We have officially celebrated Columbus Day since 1937 when Franklin Roosevelt made it a national holiday. Unofficially inhabitants of our country have honored this day since the 18th century.
Christopher Columbus is the courageous, almost mythical, explorer who discovered America in 1492. Every school child learns this. His journey has been glamorized in legend and film, but the story isn’t what we envision. It is much darker. Columbus was attempting to find a short cut to China to speed up Italy’s international trade. Capitalism was in its infancy and became the impetus for global exploration. Without economic incentives North America would not have been discovered 527 years ago.
Columbus, like his contemporaries, was unaware of the vast Pacific Ocean and the continents that lay to the west between Italy and China. He was the pioneer who introduced Europe and Asia to a new hemisphere. Imagine the excitement – a new frontier, seemingly endless. What vast possibilities lay ahead!
On the surface it was romantic, but a tragic story lurks in the details. When Columbus and his men arrived in Hispaniola, the natives greeted them with gifts and warm welcome. Columbus himself documented his astonishment in a report to the Queen of Spain:
“The Indians are so naïve and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no . . . they offer to share with anyone.”
Columbus responded by taking them captive and demanding that they provide him with gold. His band set up a small dynasty and ruled like pampered kings, commanding the natives to carry them around in hammocks. They grew savage in their treatment of the people who had welcomed them with gifts.
In a relentless pursuit of gold, they traveled from island to island enslaving the inhabitants, using the women, murdering children. Within two months they had killed 125,000 inhabitants, half the population, of Haiti. It was a slaughter of innocents.
When it became clear that there simply wasn’t enough gold, they began rounding up natives, putting them in pens guarded by men and dogs. When a ship was ready to sail, they loaded the 500 healthiest slaves into the hold and sent them to Spain. Forty percent died in the crossing, exposed to hunger and cold. Those who made it to shore were auctioned off in the marketplace but expired soon after, unable to adapt to the new climate. By the end of the 16th century the Arawak islanders were extinct. A whole population disappeared in a malicious genocide.
Civilization developed in Europe and Asia through centuries of war and conquest. That rapacious paradigm of expansion formed the mindset explorers carried to all parts of the world. In every case native populations were conquered, abused, slain, enslaved in the white man’s quest for wealth. For the complete story check out Howard Zinn’s amazing book A People’s History of the United States.
I tell this story, sparing you the gruesome details, because it is the initial context of our birth as a nation. The same holds true for all of North and South America. This story was played out, over and over, as more European conquerors staked claims to land in the name of their king, and displaced the natives.
Our nation was conceived in a predatory paradigm. We stole this land from the Native Americans. We raided African villages and brought slaves back to till our soil, harvest our crops, pick our cotton and raise our children. We still abuse their descendants and prey upon the weak around the world. We raid poor countries for their resources, and enslave them with impossible loans and promises of protection.
This behavior has never stopped. In the first decades of the 21st century we have devastated Iraq and Afghanistan, slain innocent civilians, orphaned thousands of children, destroyed livelihoods. Currently, we are supporting the Saudi genocide in Yemen. Right this minute we are responsible for the slaughter of the Kurds in Syria and increased suffering in the Ukraine as we support Russia’s mission to expand its territory. Most shocking of all to me, we are arms dealers. We grow rich selling weapons to other countries so they can prey upon and kill each other. We have just sent 2000 troops to protect Saudi oil. It’s obvious what we value.
The form has changed over time, but the essence is the same. Predator and prey. Wealth and power. Separation between the haves and the have-nots. It is evident that this is a dead-end path. Our reality has become a bad habit, developed over millennia. We have all lived thousands of lifetimes. We have all been prey, slaves, victims. We have all been masters and abusers. We’ve learned all we can about this dysfunctional way of relating to each other and to our Earth.
In the pursuit of wealth, we have lost our moral compass. As a result we have racked up centuries of crimes against humanity and we must make amends. We have profited at the expense of countless Native Americans, refugees and slaves. This is the karmic wheel to which we are chained. Until we release it, we are doomed to repeat it. Until this karma is addressed, until we ask our victim’s forgiveness and make restitution, we will never be a nation at peace. We will never fulfill our spiritual potential.
Capitalism is a loaded word that has become a sacred cow. The number one trigger in debates is a criticism of capitalism. Defenders point accusing fingers at their opponents and scream “Socialism!!!” – another word tainted by propaganda, held in place by fear and completely misunderstood. It’s just a word that describes a just sharing of wealth, a concern for the welfare of all. Corporations and countries around the world, receive financial backing from our government. We call it subsidy or foreign aid, but it is corporate or foreign welfare. With 14% of our population living below the poverty level, who needs support more – our starving children, their struggling parents, our sick and elderly, or the multi-billion-dollar oil industry?
There is nothing wrong with commerce and fair trade, but when it inflates to predation, when values are compromised in the process, it becomes a disease that sucks every last ounce of decency out of us, strangling our collective Soul. We live defensive, paranoid lives in terror of scarcity, chasing wealth for wealth’s sake. Wealth may seem like power, but power of this sort is putrid at the core. It doesn’t nourish. It doesn’t produce happiness because it isn’t enough. It will never be enough.
How many cautionary tales can we ignore? How many symptoms of decay can we continue to deny? How much pain and suffering must we witness before we wake up and realize that all of our suffering is self-inflicted. The body politick has an auto-immune disease. It is attacking itself, poisoning its own lifeblood and its host planet.
Our scientists tell us that we are on a collision course with our own extinction. If we want to survive, we must make a radical change. That is the challenge of these times. We must slough off our addiction to greed and excess and find a sustainable way to live with each other and our Earth. Will enough of us wake up in time? Will we take a good look at ourselves and reassess our values? Will you be one of them?
Over the next three years we will reap what we have sown. In January 2020 our vision will get a whole lot clearer as the consequences of our past begin to manifest. We have ravaged our planet in the process of ravaging each other. Karma comes due as Saturn conjuncts Pluto and Pluto returns to its home degree in the USA chart.
A paradigm shift is taking place right now. One by one individuals are waking up, realizing that we hurt ourselves when we hurt others. We are One, united by the same consciousness, walking around in different packaging. Separation is an illusion. When we get out of our heads and open our hearts, we will begin to see and relate to each other with reverence. We will transform our world. Change comes from within and manifests through relationship. This is the arena where evolution happens. It happens through us as we come to realize the truth of ancient wisdom. The key to peace, and a spiritually fulfilling life, lies in realizing we are part of a sacred whole and treating one another as oneself.
In the final chapter we will take a look at the emerging paradigm and the potential of these times to birth a new humanity comprised of spiritual adults.
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