Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism

by Jack D. Forbes

The white settlers in North America frequently claimed that divine providence or destiny had given them the right to displace the “inferior” Americans with “superior” white European industry, ingenuity, know-how, and ideology. The Israeli occupation of Palestine (Kanaan or Filistina) has also been justified on the alleged ground of a divine grant in Mosaic times. The white New Englanders spoke of a New Canaan in North America, and thus we see how strikingly alike are the Anglo-American expansionist ideology and the Zionist perspective. And just as the First Americans were condemned as “savages” and “Redskins” for defending their home countries, so too the Arab Palestinians are categorized generally as “terrorists” for striking back at Israeli settlements.

“Arab removal” is strikingly similar to Indian Removal. The Arabs lose their wells, their olive groves, their fields, their homes, and their cemeteries. They are also threatened with the loss of sacred places (in Yerusalem for example). They are forced into concentration camps (refugee camps) where they attempt to build new homes, but ones that are often shelled and destroyed. Many Arabs have been repeatedly uprooted. Often their homes are destroyed because of a lack of “authorization.” They are forced to have passes in order to move about, just as Native Americans were.

When the German officer corps planned their stunning and unexpected sweeps through neutral Belgium, did they think about the ethics of a surprise attack through neutral territory? Did they think that civilian non-combatants might get in the way or be hurt? I should think not. The “Great Powers” have all provided a model that says, win with the minimum loss of civilian life possible, but if civilians have to die, so be it. But in practice, winning is everything. Morality is an option only when winning.

Thus, in an atmosphere of violence, the people themselves, or their legitimate leaders, may often lose control to the most violent and intransigent elements. Genuine liberation struggles, after all, should have an overwhelming love for human beings as the very heart and soul of their movement. Can one truly love one’s own people or group while hurting other people or groups?

If there ever was any legitimacy to the political movement of Christian Serbs and Christian Croats against each other and against Muslim, secular and Jewish Bosnians, that legitimacy was totally eroded by the apparent institutionalization of extermination, “ethnic cleansing,” rape, and seizure of homes and farms. Nazi-like behaviors, I would argue, are incompatible with any legitimate liberation struggle.

So hundreds of thousands have died, but little real change has been seen. Perhaps then it might be worthwhile for liberation and independence movements to reconsider their tactics! Perhaps the wisest choice is to force the oppressors to use violence (if they choose) rather than see the popular movements becoming violent. The lives of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., are viable examples.

Jack has a real hard on for Ghandhi

Whether it is a US President threatening terror with his nuclear weapons, first strikes, and “preventive war” doctrine, or the Reagan-Bush administration providing funds to Saddam Hussein when the latter was launching chemical weapons against the Kurds, or extremist Muslim fanatics calling for the killing of innocents as acceptable strategy in a “just war,” we are led to one inescapable conclusion: many males are insane!

Ok but sometimes gender essentialism is funny

It is time that women demand and be given an equal voice in all major institutions, whether it be in Islam, the Latter Day Saints, or the governments of Israel, Palestine, or the United States. My suggestion is that every parliament (or religious body) have two houses: one elected entirely by women and one by men, both with equal power.

Ok its back to being bullshit again

How do we change this collusion of male clerics with male secular aggressors and dominators? First, by coming to an understanding of the wétiko psychosis as a disease affecting both sexes, but primarily males. Second, by understanding that predation can lurk under many guises, such as “patriotism,” profit-seeking, “protecting our way of life,” and “investment returns.” Third, women must understand that a luxurious way of life, when obtained by the fruits of male aggression, is anti-woman. But mainly, we must seek the universal education and emancipation of women, and the providing of tools for their political equality with males in all secular and religious institutions. This includes women who are, directly or indirectly, servants of other women.

The British, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch empires, for example, were at various times extensively engaged in the crime of seizing persons and selling or using them as slaves. This captive trade cannot be viewed as ethically being in any way different from Mafia kidnapping, murder, or extortion except in the sense that it was infinitely more bloodthirsty, profitable, and vicious. The leaders of the Sicilian Mafia must appear as mild-mannered, almost decent persons when compared with the Liverpool, London, Boston, Lisbon, and Cádiz dealers in human flesh and butchers of entire nations.

That the FBI, with all of its manpower, resources, and willingness to use spies, informers, infiltrators, and electronic surveillance, has not yet brought the Mafia under control suggests that the latter is a relatively lower priority than the very small Socialist Worker’s Party, the equally small American Indian Movement in the 1970s, or the Central American peace movement of the 1980s. It is reported that the drug traffic in New York City actually declined during a police strike a few years ago.

Violence and crime do occasionally get “out of hand.” But governments and law enforcement agencies will generally focus attention on individual criminals or low-income crime in order to create the impression that they are “fighting crime.” Legalized or tolerated organized crime will not be greatly affected, since the very fabric of the economy in many states or regions is dependent upon planned aggression, exploitation, or secret price-fixing and gouging.

Imperialism creates the illusion of wealth as far as the masses are concerned. It usually serves to hide the fact that the ruling classes are gobbling up the natural resources of the home territory in an improvident manner and are otherwise utilizing the national wealth largely for their own purposes. Eventually the general public is called upon to pay for all of this, frequently after the military machine can no longer maintain external aggression.

Another facet of organized systems of aggression is that the governments, syndicates, corporations, or groups controlling or profiting from such behavior also control the greater part of the organs of public opinion modification. Historically the state, the Christian churches, powerful newspapers, and so on have conspired frequently to use patriotism, sectarian fervor, news, and propaganda to not only justify aggression, genocide, slavery, and torture but also to make the masses willing (or even anxious) participants. More significantly, as indicated earlier, the entire national culture becomes pervaded by myths, values, and habits of action and thought conducive to the perpetuation of a wétiko society.

How many times have the Christians killed Jesus? Every time they have murdered a “heretic” or a heathen, every time they have worked to death or starved to death a victim of their oppressive colonialism.

Calvary, the place where Christ suffered and died at the hands of the civil and religious politicians of his day, is the holiest shrine in Christianity. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are calvaries. For here, Christ in the bodies of the “least” was again tortured and put to death hundreds of thousands of times over by exactly the same dark and deceitful spirit of organized lovelessness that roamed Jerusalem two thousand years ago . . . Christ suffers and dies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Therefore to condone or support war is to condone or support the call to “crucify Him.”

Even the pyramids and temple-mounds built by some Native people were not designed to close man off from the visible universe but, in fact, to imitate a mountaintop, to bring the worshipper closer to the elements of the world. And, indeed, it may be that the development of massive, enclosed temples and churches of whatever size, in Asia and Europe, correlates very well with the rise of the wétiko sickness. Why? Perhaps because the temple or cathedral clearly serves to separate the sacred from the profane, the religious from the secular, the realm of worship from the realm of work, money-making, and killing. The wétikos want people to box up their religion in buildings, where it can be isolated from the rest of life. Then religion comes into existence as a concept separate from life, worship can be largely centered in one place, and priests and preachers can make their living and gain great power by controlling the use of the little boxes where that which is “sacred” is stored away.

Perhaps this is why black people in the United States have sometimes developed the most authentic forms of Christianity, because, even though they have been limited by the sectarianism and forms of church building, and so on, brought over from Europe, they have succeeded in developing a “spirit of living,” based upon suffering, sharing, and humility, which permeates their faith. If you have ever heard a song sung in a black church, like “If I Can Help Somebody,” or if you have ever heard the late Martin Luther King, Jr. speak, you must know that you are experiencing the true potential of Christianity in the United States. And perhaps that is why Martin Luther King, Jr. was harassed by the FBI and finally murdered, because religion was, for him, a thirst for justice that could not be confined only to sermons. Such men are dangerous in a wétiko world. The fundamentalist preachers usually support the status quo, they sell religion instead of used cars, but their world is comprised of the Nixons, Reagans, Bushes and the military empire, and they thrive on it.

To accept one’s self is bad if it means accepting personal behavior which is ugly, exploitative, or which represents a surrender of the need for freedom, change or growth.

It is a striking fact that both traditional Buddhism and Native American religions tend to avoid theology, perhaps partly on the grounds that the “study of God” is impossible or at least presumptuous, but also because such a study leaves the problems of this life still to be solved for each individual.

So the real test of a spiritual path is not to see how many monuments result, or how many converts are obtained, or how many prayers are repeated over and over again by imitative voices, but rather the test is: How do people who follow that path behave?

I can lose my hands, and still live. I can lose my legs and still live. I can lose my eyes and still live. I can lose my hair, eyebrows, nose, arms, and many other things and still live. But if I lose the air I die. If I lose the sun I die. If I lose the earth I die. If I lose the water I die. If I lose the plants and animals I die. All of these things are more a part of me, more essential to my every breath, than is my so-called body. What is my real body?

a path is only a path and one should not follow it if it goes against one’s inner feelings or convictions. But one’s decision to keep on the path or to leave it should not be based upon fear or ambition. According to Castaneda’s teachers, a “warrior” is different from the average person because of the consistent choice of a “path with heart.” The warrior knows that the path has heart when he or she finds a “great peace and pleasure” traveling on it. The path with heart leads one on a “joyful journey” while paths without heart will lead to curses and weakening.

The fundamental message of one’s own imminent death is to live a life that is worthwhile, one that is filled with precise acts, beautiful acts, meaningful acts, that help to take one along the pollen path, the path that only a wisdom-seeker can travel. And what is a wisdom-seeker? A man or a woman who fearlessly seeks to be truly authentic as he or she travels onward in beauty and humility seeking knowledge.

I am named and that is a marvel to think on, that we are named! for naming is so fundamental to be named is to be perceived! I am named, therefore I am?