One of the deepest roots of toxic masculinity is unreleased pain. Men are cut off from feeling – imprisoned in their bodies and minds, unable to naturally express sorrow and despair.

The endless battle between a man and the pain that lives inside him, comes from a desperate and learned need to control and dominate any natural upwelling of emotion. We even call it ‘fighting back tears’. That fight takes a lot of energy and when men feel overwhelmed or as if they are ‘losing it’ (‘it’ being the fight), then anger and aggression can very often be the default strategy. It’s like an all-consuming need to control and dominate, to avoid being exposed and seen in their sorrow, in their weakness.

This can escalate to the point where men are so disconnected from the reality of what they’re actually feeling, that all that’s left is anger and aggression. We can see how that is manifesting both in the individual and in the global collective.

To manage that rage, that exhausting frustration, men often begin to self-medicate. Alcohol or drugs, porn or sex, over-eating, over-working, or seeking drama. Anything to avoid that darkness. These desperate and destructive strategies lead to abuse, violence, and eventually the destruction of their lives and of those around them. For some, the desire to escape becomes greater than the instinct to survive, and they just end it.

Life simply becomes impossible.

When a man can re-learn the art of expressing and releasing pain through tears, deep, aching tears, he begins a new journey. One towards emotional maturity, inner sensitivity, and true masculine power. The kind of power that comes from knowing that the more courage we can take to express our inner world, the stronger and more resilient we become. That need to feel in constant control of our behaviour falls away. We create a new relationship with the pain inside. We befriend it. We come back to ourselves.

Some men naturally mellow with age as the energy to control is lost and the tears and the truth begin to emerge. But some have hardened to such an extent that the shell or the ‘bubble’ in which they live never breaks, and they die angry, defiant, and in discontent. A tragedy that begins in childhood is emotionally crippling men for life.

Learning to cry, and surrendering to tears can quite literally be a life-saver.

This beautiful planet is changing. The climate is changing. What does the future hold for humanity?

We live in hope.

We live in despair.

But not for Earth. No. It is for ourselves that we fear.

Evolution is as brutal as it is elegant.

The atmosphere, oceans, and soil are all part of a perfect self-regulating and self-correcting system. Yet we humans behave as if this process has somehow now got it ‘right’. Because we are here, because we are self-aware. We want to preserve it, just the way it is, for our children and our grandchildren and future generations. “That’s quite enough evolution thank you, you can stop now.”

How quaint. How endearing. How arrogant. The climate is warming. It does that sometimes. Sometimes it cools too. Mother Earth moves through the epochs of her own seasons as if it were a chilly morning breeze before a hot sunny afternoon. This exquisite and astounding biosphere, floating in the vast airless void of unimaginable space has no interest or preference for what creatures may dwell upon her skin. Just as we have little concept of the myriad tiny creatures and organisms that dwell upon, if not constitute, most of what we call our bodies.

To Mother Earth, we are little more than a yeast infection – a bacterial mass, that is growing to its boundaries and voraciously eating its way through the resources it finds, leaving the most imperceptible of scars upon her. We are nothing that she cannot handle. She has faced far worse and will again. We will blindly devour and consume all we can until either nothing is left that is edible, or simply destroy ourselves in an assortment of ways. In that, we are spoilt for choice.

Humanity’s activity since the industrial revolution has begun to alter the climate, and the ratio of gases in our atmosphere is shifting. Little doubt about that remains. Now, we clever little fellows want to ‘fix it’. We want to ‘repair’ all the damage we’ve done. Well at least some of us do. How quaint. How endearing. How adorable.

The Mother has a message for us. She wants us to understand a few things.

Firstly, we are not qualified to do her repairs for her. We are not part of the solution. That attitude of exceptionalism that has us believe we are that significant, is what got us to where we are today.

Secondly, She has no need to be ‘healed’. For her, there is no predisposition to preserve what exists on the land, in the air or water. We are made from her and destroyed by her. As we breathe, we join the atmosphere in perfect harmony with the forests and ocean micro-organisms. Our bodies eventually create the dust that covers her. Preservation is not her way. Creation and destruction are her ways.

Thirdly, in her time frame, in geological time, we are a fleeting moment, a passing shower at most. Had the asteroid that created the last mass extinction not hit her, the small primordial mammals would never have developed into the extraordinarily diverse and complex ecosystem we see today. To her, we are simply the next asteroid. The sixth mass extinction. We too will eventually perish and be replaced by something more complex, more evolved, more adapted. That is the way this works and we don’t get to stop that process just because we prefer it the way it is. We don’t get to decide when the Polar bears and the Brazilian tree frog come into existence, nor when they leave. That is a natural law, subject to the never-ending and merciless march of Evolution; survival of the most adaptable.

Humans are very adaptable, and that’s going to become our most precious quality if we are to see the next millennium. But let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop playing games. Let’s have the humility to accept that no matter what our glorious leaders promise or aspire to, as Greta Thunberg says, “Change is coming whether we like it or not.”

Before this century is out, our current civilisation will most likely be unrecognisable. Our once great cities, long since inundated and abandoned. Nation-states and ideologies drowned beneath the reality of pure simple survival. Is that a bad thing? Do we not live within the immutable laws of nature? Creation requires destruction. Resurrection requires death. Dinosaurs perished allowing the mammals to grow and diversify. Some of those mammals evolved into humans, and eventually, something else will happen once we have had our time.

We demand that our species be free to endlessly consume, grow, and reproduce, feeding off the resources of a finite planet. We are hastening our demise in search of some strange, imagined idea called economic growth. We call it sustainable development. Lovelock called that an oxymoron. He was right of course, nothing short of a sustained retreat will have any effect on slowing our extinction.

Then there are those who see what is happening and have decided to make a stand, defiantly demanding that the giant corporations that run our governments and therefore our civilisation, heed the warning and finally see the reality of the devastation they are bringing upon the Earth.

It is screaming colours at the blind. Chanting slogans to the deaf.

Their hunger for power, for meaningless, imagined power, through the insatiable desire for money and material wealth, has consumed us all in their insane and unstoppable trundle toward oblivion. These lost individuals that cling to control and frenzied, endless growth will never, ever, ever, stop raping our Mother of their own accord. Never. And most of the rest of us cannot see beyond our own favourite things, our desires to keep it all the same, to ‘preserve’ our way of life. All the while, killing each other over our imagined ideas of nations, races, and states, or the different names of our imagined gods.

Her final message to all that see this insanity, to those that hope to be part of the solution is this. Don’t waste any more time or energy trying to win the argument. Don’t waste another moment in the battle for climate justice. You have failed and you will continue to fail because the sociopaths that run our civilisation cannot and will not relent. They will violently suppress any action against them. That is all you face in confronting them. They are lost, never to return. Mother Earth will deal with them and nothing created by man can match her power. She has already begun. It looks like disaster and catastrophe, and to our material fixations and attachments, it is. Wildfires, floods, storms, volcanos, quakes, pestilence, and disease, is the cleansing. It is the self-regulating system in action and nothing we can do will stop it. Whatever it takes to bring this infestation under control, like a fever, her immune system has kicked in. We will reach +1.5 degrees and then +2 degrees. Maybe more, judging by the impotent and laughable pledges of our disingenuous so-called leaders. That scenario is most likely now ‘baked in’ to use a perfect turn of phrase.

The structures, both physical and imagined, that have been built all around us are now beginning to crumble. This is the reality. See it. Understand it. Acknowledge the necessity for agony and blood at every rebirth. You have incarnated to be a witness to this moment. To help smooth the transition, to be a part of the ongoing transformation of Mother Earth. As a global awakening begins, and alliances form, we can learn from the wisdom of the ancients and those who still live in tune with the Mother. The indigenous tribes and elders from around the planet, council us to become flexible, adaptable, fluid, and relenting. To let go of the structures that we think we need around us. This ability to accept change is what will best protect us and those we love. The labour has begun and before the new child is born, she will have to come through a fire. This diseased society cannot be healed. it has to die. That is also the cycle of empires – of civilizations. Rising and falling. Let us be humble. Let us love and honour what we have created so far, and grieve for what we will lose. It is as it should be.

All around the world, there is a growing awareness of this transition. We can start now, to come together in preparedness for the turmoil that lies ahead. Sharing our knowledge, our talents, and our resources across a global network of communities. There is no battle to be won. Mother Earth has that in hand. Instead, we can work together to ease the passage for ourselves, and for each other. To be there on the other side when that time comes. We will have the technology. We already do, to produce and create all we need to live in alignment, once the old edifices of the past have crumbled.

That is our community. That is The META.

I leave you with the ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.”