Colonialism

Dear Sylvio,

Thanks for speaking your truth to the PA. I resonated with much of what you said. Remember that time you stopped at our place, walking back to the PA from the train station, after some trip you took, when I told you I thought the folks at the PA were spoiled and living in a country club for the rich, pretending like they were largely independent of the Empire? You seemed offended, probably thinking "but we work so hard at bread labor". Perhaps now you understand that most working class people do not have the luxury to work towards any vision other than their and their family's survival. That unlike the PA settlers, they don't follow their bliss (they follow the demands of the boss) in their jobs, that any momentary bliss is drug- or sex- or dumbing-phone-induced. Or else they suffer the shame of unemployment, not being able to use their gifts to contribute to their family's well being, being treated as a burden to society by the welfare system. And yet most of them would not want to live at the PA, even if they knew about it, for the reasons you gave about the PPC (being treated like second class citizens), and maybe others (forgotten skills, less autonomy?) And yet, if that privilege could be used to create opportunities for even people without money and give them autonomy. With privilege comes responsibility, not just for helping wealthy white people...

Another historical tidbit: Remember the story of how the Dutch "bought" Manhattan from the natives for about $24 "worth" of beads and other trinkets? I wonder what was going on in the minds of the Canarsie tribe. Did they understand transfer of property? Probably not. They probably wanted to share that land and were in the gift economy (not the kind you rightfully critique, where wealth comes through Empire to settlers who then without much toil, pass on that wealth to other wealthy people). Yet your (and your black mesa compatriots') language of "give back the land and go back to Europe" makes me think that you want to keep playing that game, only reversing the roles of oppressor and oppressed. Go back to Europe? Are you fucking insane? Most of the people who came here from Europe (not Columbus though) did not come in order to oppress anyone. Most of them, at least in the beginning, came because they were being burned at the stake, hung, imprisoned, were driven off the land, had their houses demolished and their crops burned, not much different than the slaves who came here from Africa (sometimes white people came here as indentured servants). Same with some of my jewish people, who came to Palestine seeking a safe space from two millenia of oppression, the latest of which was the holocaust and state-communist dictatorship, not seeking to oppress or colonize anyone. But they had already been infected with the "ownership of the earth" disease (after not being allowed to own land for most of those two thousand years by the god damned so-called-christians) and the inability to share with people that were different than themselves. Not that most of the Palestinians were that willing to share either. You can perhaps blame it on the British and the time-tested colonizer strategy of divide and conquer, but I think most tribes left in recent history do not want to share the earth with other tribes that have oppressed them, are considered inferior (tribal supremacy, not just white supremacy, as in "we're better than the fucking settlers"), and/or have some resources that are coveted. As Andy Schmookler pointed out in his book "The Parable of the Tribes", the warlike tribes that do not want to share tend to take over, without some external intervention like what Hobbes called Leviathan (an healthy example being The Iroquois Confederacy, a not-very-healthy example being our legal system), and perhaps other factors like trade and ability to effectively defend.

In game theoretic terms, love and a willingness to share are not by themselves evolutionarily stable strategies. Tribes possessing those strategies, without the ones mentioned above, can be invaded and colonized by tribes who covet their "resources", are warlike and/or have a supremacy ideology.

I like to think of this in game theoretic terms because it is obvious to me (as it was to Jesus, Gandhi, and MLK), despite the children's story (enacted in Western movies of cowboys and "indians") of good guys and bad guys, that hating and trying to destroy the other group is not going to change anything except switch oppressor and oppressed. Same with feeling guilty about being part of the group that has historically oppressed other groups, or even a group, some of whose members continue to be assholes and oppress others. Most conservatives still believe in that children's story of good and evil. Most liberals and leftists have slightly embellished that story, adding another role of the rescuer (usually themselves).

No, the world is not that way. Anybody, regardless of what group they are part of, is capable of being seduced by power and thinking of the earth as resources to be acquired, and that other tribes are inferior and deserve to have resources taken from them, and only their own tribe's needs matter. Even native americans can do this, even people from hispanic descent, even people who go to "defend the sacred" at Standing Rock or other places, even the jewish people who must have won the "oppression olympics" before Israel. We need a different game, where the strategy of creating friends (as opposed to enemies) and seeing everyone's humanity is appealing, and reinforced by Leviathan and trade.

I am now going to say something that will probably get me accused of cultural appropriation or being an entitled white male who wants to be the center of attention, but I have to say it anyway, in hopes that your heart is still open, and your mind is not totally clouded, and I want to say it before I die in hopes that the lesson is not forgotten. I know what it's like to have a gift that was meant to be shared (such as ancestral land and home) taken away to satisfy someone's selfish need or greed and desecrated, to be cast out, shunned and forgotten, powerless to change anything except to continue to appeal to cold hearts in the hopes that there is still a warm ember in the center of the ice. Ironically, the people who took this gift and desecrated it are anarchist LGBT people, some black, some white, some hispanic. They are not evil monsters (is anyone except our jungian shadows, before being touched by the light of consciousness?), just humans who wanted a safe space and some autonomy, but did not care what the previous people who were there wanted. They thought they were superior to the previous people, who were mostly cis, het, white and black men. They did not want to share the gift or steward it, but to use it for their own needs, treating it as a resource. I have documented some of the details of the story from my own limited perspective, and if I'm still alive by the time you get this I can send them to you. The details may not matter. You might scoff at this comparison, since there is only one white male who wanted to share a gift, who gave up power over, whose heart was broken, who has been silenced and shunned (and a few other white and black people who converted to a mainstream mentality after this experience), not a whole village, or a genocide of a whole tribe. Yet all the elements necessary for genocide are in place in the mindset/game that these people and most people on both ends of the political spectrum are holding/playing. The conservatives have told me to use our punitive, adversarial and wealth favoring judicial system to punish my LGBT grandchildren whom I love at the Homostead. The liberals have either ignored me, or told me to use the courts or to let it go and do inner work, which lands in me the same way those words would probably land in any native whose culture has been largely destroyed and who yearns for justice and connection. Restorative justice liberals don't want to get involved unless I pay them alot of money and even then they don't want to because they don't want to violate my grandchildren's boundaries who are not willing to talk. Maybe they think it is better to violate an expendable cis, white, het man than the boundaries of LGBT people. Ethan understands the need for conversation and a restorative justice circle, but says he has other priorities (I'm guessing like figuring out how to keep his family together, and also not have the gift he was given be desecrated the way the gift that flowed through me was).

I am tired with a weariness of many generations of playing a losing game. Since I have left the mainstream world, I have not been able to accumulate any substantial wealth to share through any of my own efforts, though I have produced some food and have kept Sashi and I warm. I have accepted welfare from my parents, which has been humiliating though I have tried to save it in order to try again, despite all the evidence, to share wealth in a way that doesn't get taken over by the old game. I have tried in vain to interest people in developing that game, even as a computer game, but most people do not seem interested in a new game and I have not found the ones who are.

A few more things: You urge us to follow and serve native people if we don't go back to our native habitat (where am I supposed to go?). But I will not follow anyone, native or otherwise, who professes intolerance, supremacy and hatred (unless that hatred is used as a cathartic tool, not as an ideology).  I would like to follow peaceful native leaders, if they are also loving, tolerant and encouraging of conversation and critical thinking and can think about the bigger picture, helping white people, not just natives. Do you know any? Perhaps Pat McCabe? Or her daughter, Lyla June Johnston? But both have refused to help me. I would want to help them if I could trust them.

I pass a dying ember to you, Brother Sylvio. Perhaps it will live.