Hubris of the West – Delusions in Destiny

We have a tendency in the global West to believe that we’ve got everything figured out. There is a sense of arrogance that seems to be the mortar that holds the blocks of our foundation together. This arrogance prevents the consideration of novel concepts and blinds us to the flaws of our current systems and institutions. We’ve used our arrogance and entitled attitudes to do horrible things to so many people.

It started with the founding of the New World. The colonizing nations of Europe sailed west and enslaved or eliminated the indigenous populations of Central and South America. The justification being that these people were ‘savages’ and needed to be shown the proper light of Western religion. It continued in the slave trade and the hyper-colonization of African and Asian countries, and then in the systematic genocide perpetrated by the US government against the American Indian.

The early Americans used something called Manifest Destiny to justify this eradication of the indigenous population of North America. Essentially falling in line with the same logic of their European predecessor in that they viewed these people as savages, and an expansion of the American experiment westward was God’s will. The atrocities that followed decimated an entire population. What remains of that population now clings to whatever is left of their culture all the while struggling to assimilate to a culture that values little of the natural world.

The conquest of this land we now inhabit is still romanticized by a few bigoted organizations that we can’t seem to leave in our history. Just recently I read an article about one of these contemporary white American terrorist organizations. At the heart of their ideology is that the United States is a white country that was bequeathed to them because of the conquest of the land by their ancestors. Sadly there is some logic to that, but only if you see life through a very specific lens – a small lens drawing on that same violent justification used by the first white explorers.

It is an outdated, selfish, and myopic worldview. It is largely based in fear. A fear that should these white dudes one day become the minority that they’ll be treated in the same way that they’ve treated the minority populations to this point. It is a legit fear for someone that sees the world through that distorted lens.

Most of our collective problems currently stem from some form of that original perverse perspective. That selfishness, arrogance, and sense of entitlement is still with us, and not just in the ideologies of the white American terrorist organizations. Our entire foundation is built on a sense that we are living in accordance with the natural order of the cosmos. When in reality we are far from living in some accordance with any form of nature. Rather it seems we have done a good job of distorting reality to fit our selfish needs and desires.

The horrors of the past now allow a few of us to currently live very soft and privileged lives. Should those horrors be brought into focus then most people simply dismiss them as being an unfortunate flaw of our ancestors. Others form groups celebrating that genocide then get offended when they’re referred to as terrorists.

The founding of this nation and the domination of the Western way of life wasn’t God’s will. If it was then God is much more demented and vengeful than even the most extreme religions contend. We have not left those old ways to the past. They are our foundation and still inform the way that we operate in modern times. We still devalue human life. Currently the same people that preach the sanctity of life when it comes to the unborn will champion an imperialist military, capital punishment, and advocate against any policy that will improve the quality of life for those currently struggling to survive.

The Western way is viewing the human as a savage animal. A savage animal that needs corralled by the strong hand of a dominating upper-class of rulers. Is there much difference between the wealth disparity in our country and the ancient king locking himself in a castle of abundance while his subjects starve? A billion dollars can provide 20,000 families a salary of $50,000/year. In a country that has a homelessness epidemic, a drug epidemic, and a disproportionate percentage of the population living in general despair – we are fine with a few people sucking up all that wealth.

It only makes sense for our minds because we’ve never lived anything else. It is the only reality we’ve ever known and it has been reinforced by every interaction with our Western culture. Other non-Western societies and civilizations see such mentality as mental illness. Instead we’ve convinced ourselves over time that it is the only way that the world can operate. It is a lack of imagination. It is being captured by the worst of our species and then having it normalized and reinforced through our interaction with culture.

It could be argued that every aspect of our existence is propaganda. From our relationship with media, to popular culture, to what is in our school texts. Ignore the atrocities of our past, get a job, consume, pass that way of life on to the next generation, repeat. Perhaps this is only now becoming so apparent because we are going through times of great change.

In our current era we have put almost everything under a microscope in an attempt to understand the flaws of our past. The language that we use, the institutions we’ve used to keep order, and the general ethics and logic of our society are up for scrutiny. I personally think it’s a good thing. Let us as a whole examine where we are and how we got here. There is much that needs tweaked and hopefully over time we can collectively figure that out – with many growing pains indeed.

I appreciate your attention and hope you’ve found value in this.
Thanks for reading and take care of each other.