This is the last entry in the Chicago Roadtrip blog. I feel like this one, puts a perfect ending to this journey. You may not understand it all right now, but that’s okay. If this knowledge does not hold true with your beliefs, then don’t believe it.
This is taken from The Circle of Life book by James David Audlin. Chapter IV: Human Relationships.
Some parts I skipped as they weren’t relevant. There is more to this chapter, but I think that’s plenty of knowledge right there and you need to digest it first.
In the dominant culture, the primacy of the individual goes hand in hand with the concept that all things in the environment are also individual and separate and can therefore be owned. In Europe, ownership developed through the exploitation of nature: as forests were turned into farmland, large-scale agriculture created concentrations of wealth to be defended and traded. Competition for these prizes led to conquests that gradually brought the land and everything in it under the “ownership” of emperors, kings, princes of the Church, the nobility —- with the majority of human beings functioning as commodities in the process of creating wealth and power for others, valuable only for what they produced. Ownership had come to seem natural and normal, and the newcomers brought it to Turtle Island (=North America) with them. Since the people arriving had to count entirely on themselves and their families for survival, they usually sought to possess as much as they could.
Inevitably, great wealth comes in part at the expense of someone else. The most powerful members of society tend to accumulate a larger and larger share of the available wealth, creating want, suffering and conflict. With this comes an attitude of arrogation, the belief in the right to amass as many possessions as possible lest others acquire them and strengthen their own position. The labor and even the bodies and minds of less powerful people are exploited as virtual possessions; therefore, people come to think of their own selves, including their bodies, thoughts, words and actions, as personal possessions that they in turn must defend. In this situation, society can only be held together by applied force — the massive, sometimes brutal, imposition of prescriptive law. Against this power the individual must always press back, defending the self against exploitation.
My experience has always been that the original peoples — those worthy of inclusion in that company, at least — treat all individuals with respect, no matter what their gender, age, race, sexual orientation, physical appearance or condition. They do not judge or criticize others or compare them in terms of “better” and “worse,” they do not talk behind someone’s back, they do not gang up on individuals. Rather than taking, they seek ways to be giving, to be generous — not only to those they care about, but if anything even more so to those they don’t particularly like.
Since the traditional culture is based on balances, individuals commonly share what they do not need with others within the community. This is not prescriptive law — law that can be broken and mandates punishments for its violation — but descriptive law. Certain birds migrate at certain times of the year, the seasons always follow in their proper order; descriptive law describes natural behavior. For humans, it is natural behavior, and logical besides, for each individual to take only what she or he needs, and to share any further bounty with others (of whatever species) because fostering the survival and well-being of others ultimately fosters one’s own. At another time, one may need to rely on the good will of others to share their bounty in return. This philosophy also is the teaching of the White Buffalo Calf Woman: the sacred descriptive law of mitaquye oyashin (“all my relations”), remaining mindful of all one’s relations.
When one thinks of oneself as a possession, loss of control and changes such as sickness and pain, old age and death are perceived as threats to one’s possession of oneself. If you think yourself as a sacred trust (as in the traditional culture), it’s likely that you will be at peace with yourself and the world. Even when you experience adversity, it will be understood not as an assault on you, but simply as a part of the story.
In the traditional peoples’ culture, individuals seek not the affirmation of others, but to satisfy themselves that they are living their lives as honorably as possible. Traditionals realize it is impossible to satisfy every other person since each person has a different set of priorities, and that it is best rather to satisfy yourself that you are doing the best you can to live life rightly.
We see these balances operating also in love. In the original peoples’ way, to love another is to give yourself freely and fully to that person, accepting the other’s gift of herself or himself to you in return. Since ultimately, the only gift that is truly ours to give is ourselves, this is a very sacred kind of giving.