Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

Okay, this may not seem directly related to my blog topic, but I can't let this pass by unremarked.  After yesterday's post with that beautiul quote from Ohiyesa, I find this in today's NY Times.  It is an article about Sec. of Def. Rumsfeld's visit to Vietnam (for the purpose of enhancing military cooperation - sigh…) and it mentions his visit to the Temple of Literatrue, which was established in 1070, the country's first university.

Well, he was impressed, and then made this remark, that when the university was founded, "American Indians were still living in 'mud huts.'"

Wow! and wow!  Maybe one requirement for a cabinet level position in government should be some basic historical literacy.  Talk about pompous!  Talk about ignorant!  Talk about insults!

I just did a google search — American Indians culture 1000-1500 — and of course found a long list of research on the magnificent cultures of the so-called Americas before we Europeans showed up (one example).  Most of us know this — the advanced civilizations, the big cities, the technologies developed, and on and on. 

I guess Rumsfeld, like others of his ilk, are remnants of that European superiority, that hubris that is setting us on this free fall ecologically, culturally, and politically.  They just cannot imagine another history than the one that formed them — the marvelous Europeans conquering the lands of the ignorant heathens, moving these backward peoples out of the way in order to conquer wilderness, settle frontiers, pave everything over, make way for private property and commerce — the same impetus behind Rumsfeld's adventure in Iraq.

It is another reminder for me of how we need a whole new approach (other than this Western Euro-American approach) to what it means to be human on this earth if we are to save ourselves.  And we have to get power out of the hands of people like this.

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