Indigenous Fad?
The pathtivism manual has changed radically but it’s really just an evolution. What started as an understanding that the movement has failed, a mass movement based in Marxism, led to a recognition that the path is the means of change. And for most of the movement they eschew the path as some form of religious opiate.
But when you think of the path and the need for change, when these two come together, there has to be Gaia; that is the evolution I have realised. It has to be a movement for Gaia. In truth the movement has never embraced Gaia – green, climate was (is?) a fringe struggle for treehuggers. Can the mass movement lead if that is their consciousness? Look at Marxism, it is redistribution of wealth from resources, it does not have any reference to Gaia and depleting resources.
So if the movement comes up with Marxism, is it the place to lead? And as a genuine democrat that is a hard question. Democracy has been manipulated, and I cannot see the possibility of it not being manipulated. From birth we are conditioned, and included in that conditioning is a consumerism that enforces the neoliberal system that is on the way to the destruction of Gaia.
There has to be a reason I reject the mass movement as source of leadership, and that reason is that our culture has been so manipulated we have lost our connection with Gaia – in the Pathtivism manual I have called this being dispossessed. Our mass movement has been dispossessed of Gaia, and have been conditioned to being possessed by greed for money. I have sufficient faith in the mass movement to believe that they can become aware of this excessive greed, and the need to reduce greed. I have sufficient faith in the mass movement to recognise that Gaia is the priority, but because they have been dispossessed they don’t know the way forward. The mass movement can recognise the need for harmony with Nature from within their industrialised concrete jungles, but without a relationship with Gaia how can they know the direction to take?
Perhaps more importantly how can they feel the importance of Gaia because they have been dispossessed of feeling Gaia. Indigenous cultures are still brought up to feel that relationship, that harmony, and it is to them the mass movement needs to seek direction.
If the mass movement is to be indigenous-led then there has to be re-education. As usual when colonialists have exploited peoples there has been an associated vilifying propaganda. Here is a history of Dakota 38 – something I knew little of – just names. This is not the history of savages raping and pillaging poor defenceless homesteaders (the vanguard of the colonial expansion similar to the Israeli settlements in Palestine). It is mostly on facebook where I share the indigenous wisdom. For me what I am sharing is feeds from people following the path, but I notice a difference because their path-following is much more concerned with connections to Gaia than my Buddhism which is spiritual and concerned with controlling the mind. When I talk about ending attachment to the 5 khandhas and ending the blocks to sunnata:-
this is more detail on being in harmony with Gaia (the source of sunnata), Nature or Idappaccayata. In this clip where Winona Laduke (my blog about her) is being interviewed on Democracy Now, she describes how her nation is living in harmony with Nature. This is not simply an ecologically-aware individual, it is her nation. This is why I talk of indigenous-led. With all our talk of the environment and with all the COP talks where has any nation (other than indigenous peoples) actually implemented a harmonious economic system?
This blog began with pathtivism. Pathtivism requires Gaia-consciousness personally and politically, and for political leadership we don’t need ego we need people in harmony with Nature as a community. Hence indigenous led. There is a political inevitability for this so can it be a fad?
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The path of compassion, insight and creativity - the struggle for GAIA and against the 1%-satrapy of war and wage-slavery.
