I hear the surviving victims of the most recent school massacre and pundits on both sides of the gun issue debating about what to do to make sure that no more of our children are slain senselessly or have their innocence stripped far too early from them. However, none of them, not one, seem to understand or have been too brainwashed by the existing system to see what the real source of these, and so many of our other self-inflicted tragedies are. We all have been part of a millenniums long tale written by fear, where only two things make right and represent real power, might and money. If you have the money, you have the power to buy the might of others to do your violent acts for you; young men and women being sent off to fight wars of profit for faceless corporations and the soulless men and women who run them, as an example. But if you don’t have money, we have still been programmed (despite the best wisdom of our religions that violent begets…) that aggression and force are the solutions to our problems and or our suffering. This is the cause at the epicenter of our epidemic of hate and rancor, this is the culture we bring our children up in. So why should it surprise anyone that young people coming of age in this insane world, turn to violence as the only means they feel they have to address the agony ravaging their hearts and minds. And what concerns me most is that unless we now allow LOVE to be the author the next chapter in the opus of humanity, what will arise from this latest manifestation of our collective insanity, is what happened following 9/11. And that was, rather than a coming together, a rising up in the light, we fall even further into the madness of fear’s shadow, giving up even more of the rights and ideals that our founding fathers (flawed though they were) laid down as blueprint of a better path for the species human. And what will come next, is not a kinder, gentler, more compassionate and empathetic tomorrow, but instead a police state that will be the final marker of not only the end for more of our children, but the extinction of us all. Unless the true cause of mankind’s illness, fear, is recognized and accepted there is very little hope of LOVE’S healing occurring. just LOVE…