worldfreeinternet | There is yet a deeper widespread rationalization for our avoidance of Indians and the news
they bring us. On some level we think that however beautiful Indian culture once was,
however inspiring their religious ideas, however artistic their creations and costumes,
however wise their choices of life within nature, our own society has advanced beyond
that stage of evolution. They are the "primitive" stage and we have grown beyond them.
They have not adapted as we have. This makes us superior. We are the survivors. We
are the "cutting edge."
A good friend of mine (who now works in television) put it this way: "There is no getting
around the fact that the Indian way is a losing way. They are no longer appropriate for the
times. They are anomalies." In saying this, my friend was essentially blaming the Indians
themselves for the situation that befell them. They failed to adapt their lifestyle and belief
systems to keep up with the changing times. Most importantly, they failed to keep up with
technological change. They were not competitive.
This statement reflects a Darwinist, capitalist outlook of survival of the fittest, with fitness
now defined in terms of technological capability. If you can use the machine better than
the next fellow or the next culture, you survive and they die. This may be sad, the
reasoning goes, but that's the way it is in today's world. This view sees Western
technological society as the ultimate expression of the evolutionary pathway, the
culmination of all that has come before, the final flowering. We represent the
breakthrough in the evolution of living creatures; we are the conscious expression of the
planet. Indians helped the process for a while, but they gave way to more evolved, higher
life forms.
Our assumption of superiority does not come to us by accident. We have been trained in
it. It is soaked into the fabric of every Western religion, economic system, and
technology. They reek of their greater virtues and capabilities. Judeo-Christian religions
are a model of hierarchical structure: One God above all, certain humans above other
humans, and humans over nature. Political and economic systems are similarly arranged:
Organized along rigid hierarchical lines, all of nature's resources are regarded only in terms
of how they serve the one god -- the god of growth and expansion. In this way, all of
these systems are missionary; they are into dominance. And through their mutual
collusion, they form a seamless web around our lives. They are the creators and enforcers
of our beliefs. We live inside these forms, are imbued with them, and they justify our
behaviors. In turn, we believe in their viability and superiority largely because they prove
effective: They gain power.
But is power the ultimate evolutionary value? We shall see. The results are not yet in.
"Survival of the fittest" as a standard of measure may require a much longer time scale
than the scant 200 years' existence of the United States, or the century since the Industrial
Revolution, or the two decades since the advent of "high tech." Even in Darwinian terms,
most species become "unfit" over tens of thousands of years. Our culture is using its
machinery to drive species into extinction in one generation, not because the species are
maladaptive, but by pure force. However, there is reason to doubt the ultimate success of
our behavior. In the end, a model closer to that of the Indians, living lightly on the planet,
observing its natural rules and modes of organization, may prove more "fit," and may
survive us after all. Until that day, however, we will continue to use Darwinian theories to
support the assertion that our mechanistic victory over the "primitives" is not only God's
plan, but nature's.
