We were put here to take care of life, not to destroy it.
Mar 17, 2024
Image Jakob Rubner on Unsplash
The siege of Gaza is the worst thing the world has ever seen. Terrible things have happened before, but the world couldn’t see them the way we can see the horror in Palestine. People bombed, shot, starved, denied water and shelter, while the killers call themselves the victims and say the people they kill, half of them children, deserve their suffering and death.
People everywhere rage and despair as the world’s governments (except Yemen and South Africa) have stood by, watched genocide happen, or helped it happen as the US, UK, and Germany have done.
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How can this be happening in the 21st Century? While history shows that people are capable of any level of depravity and stupidity, our past also proves that we are capable of wondrous acts of kindness and creativity. You can see such deeds every day on the Internet and in your community, if you look for them.
Those two sides of human nature are beautifully described in indigenous American stories, as retold by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass. In struggling to understand and to stop the slaughter in Gaza, and to create a world where such crimes don’t happen, these ancient stories are as timely as anything you’ll hear in a TED talk. This one tells us we are meant to protect life, not dominate it.
People’s task in the world
As in the Biblical creation story, and as proven in the fossil record, central North American Indians believe the first man was sent to Earth after all the other life forms were already here. Nanabozho was his name (although different tribes say it differently.) There are hundreds of stories about him, but I will rely on Dr. Kimmerer’s telling.
Creator gave Nanabozho specific instructions about what to do in his new world. He was to walk all through it and learn what it had to give and what it needed. He would find out how to live by observing his older siblings, the animals and plants. Other creatures have been here longer, so they understand better how to relate to each other and to their Mother Earth. From spiders, he learned how to weave. Raccoons taught him to wash his food before eating.
Creator had told him that all life had wisdom, but that man had a powerful mind and could create new things. He could make the world better. In particular, the first man was called on to protect life everywhere. “Don’t destroy creation; don’t interfere with another being’s sacred purpose,” as KImmerer learned from her elders. “Take only what is offered.”
Seek balance in all things, Nanabozho was told. Growth and degrowth, birth and death, creation and destruction come in their own time and maintain balance in the world. All are necessary, and all life forms have a purpose and a place.
At some point, Nanabozho became aware that he had a twin, a man who was walking the world creating imbalance and conflict everywhere he went. The brother believed in constant growth, disrespecting neighbors, oppressing women, ill-treating other creatures.
Nanabozho couldn’t defeat his evil twin in battle. All he could do was redouble his efforts to live in balance with the rest of creation. This is what indigenous wisdom teaches us to do. Indigenous people haven’t always lived according to these teachings, but over time, they have integrated them and established truly sustainable societies.
Native peoples had occasional violent battles with each other, but they were small-scale and time-limited, never reaching the levels of genocidal horror that settlers brought to them after Columbus, the same horrors that colonizers have visited on the world and on each other for centuries and are visiting on Gaza now.
Leaders have long chosen the way of power, growth, and violence over the instruction to defend life. They have taught their ways to the people in their societies. This is especially true of the US-centered empire, which includes Israel, Western Europe, and the white English-speaking world. They are destroying everything. It is past time to reclaim the original instructions. But how?
Gaza beach. Image Al-Monitor
When healing comes, it will seem a miracle
Looking at the destruction in Palestine and other war zones now, and the depravity to which Israel and its Western supporters have sunk, it is very easy to despair. Must all the people in Gaza die? Or in Ukraine? Or must all of us die in a world war or an environmental collapse? Can our animal and plant cousins survive the holocaust people are visiting on the forests, the oceans, and on each other?
According to Charles Eisenstein, author of Sacred Economics, and other great books, we have lost Nanabozho’s connection with life and land. We are living in Nanabozho’s brother’s story, which he calls The Story of Separation, the belief that we are all disconnected individuals in a dangerous, meaningless world.
In a belief system like that, living in isolation from Nature and from each other, and relating to the world through computers and money, it makes sense to seek safety by accumulating wealth and power, and to believe that only we and our own people count as worthy of life. Everyone else is a threat.
That is the belief system of Israel, of the US, and of most governments. We learn from infancy the importance of wealth and power for survival. We have forgotten the instruction to protect all life. Those who have not forgotten are the ones being massacred.
Eisenstein says that when healing comes, it will seem like a miracle, because it can’t happen within the Story of Separation. But if we unlearn that story and relearn the original instructions, seemingly impossible things could happen. Israelis and Palestinians could accept each other as family.
I told you it sounded impossible. The people who run most human societies live in fear, which they disguise from themselves as aggression against the vulnerable. They could heal, but they’re profiting from their madness. Someone will have to make them.
Millions of people around the world are rising up to keep Gaza alive, but it hasn’t been enough to stop the slaughter. The system based on greed, growth, and power — the Story of Separation — is too entrenched.
Governments like the ones we have now can’t change on their own. The people will have to do it for them. Commit in all we do to protect life. Choose peace with each other and all our relations. Keep speaking; keep teaching; keep organizing and fighting.
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