I find it fascinating that whenever we speak of atrocities large and small, historic or present day, we always speak in generalized terms. Using words and phrases that cast the whole of societies and nations as participants in those horrors.

I’m not sure if this is lost on historians or the public at large, but our problems are not a whole of anything. Society is plagued by one incontrovertible truth. That no matter the tense, the actual participants are nearly exclusively men. And specifically white men.

All of the worlds horrors are traced back to the hands and dare I say the hearts of mankind.

Which begs the question; are men flawed within their DNA, or is it more insidious? Could we all be party to their predispositions?

Could we as humankind be responsible for mankind’s urge to control, possess, dominate, maim, kill, and otherwise overpower, (not just one another) but all others in their path? In other words, are we implicit in mankind’s seemingly inherent anger and violence?

I’ll answer for myself, by saying with every fiber of my being that indeed we are.

I have the unique perspective as the one who got away. The one who after 44 years escaped the madness and droning noise to find that the anger and vitriol was never mine. It was given to me. Forced upon me because of the body I was born within. I now have the benefit of hindsight. And now know that it wasn’t my DNA that was flawed; it was my socializing.

A message to humankind, (and this includes enlightened men) we need to do better. Our little boys need us to do better by them. Make no mistake, we’re the keepers of the patriarchy. We all create it. We all feed it. And the only we can defeat it is to learn to love and raise our little boys as unconditionally as we do our little girls.

Either humankind must change, or we’ll never escape the chaos and hell on earth we continue to endure at the hands of mankind.