The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.
– Lois McMaster Bujold
This is the third part of my continuing series on “Silence”.
There has been an epidemic of younger, white, middle class men who have been dying at earlier ages than would be statistically forecast, for the past 20+years. There is a dearth of information on this issue, though there are many references to the Opioid Epidemic, painkiller addiction, and the progression to heroin addiction by those participants. This is only a small part of the real story, and I am going to try, in my own incomplete way, to write about the disease of Spirit that has targeted American Masculinity for quite some time, and the people who I have known who have been struck down by it. I have seen, and I believe at the deepest level of my own being, that disease in the mind of mankind is directly related to disease within the body of mankind.
I offer my apologies in advance to any widow or family member who reads this story, and might be offended by what appears to be judgmental or incomplete representation of the facts. I will leave it to the real ‘experts’ within our culture to drill down to the “real facts”. What I have observed is quite subjective, and the population that I have witnessed is fairly small, compared to the whole of the population that has been impacted by our cultural disease. My only intention here is to provide a very incomplete voice, for those who can no longer speak up for the ills of the society that created the conditions for their own early demise, be it through heart attacks, brain cancer or cancer in general, alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, murder, or “accidents”.
Poor self-esteem inculcated into boys from birth by our wayward fathers, religions, and cultures, ignoring our own feelings, not communicating honestly with others, excess competitiveness with others while engaging with greed and the “keeping up with the Jones’ “, proving self-worth in environments where self, and others’, worth is disrespected, trying to fit in where we really don’t belong, people pleasing, not speaking up for ourselves or for others that are oppressed for fear of being marginalized, over immersion in entertainment, excessive eating, not exercising, excessive drinking of alcohol, use of recreational drugs to the point of habituation (including marijuana), smoking, chewing tobacco, using sex as a way to manipulate others, workaholism, or a number of other phenomenon represent the factors that most men encounter or employ in our efforts to meet the needs for economic security, establish our place in society, and family fulfillment, including ones sexual gratification.
Jeff Tobin (55-suicide), Brad Gillespie (63-heart disease), Jim Graham (53-suicide through alcoholism), Larry Weaver (58-heart disease), Jim White (63-alcoholism/heart disease), Bill Jollo (62-heart disease), Dan Dietz (43-heart disease), Randy Olson (58-heart disease), Bob Reuter (61-brain cancer/Dearh with Dignity), Marty Crouch (70-Metastatic Melanoma/Death With Dignity), Mike Sutton (65-cancer), Victor Thomas (57-brain cancer), Chuck Mason (62-heart disease), Ken Runyan (45-abdominal aortic aneurysm), and an endless parade of other friends, and acquaintances, I have already witnessed meeting an early death. In many cases, their deaths were, literally, a divorce from their lives, as their lives were so unfulfilled and unhappy. This is not universally the case, especially for some of the younger men, yet, in most of the cases that I am familiar with, the men were not happy at the end, and death appeared to be a welcome release for them.
Some had lost their careers, and could not recover from that. Some had no meaning in their lives, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, and could not recover from that. Some were addicted to the idea that their only function was to provide for their wives or family, and, having achieved success or failure, they could not recover from that. Some were just waiting for a better day, and when it never appeared, they could not recover from that. Some were lonely and depressed, and they could not recover from that. Some had profound mental illness, and they could not recover from that.
What is the real back story to these men and their lives that may not have been told to their families, to their religions, to their culture, to their employer and co-workers, and to their Gods? Were any of our male victims of society able to listen to themselves, and identify their own unique pain and suffering, and bring it to the light of Love and Reason, to search for, and eventually find a newer path to healing and meaning? Or, did they blindly follow down the well-worn path of premature deterioration and death that unconscious humanity is doomed to trudge upon?
I took my father to the doctor this past January, and my number one concern, next to my dying father’s needs, was that my father was going to outlive me. Why would such a concern erupt within my own mind? The stress of having provided care for a moderately demented older “gentleman” (he was quite gentle the last several years of his life) did take quite the toll on me, even though it also provided great spiritual benefits to me, as I came to understand, AT THE DEEPEST LEVELS, how my relationship with my father had created much of the irregularities in my own vision of life, and love, especially in my earlier years.
My father represented, in a perfect way, how my life experience had become overshadowed by the needs and concerns of our culture, and its own unconscious needs to dominate, control, and oppress, especially those who did not conform to its twisted values. My father had great difficulty, in times of stress, in recognizing the intrinsic value of all life, including my “baby self”, and my essence as a young boy. My father showed to me what that dark, negative end point looks like from a lifetime lacking in true collaboration and emotional integrity while sharing life force with others. My father achieved his goals in life, yet at what cost did they come to him, and to the people that he influenced and controlled? And, what is the cost to a society that blindly plows forward while supporting ideals that do not conform to the development of its citizens’ highest nature, and truth?
One only needs to look around, and view the effects of Toxic Masculinity, and its ugly spawn, Toxic Religion, Toxic Politics, and Toxic Capitalism, to see that repression of the feminine, and the Divine, is built right into the very fabric of our cultural existence. Our POTU$ is the perfect representation for all of the ills of our culture, and to the extent that the men within our culture practice his unholy principles of engagement with the world, and the women, and men, within it, the men also share in his disease of mind, body, and spirit. What happens to a man defeated by the dark energy of unhealed masculinity? We don’t need to look too far to see the insanity around us, the mass murders, early deaths, suicides, drug addiction, alcoholism, abuse of woman, and children, extinction of species, destruction of our ecology, and see the relationships that now continue to a very bleak future, unless the men in this world awaken, and rebel against the prevailing dark attitudes of our dying culture.
Dead men tell no tales, but the near dead, and fully alive, MUST continue to tell their stories, with respect for themselves and others, until our civilization finally wakes up. To not express ourselves honestly and openly results in our own early demise, Spiritually as well as physically. My innate response would be to keep silent, as I have nothing of value to share with the world, and/or the world could give a shit about what I have to say anyway. Extrapolate that response to life, and we can perceive the isolating framework that imprisons much of the American male psyche.
I grieve with the rest of humanity for the early deaths of these often times brave, though many times, damaged souls, and for the loss of human potential to the rest of humanity. Please, America, listen to, and retell their stories, so that we can all heal, grow, and love together in a new, transformative environment that can celebrate wholeness, and our individual contributions to it, from both the male and female perspectives.
May all sentient beings be released from suffering.
May all spiritually and emotionally damaged men be released from the cultural Conspiracy Of Silence, which contributes to personal, and collective, suffering.
Please, save yourself, before it is too late.
