifice for our whole species.
One can see how the evolutionary sacrifice of that is playing out now. You can watch modern men leaning on their power, and women leaning into their empathy. Maybe that is exactly what we’ve been watching in the whole “metoo” movement. Currently, however, women are gaining access to their own power; so they have both power and empathy. While many men have not yet learned to access their empathy. As a result women have more tools available to them then men. That probably feels unbalanced and scary to men.
Carrying the emotional burden and scar of taking life, millenia after millenia, has created a wound so deep in the masculine half of the collective consciousness, that they are crying out in pain. I think their pain has gone wild. I think every time they chose destruction over the planet’s health, or respecting life, or caring for a woman, a child, an animal, it is a backlash of a suffering that they can no longer endure.
So I want to say this, on behalf of the whole world:
Dear Men, Thank you. You got us to the top of the food chain. Your sacrifice and your burden have allowed our species to do remarkable, unimaginable things. We are so grateful. Thank you for being strong enough to do horrible acts out of love. We can’t imagine the suffering you have often stoically endured, or the generational consciousness wound you have carried all this time. The apex our species stands at now, is a testament to your bravery, inalienable strength, and commitment. You did it. You can rest now. Come into our arms. Let us offer you a safe place to lay down your swords and your sorrow. Let us hold you and your pain. We will heal together. It’s okay. You can cry. You did it. We’re here. And now you can rest.
Rexxisms 
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