COLUMBUS DAY is the ideal opportunity to contemplate this man we did NOT really know, the navigator explorer named CRISTOFORO COLOMBO. But it's an important lesson and there are 364 OTHER days in the year when we might TEACH this lesson to our YOUNG! Chris was basically a talent scout. He sold his time piloting boats to go find land for Kings to steal, thusly enriching themselves. Click on his bio there, you'll see what I mean. Have your kids read it too or stash this article in your cache and show it to them on COLUMBUS DAY, the perfect day to teach our children the reality which is that MALTHUSIAN THOUGHT, LAND GRABS and COLONIAL exploitation of rural peoples are not all that healthy. How did these greedy actions get held up as GOOD THINGS and How did the antithesis in thought, more of a progressive, sharing, socialistic, Fabian "Liberalism " get to be a bad thing? "Liberal" means giving easily. "Conservative" means believing the thoughts of Malthus, who worked for the East India Trading Corp of the UK... who promulgated the message Kings wanted to believe. Stuff is finite, land is finite,' so hold on to what you have, kill to protect it, worry about whose name it's in and always send slaves out grabbing more. And always be more strategic, more cunning at getting 'stuff'. Even devious, even murderous. It's easy to get stuff if you point a gun! So invent war toys!
THINK back to the NEANDERTHALS,
before the GRAB IT ALL "GREED IS GOOD" ETHOS grew like a cancer on
the flank of the later, Cro-Magnon man. It wasn't always that way. When
homo
erectus first began in small hunter/gatherer Neanderthal groups, they
found things for the clan, not for THEMSELVES ALONE. Imagine how rude that
would seem. You come back to camp with your own deer and...what? FREEZE
IT in baggies? No, you shared with each other. Dinner at night was like
a picnic buffet today: CELEBRATORY! Joe the Hunter was l8, strong, so he
made flints, he hunted; he chased through the woods barefoot & put
the spear in the Boar at risk of being gored. The other ten people were
older, couldn't walk barefoot, they let Joe do it but guess what? All ate
equally well! Generosity was alive on the planet. And after that meal,
when they're strumming ukeleles, the gang felt the gratitude and love for
Joe. All the higher emotions. You need somebody, you're grateful to them
for running barefoot through the forest and pronging a BOAR; you appreciate
that somebody. And Joe's giving to the small, weary, aged or incompetent
made him more heart centered, proud to be a giver. He became a real winner.
And his seed made the cut! Be sure of it.
I gave her some barbecued
ribs. Now she loves me. I'm
gonna tell Darwin about
this hunting gambit idea. It works!
Comes the end of the Ice Age, the world dried up, animals became harder
to find, so man turned to farming. In later Farming communities, they shared
the shack, had the great hall, had the homes strung one to the next. No
fences between Teepees made for real brother sister feelings. Fencing stuff
would have seemed rude. And, owning something for one person, like land,
crops, implements, would have seemed rudest of all, yet with the ENCLOSURES,
where the rich people took at the land and enclosed it so the sheep couldn't
go there, so the farmer couldn't till there, well, that RUDE ACT became
the norm. It was based on a perceived danger 'out there.' So the king in
the castle could claim, I gotta salary all those soldiers, a.) you owe
me taxes up the wazoo, and b.) you are now officially a serf, and C.) as
it's all on my shoulders, I'm now the King. And you aren't! 
Voila. Conservatism, serfdom, empires, kings, war, war toys were all born in one evil minute! Corporatism, fascism and GM seeds would not be far behind. While our bodies and minds evolve, our philosophies have devolved. There is a counter trend contained within material evolution. Spiritual devolution!
There is an excellent book, "The Fall", written by Steve Taylor which proposes that man has been insane since farming started, right after the last ice age. Once man began farming, he was confined to one spot, with a limited range of things to eat, thus hoarding began, covetousness, wars, and general unhappiness. Cities arose, overcrowding, hatred, war.
But I don't think it was staying put and farming as hey, we know guys. If they wanna go shoot arrows they can go off for as many days as they want, see all the farmgirls at other villages that they want, as long as they come home with the MEAT! By that I mean the edible stuff, the joint, the uhhhhh, the RED STUFF WE COOK ON THE STOVE.
Author Taylor has a point. Disease exploded when animals were domesticated, and man came into contact with the germs they carried. Critters have cooties. New ones, to us humans at least. Measles came from dogs, smallpox is a close kin to cowpox, sheep pox and even the common cold came from other creatures and all the flus did. Mycoplasma is resident in pigs, cats, dogs and all barnyard animals and it can kill ya the first time you get it! Much worse than the annual flu we all have these days.
In America, no suitable animals were available for domestication, thus the Native Americans had no resistance to the diseases the Europeans brought, or which their BARNYARD GERMS brought, ( cows, dogs, and especially pigs came as germs carried on the explorers' bodies or later, animals were brought over in person.) There are estimates that 95% of the native population died out after Columbus. (And here it is nearly Columbus's Day.) Another wonderful book about that theme is "1491" by Charles C. Mann. You can buy both books used at abebooks.com if you like philosophy of mankind's history studied from an anthropological viewpoint.
By virtue of working for greedy King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Columbus was also one of the greatest conservatives finding a second half to the world the royals had already quite well exploited. He was no liberal. This would be an excellent time to reiterate that liberalism saves, doesn't destroy. Liberals GIVE, they don't take. They organize for the common benefit, don't exploit slaves by the whip and take the fruits of labor for a King.
Time to have your child read these books for a few days before the anniversary of one of the most greedy events in human history-- October 12th, the anniversary of the destruction of the New World, so that he or she can do a SHOW AND TELL CLASS PROJECT, maybe tying it in to the fate of HAITI, the first place ole Chris landed! See the HAITIAN GAMBIT.
Written by Two Moms both teachers, Patricia Starteller and Anita Sands Hernandez
<=== BACK
TO THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES for DUMMIES WEBPAGE
<=== BACK
TO
THE EMPIRE INDEX PAGE.
<=== BACK
TO THE TRUTHS GOV DOES NOT WANT YOU TO DISCOVER WEBPAGE