‘Something wicked always comes because change, like it or not, always comes, and change is always wicked, at least from convention’s point of view.’ ~ EON
The native American disaster is one of history’s greatest ironies. The indigenous people from north to south and coast to coast theoretically and in general terms understood the notion of harmony, wary of the perils of imbalance. Their cultures supposedly deemed disparity an unwelcome arrangement and their people were prepped against the dangers it posed. They worried about the effects of systemic calamity and were sensitized to the drawbacks of discord and chaos, with which nature was rife.
As a result, with active and systematic effort, they sought to endure, subvert or placate such forces by maintaining the equilibrium in their surroundings via their religious and cultural practises. They were devoted to their cause to the point of purity, if not puerility, which became their liability. Having grasped the intricate interdependence on which nature operated but lacking the logical, ideological and operational latitude to expand on it, they failed to grow into that knowledge. They never truly acted on their insights or followed the thread. Even though the world they worshipped was completely unpredictable, exploding with fearsome, violent friction at the drop of a feather, or at the utterance of a curse, these poor, self-deluded peoples kept singing the mantra of their convenient world, ignoring the imperative to embrace the unfolding reality of life, which had so abruptly disembarked on their shores.
Their failure to extrapolate their knowledge to areas beyond their immediate expertise was instrumental in their demise. They failed to prepare for change ahead of time and refused to adjust to circumstances in the wake of it. They failed to embrace the rising paradigms and refused with suicidal stubbornness to acknowledge that the world was larger and more complicated than they had envisioned. They refused to look their banes in the eye and failed to apply their profound knowledge on the nature of chaos and transformation in an imaginative manner, desperately trying to uphold their belief systems by wishing away what essentially corroborated the very essence of nature itself.
They remained cocooned in a worldview too romantic for their own good, rendering themselves unable to face a threat as comprehensive as the machine of Western progress, a system that eventually stormed them without reservation or inhibition, with all guns blazing, with everything it entailed: conquest, trade, disease, monotheism, feudalism and modernity, snatching the ground from under their feet.
In other words, unprepared for the harsh reality of nature on account of their poor innovation skills, their puerile attitude and their quaint obsession with a quaint and dated version of the world, the native Americans snapped like stalks in a hurricane and were swept away like debris.
And the world sees them as cautionary tales.
The question is, will the world that swept them away avoid a similar fate? When the time comes to face the harsh realities of its own choices? Will it survive the coming changes, or will it, too, be gobsmacked, dumbfounded and crushed like a deer caught in the beams of a juggernaut? Will it snap like a stalk in a hurricane and float away, or will it bend with the wind and withstand the onslaught, meeting it by embracing the brutal truth that awaits it just beyond its romantic delusions of itself, a brutal truth that will help it deal with whatever wicked comes its way?
Time will tell.
Intrigued? Watch this space for more.
From the collection of writings EON: THE ANGRY COMING OF AGE