Endgame

“When a white man kills an Indian in a fair fight it is called honorable, but when an Indian kills a white man in a fair fight it is called murder. When a white army battles Indians and wins it is called a great victory, but if they lose it is called a massacre and bigger armies are raised. If the Indian flees before the advance of such armies, when he tried to return he finds that white men are living where he lived. If he tried to fight off such armies, he is killed and the land is taken anyway. When an Indian is killed it is a great loss which leaves a gap in our people and a sorrow in our heart; when a white is killed, three or four others step up to take his place and there is no end to it. The white man seeks to conquer nature, to bend it to his will and use it wastefully until it is all gone and then he simply moves on, leaving the waste behind him and looking for new places to take. The whole white race is a monster who is always hungry and what he eats is land."
-quote from Chiksika recorded by Eckert, taken from the book Endgame by D. Jensen.

I live in constant despair about the culture I was born into. I hate that I have been shaped by it, that it owns me, controls me, limits me. This is a culture that so many cling to; that so many view as being great and the only way in which any human should live. I think this culture is full of ugliness, evil, greed, hate, violence, destruction, myopia, childishness.
There are things about this culture that have vastly improved our lives, that is certain. But at what cost does this come? We have exchanged a life of risk, sustainability and freedom for a life of mundanity, self-destruction and short-term safety. We are destroying everything around us, and we will destroy ourselves. So what; modern medicine means that if we find ourselves in an otherwise life-threatening situation we can clamber out of it. To what end? For what purpose? If this means that our entire race is doomed to destroy itself painfully and bring a lot of other species down with it, then I don't see what's so great about it. There is no benefit.

I hate that I have been shaped by this culture, that I find it so hard to break free of it, despite how terrible I know it to be. In order to break free I need to first totally embrace it. Because the land I was born onto, and all land in the world, is now claimed and owned it means I must become ugly, evil, greedy, hatful, violent, destructive, myopic and childish in order to accumulate enough money to buy myself out of this system. I don't know how to do this. I am living in two worlds. I cannot totally embrace it, and I cannot totally reject it.

I will go for a walk. Yesterday the forest looked more beautiful than ever. The mist transformed the valleys and the forest so completely. It was like I was in another country.

This is an article about a tribe in Africa called the Hadza. It is interesting. I recommend reading it.