Home - The Way We Are: Time for Men to Be Men

And let me begin with an apology to women. :-) I am a man; I do not know enough about what women need to do and be to right this world. I do know that we - men and women - have devoted much effort to perverting and burying the feminine aspects of ourselves and our societies, and this is a large part of the reason our world is in such trouble now. We are sadly out-of-balance, both in our excessive focus on our material side and in our drive to stamp out the feminine in favour of the masculine in our world.

Stand Up and Be a Man

Your manhood is not determined by the size of your car, your house, your wallet, your muscles, or your belly. It is not related to the attractiveness or youth of your woman, or the number of children you have. How forcefully you express your opinions is irrelevant. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with how many people you control or have killed. The amount of power you wield has nothing to do with how much of a man you are.

Unless...that power is through moral authority. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., were examples of mature men. So was Winston Churchill when he led the British people through some horribly dark times. So is Al Gore, now, for trying to wake us from our trance, regardless of the abuse thrown his way. These men were and are real leaders; they stood for truth and justice and light, for liberation from oppressive forces.

Doing the right thing is not easy; nor is being a man. Being a man is also not something you achieve; it is something you strive for every day. You might as well enjoy trying to be a man, because it is a journey, not a destination.

Stand Up and Be Counted

Civilization will be destroyed unless you stand up - now - and do something. Your children will live a horribly diminished life, if they live very long at all, unless you stand up and do something. Now. Your children will not have children, and so you will not have grandchildren. You may not even have the luxury of living to a ripe old age unless you do something, and do it now.

If you think I exaggerate, kindly take the time to research the effects of climate change. There isn't time to go into it here, but I researched it extensively and can sum it up as follows:

• Global warming is real and humans are causing it
• We have less than ten years to make significant changes in how we live or we will pass a tipping poing
• Once past that tipping point, there is no return
• Climate change will be catastrophic; nobody will be spared the effects, not rich nor poor, no matter where you live

All of the above is based upon the best scientific work by the top climate and other scientists. None of it comes from opinion writers or politicians.

Why will climate change be so deadly?

• Some areas will warm more than others, allowing crop and human diseases to spread
• Organisms with short lifecycles will adapt more quickly - the bugs and fungi will be at the top of the "food chain"
• The 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' will ride free: Pestilence, Plaque, Famine, and War
• Climate change is rapid - with a decade or few, the world could be radically different; we won't have time to adapt, even if we could

Again, if you don't believe this, do your own research. What do you think will happen if hundreds of millions of people are forced to relocate due to rising oceans - or drought, as happened in Darfur? What do you think will happen if the coral dies off, if ocean fisheries collapse, if dustbowls return, if pests spread?

Be the Light

To be a man is to seek the truth, then to live that truth. There are other aspects to being a man, but this part - this courage - is something we have submerged in our comfortable lives, as we have turned over control to those lacking wisdom, integrity, and even the common sense to pay attention to the dangers confronting us.

Men used to be protectors of children, of women, and of the Earth herself. We must reclaim that authority, and we must do it now. Our democracy has been corrupted by large organizations, especially mega-corporations. The founders of our democracy had the courage to stand up to kings and queens who claimed to be descended from God and thus have a divine right to rule the rest of us - and to take from us as they chose. Our Fathers of Confederation had the courage and wisdom to protect democracy from powerful religions, whose rulers claimed to have exclusive access to the truth and the right to dictate right and wrong to the rest of us.

The Fathers of Confederation protected us from these two powerful forces, but they could not foresee the rise of equally powerful megacorporations. The reason we have not taken action on climate change is that leaders of major corporations have devoted their influence and large sums of money to obscuring the truth. Put plainly, they have funded bogus studies and paid professional liars to obfuscate, to confuse, to downplay - and they have worked out a too-cosy relationship with our politicians.

The scientific warnings began over thirty years ago. In the same way that the tobacco companies lied and stalled for as long as possible - and therefore killed millions more - so have other large companies deceived us about what is now a climate crisis. They told us that "What's good for General Motors is good for the country," and what an arrogant falsehood that has been exposed to be.

Be a Protector

As the Fathers of Confederation tried to create a democracy that would protect the people, and as our own forebears fought to keep freedom alive in two horrible wars, so now it is our turn to stand up and face down those whose foolish desire for power and control is robbing us of our democracy and literally destroying life on our planet.

We must eliminate corporate control of our government. Corporations and other organizations do not have God-given rights; people do. We must open our government and any other positions of power, so that abuse is prevented. And we must replace the fools and liars who have clawed their way to the top of our current system with wiser men and women.

If you wish to be a man, seek the truth. Have courage that you can make a change - and know that you must. To quote Winston Churchill, "It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required." And what is required is that we protect our democracy and our Earth - and that we do it now.