I’ve been in Europe (exiled) for over 4 . years. Three of those years have been spent in Germany with its fixation on all things Native American. There are plenty of Disneyland events going on over here, and I’m not talking about Paris.
I suppose it would have been easy to prostitute my 24 years learning with some of the last great masters of American Indian knowledge, Blackfoot, Plains Ojibwe and Cree But the culture has been so maimed by people half trained, already, I could not bring myself to dirty it any further. So, I have been quietly, individually, teaching a handful of interested people but refusing any relationship with money having to do with my endeavor in this regard. It has been an investment based solely in faith, faith in my ethics, faith in what my teachers had shown me, faith in my adopted Native culture’s original values. If you give better than you get, you are a winner.
Now, suppose I had the opportunity to teach a group of Germans and we all were seated on the ground in a circle. Knowing my background, German mentality being what it typically is, they’d all be looking at me in awe as though I were a god and I’m in the same moment thinking, “If you think you are important, you don’t belong here, these folk all think I’m important, so maybe I don’t belong here.”
With all these expectant faces peering at me, I hate to tell them the truth but they are here because their own culture is failing them, so let the pain sink in, “Our lesson today is short and simple. Here is a one cent coin. Pass it around the circle, I wish for each of you to actually take a moment, only that, a moment, to contemplate the power of this tiny bit of copper. No questions please, I will explain when the little penny has returned full circle.”
Who knows what one might think? Power? A single euro cent will buy you precisely nothing! So the 15 people take 15 minutes to appear all serious at what would ordinarily seem a ridiculous proposition, as the little penny passes hand to hand, some finger it, other bow their heads in meditation over it, but hey, I’ve all these years training so best behave as though in the presence of a god .. but just now they’re about to discover a devil.
The much pondered bit of copper has finally been passed back to me and I look everyone in the eye, one to the next, holding up the single euro cent between forefinger and thumb while saying: “In Quantum Mechanics, once two particles have been associated, they remain forever associated, no matter whether you separate them by a universe in space and time. We have always known this. It is why we, Indians, had been taught to be careful in our thoughts, and cautious in our associations and physical items such as pennies are in fact associations.
“Now, just imagine this were a large old penny such as were known 100 or more years ago, and I had taken it off a dead man’s eyes only this morning. In that case, each one of you would now be associated with that act, as well the dead man’s life, and even the cause of his demise.
“I want you all to go home, look at and consider the source of your belongings, and know why the Native spiritual name for money translates literally: “The leading trouble maker.”
It is recommended the 3 preceding paragraphs be re-read and kept in mind while reading this next:
The ancient Native view concerning the ‘web’ of life is precisely like this: We construct reality through two phenomena, primarily, our actions and our associations.
Our associations tie us to the web, our person represents the intersect where the several or many strands meet and as such, our actions influence our associations, no different to our associations influence our encounters or ‘luck.’
How one behaves and what one associates with, determines the direction and quality of everyone’s life, without exception. To construct a web which will resonate health requires self discipline incorporated to intelligent choice of associations and related energies. This is because everything you do, and everything every member of your ‘web’ does, impacts and resonates throughout your web.
The theoretical physicist Bernard d'Espagnat states:
"The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment"
He might as easily have said ‘Plato was wrong’ when Plato described with his ‘objectivity’ why the common man needs an autocratic class of ‘objective’ rulers:
“He lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour, and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of anyone who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on”
-Plato
I put Plato’s error into his context of ‘objectivity’ in relation to what Edward Bernays had accomplished with propaganda vis a vis consumerism and our own science shaped in Platonic philosophy, the ultimate ‘objectifying’ or assigning Plato’s belief in human consciousness existing independently of our intuition and related surrounding objects (nature) as the ultimately destructive equation:
When Plato 'objectified' man (our thought process), he set in motion events that culminated in a personified modern Europe represented in Edward Bernays. You cannot set man apart from, or set man above the natural environment without experiencing negative consequence; the isolated narcissism shaping Western reality resulting in destructive behaviors to include science, an unconscious necrotic religion expressed through symbol of malevolent technology. In this case, Plato's base 'appetite' has returned mutated from exile to 'consume' his Republic via consequence of consumerism and dying environment.
–R.T. West
Now, consider I’d arrived at this insight via illiterate Indians (however fluent in their language and oral traditions) primarily, with a bit of lovely insight into Plato provided by the Africa centered scholar Marimba Ani. The bottom line is, most pre-Columbian Native American cultures (the non-hierarchal ones) had been living a practical philosophical knowledge based in advanced understanding of Quantum Mechanics (following timeline established in linguistics and genetics) for as long as 40,000 years prior to Plato and modern scientific theory.
Related:
Bell’s Theorem
Plato’s Republic
Edward Bernays ‘Propaganda’
Marimba Ani’s ‘Yurugu’
Special thanks to Penny Aldrighetti for pointing out the Native American connection to Bell’s Theorem, stating: “Bell's Theorem posits what you would articulate to that group. It is quite a paradigm changer if you really try to understand the implications of this statement. Mind-blowing, in fact.
© 2012 Ronald Thomas West, mass paper media redistribution prohibited
"...our actions influence our associations..."
I wonder what they were conjuring up when they were scalping people alive, putting splinters under their fingertips, roasting them alive over a fire, whipping them with nettles or cutting their hearts out?
Not that I'm in any way against Native Americans but I'm a bit numb to the "White Man destroyed everything" narrative and the "if we'd only stayed put" all the miracle natives would have danced around with flowers on their heads in perfect communion with nature and each other.
I know better.
Hello Sam J
You kind of remind me of a conversation I once overheard between a psychology student and his professor following a discussion of the Christian religion where the professor stated "I think you have a Sunday school interpretation" and the student replied "But I've never been to Sunday school!"
With a bit of looking into the matter, you could correct some misconceptions, the material isn't hard to find; for instance 'American Indian Stereotypes in Early Western Literature and the Lasting Influence on American Culture' by Lacy Noel Cotton.
Meanwhile I suggest going back and reading at earlier bookmarks, especially the ones titled 'War' & 'Conflict' to correct your suggestion I've presented some utopian ""if we'd only stayed put" all the miracle natives would have danced around with flowers on their heads in perfect communion with nature and each other"
And you might consider looking up your own culture's history of genocides & torture by way of comparison; for instance you could use google search: "medieval torture, the wheel"
In any case, 'Cosmos & Consciousness' does not describe what is perfect, but describes a set of principles pervasively perverted by a culture that also wrote the history of conquest from perspective of its own ethnocentric bias (you're a little, teeny, tiny, piece of that process.)
In any case, the western view of itself is nicely summed up with the recent discovery of science the 'vestigial organ' called the appendix is a perfectly functional part of the human anatomy designed to restart gut flora after a bout of dysentery. This fact has never been examined in light of the centuries assumption by western 'science' the appendix was a discarded bit of human physiology. Too embarrassing a misconception to discuss I suppose, sort of like modern medicine's recent ancestral habit of bloodletting, used to attempt a cure of George Washington's tooth infection (he died.) But hey! There's lots stereotype we can fill our heads with so as to be too preoccupied with serious self-exam of our own primitive state....