The Mad Masculine, Part Two

February 17th, 2010 by Robert McDowell

I was thinking about responses to my last blog entry, The Mad Masculine, when I read the breaking (and heartbreaking) news of Jennifer Daugherty’s death by torture in Pennsylvania. “The 30-year-old had the mental abilities of an adolescent,” I read, but her parents were happy for her that she was making new friends. We don’t know all the details yet, but apparently six of these “friends”—three men and three women—conspired to torture and murder her.
Shortly after I learned of this mind-bludgeoning news, I read a report about thousands of Iraqi women disfigured, tortured, and murdered for violating Islamic laws.

Again, I ask, Who are we?

Who can justify turning God into a killer? As these horrible incidents seem to be increasing worldwide, is there no hope but a casting call for a squadron of real-life Dirty Harrys? I think of so many good people with so many good words who are feeling impotent and depressed. They’re asking, like me, are we getting better or are we disintegrating? How many more will be murdered before the killing stops? Are we truly evolving or are we on a fast track to extinction?

I have not been in the lightest of moods. And then, on Thursday night, I listened to my friend, mentor, and world beacon, Jean Houston, who was interviewed on Integral Enlightenment’s “The Impulse To Evolve: The Birth of Evolutionary Spirituality.” (Check out Integral Enlightenment’s website if you don’t know it).

In just an hour, as she has so many times before, Jean brought me back from the precipice. Of course, she said, we’re living in an apocalyptic culture. We’ve assaulted and offended nature. Racism persists. Epidemics have swept the planet. Religious battles erupt everywhere.

And yet, there are also positive developments. We’re living through the rise of effective partnerships between women and men. “Then world’s mind is taking a walk with itself,” Jean said. People are getting together who were never together before, We’re moving in the direction of a planetary civilization and being rescaled to planetary proportions.

Near the end of hr interview, Jean said this: “It’s not the end of the world. We’re in the birth canal.”

That’s how you hold on, by remembering that simple fact whenever you feel that your good words or deeds don’t amount to enough. You must believe, as I must also, that they do. They do.

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