Colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn from our territories.”
“The wealth of the imperialist nations is also our wealth. Europe is literally the creation of the third world.”
Frantz Fanon 1962 Author of The Wretched of the Earth
Last week the New York Times had an article about European colonialism and reparations , After my morning walk I often make a salad and watch tv, usually NHK, DW or France24. The last few years both European stations have focused on news and cultural interests from the ex-colonies. NHK has programs about how Japanese high-tech is creating new products to make an affordable positive impact in the “emerging world” as well as presenting the beauty of their own cultural craftsmanship.These three tv networks view the world as their audience/
I read this book in 1960s, its a reflection on European colonization.
Much of the history of human beings is about survival—war, killing, stealing and various forms of evolving political institutions. Many not here left us no message.What is the “social solidarity necessary for survival” which can only be measured by whether the society survives. Here we are homo sapiens , 300,000 later, with all of our “baggage” some good, some bad and in the near past we let another last individual of a last society die without communicating with him. The rest of his society had been murdered decades ago by business interests seeking to cut down the trees of their home for financial profits. Their home was not their property, it belonged to a nation state with its sovereign rights and the right to deny any sovereign rights of a last society and a last man regardless of how long they had lived there —we did not bother to find out.
He died alone and afraid, afraid of the civilized people, and as it seems, quite rightly so.
What we have lost can never be brought back again This seems a very dark day for human beings and the whole world could be reflect on this treatment of another human being all alone and afraid while the “civilized people.were busy being the “exceptional people reaping the benefits of their special status as the god appointed stewards of Earth.
No chance to accept Jesus r as his Lord and Savior and get to heave,; no chance to awaken the sleeping buddha inside of him and end his cycle of suffering.
Alameda Creek
What is necessary for a society to survive? By society I mean a group of people who interact only with each other. Not real,!! Doesn’t exist—the whole globe is really a bunch of larger and smaller societies, intermingled with each other in may different and various ways and levels.
Its just an idea, think about at the beginnings of human beings there were no individuals—beginning families, clans which have evolved 300,000 years to cities and countries—at some point there were very small basic and much more independent societies.
How can there ever be a time when a human being was his or her own society? When one is a last individual of a last society, the end of that human society on Earth.
We learn about European colonialism in school, lessons which for the most runs off the backs of many like water off a duck, we don’t understand how inhuman it was. nor how it lead to the great wealth of the European society and we call “proof of our exceptionalism.”
We have survived, individuals surviving as a society . What we (human beings) did `enabled people to survive, to have social solidarity. to reach this duration.
Surviving of societies means individual people doing things must have some order —Value: when something works to find food, the individual does it over and over, just by definition it takes time out of your life. Doing over and over it becomes a common behavior pattern. Other people may copy you, and it becomes how people behave in the society.
Successful behavior is repeated regularly, it becomes normal in the society—Just being normal means it takes up time in a life, time that other behavior will not happen. It makes a common structure of behavior which is necessary and normal for the social solidarity of a society.
It also has to be sustainable. Normal is not relative, it is directly related to other specific things, i.e. meeting the necessary needs of the individuals.in the environmental experience of the individuals making up the society.
Imagine early life with small separated societies living in various places all over Earth. Even if there was a common “human Nature,” we know Earth is different in different places resulting in different experiences and different behaviors, each society creating a unique structure of behavior.
Some societies grew larger and more intertwined, with these unique behaviors undergoing varying degrees of assimilation, integration, conquest and political domination.
For many many years, probably 99% of the duration of homo sapiens ,—i.e. for about 279,000 years— when things were bad an individual or a family could move and find another place to live—migration was normal, not illegal. For most of that time, life was simple enough, often simple enough that people could start over somewhere anew.
Now all real estate on Earth has been claimed by nation-states and their geo-political boundaries. There is no place people can migrate for a new life without being threatened by the violence of the nation state, and last week civilization has chased a last individual of a last society away to his death, a society and an individual and a society which had no “legal”right to the property which had been their home, for how many years? oh, we did not take the time or did not have the ability to find out.
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A shrine squeezed in among city building, daily you can pause for a moment on your way to work to appreciate the spirit of the shrine and feel yourJapanese.
Sometimes people like being in public places. Japanese like to read .They also have a great respect for others in public places which makes Japan a nice place to visit. Oh,and safe.
On Sunday afternoons people may be dancing in the street, others like to watch and listen. Cultural things which are imported from other countries are massaged until they find a fit into Japanese life. They call oknomiyaki a “Japanese pancake” but the name really means “as you like it.”
People and architecture have a Japanese feel to their fit, its a comfortable and righteous feeling.
A residential street in Tokyo—being drunk and backing your car into the garage on a street like this can be challenging. Sometimes it a better choice to sleep it off on your host’s floor.
Gate gate paragate parasamgate BodhiSvaha
Heart Sutra and birthday mooncake
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