Reality is steadily descending on my life and my need to transition from law to a creative life and the obvious problems inherent with this need. I feel that my biggest difficulty, however, is a baseline of depression that I’ve had perhaps all my life. Not for no reason, but still – it’s certainly an unfortuitous fact.

I don’t think that there can be any doubt that my nuclear family dysfunction caused it, to some degree. But I also think my own personality has played a part – I’ve wanted more from my interactions with people, all of my life, than they have borne forth – maybe that is a problem with me, somehow. Yet, I’ve given a lot, I believe, and along the lines of what I wanted returned and it seems the consensus is simply against what I believe in, and has grown ever more so. Although, I also think this fact is a contributing factor to the collective doom we know is out there on the horizon of our existence.

We have failed in our evolution with regard to our interpersonal priorities, in my opinion. We actually don’t put any real premium or place any real attention on these realms – is this an observation that belongs under discussions of the effects of a running patriarchy? Perhaps – I would include it there, although not exclusively, but certainly women have been much more the keepers of the interpersonal reality we all share in, than men.

And, by observing that, I’m not bashing men – I’m looking at it through a big picture lens and simply making an observation. What I am reflecting upon in my own experience has a larger context and it seems part of the oppression or general disregard of the ‘feminine’ which is part of us all, male or female in a yin-yang sense and in a planetary sense, to be sure.

I believe men suffer for the lack of value of the feminine in our society and culture as much and maybe even sometimes more than women do. I also think it’s time to re-examine the rhetoric on this topic because what may once have been true strikes me as a lot of claptrap from my more mature, if only by virtue of years alive on this planet, vantage point.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about the need for discourse between us that goes to the status of us all as individuals as opposed to more strictly competitors in some world ‘out there’ which commands our all consuming attention. We’ve accepted this notion far too much, by my estimation. We’ve abandoned ourselves and each other for what’s ‘out there’ and where we belong in that space as opposed to whom we are unto one another in a familial or communal sense.

I believe this tendency which has been increasing steadily in my lifetime is a significant contributing factor to the noted increase in mental illness at large and the increasingly horrific crimes, most notably the school shootings and other public shootings. These shootings speak of the desperation of individuals to be recognized and heard in their most basic of human needs. And, in their ultimate connectivity to us all, such that we must know they cannot be ignored, not just for themselves but for the greater good of us all. They go out screaming this message, in my view, willing to die, and even murder their own souls, so that it might be heard.

Kumbaya? You betcha. In my view, the moment most of us began to smugly mock that old song was the day some part of our collective music died. And, whatever you may think of that particular song, the loss of the sentiment expressed by it is not a ‘good thing’. We are all connected, like it or not, it’s not something we can just ‘deselect’, any more than basic morality – at least not if we want to survive, we can’t.

Sure those crazy gunmen and women may only get some small number of us, but if we are going to accept that our society produces such ills, why don’t we accept terrorism as well? Why do we fight terrorism and not our own illnesses? Why do we accept the cause of our collective illness while demonizing those wrought upon us from out other cultures and places on our globe?

Can we honestly be saying ‘our mass murderers are better than your mass murderers?’ How insane is that? And, yes, I think the kyboshing of kumbaya is an outcropping of our love affair with capitalism, but it’s gone too far. Anyone who can’t see that just isn’t looking at all of the evidence that even the main stream media can’t help but pump out daily for all of us to review.

Just after writing the above, I watched a YouTube video that promotes belief that these shooters are being programmed by ‘them’ just as the weather is being programmed by ‘them’. These are the sorts of conspiracy theories I do not entertain. They never answer the question of why ‘they’ would want to cause such events. Indeed, many who promote these theories admit they can’t imagine as to why and suggest that question is irrelevant. Wha?

While I don’t know all there is to know about how ‘they’ might be responsible for these things, I don’t believe ‘they’ have managed to create a consensus among scientists that suggests an opposite cause as to the weather events nor do I believe it isn’t possible that the shooters are plain old crazy and therefore must be under the control of ‘them’. I’d suggest that people who promulgate these sorts of conspiracy theories don’t want to own up to their own part in our collective troubles and are looking to ‘Daddy’ to bear the blame.