Why we need a new story that gives meaning to the world

"We once thought economists would fix poverty, political scientists would fix social injustice, chemists and biologists would fix environmental problems, the power of reason would prevail and we would adopt sane policies. I remember looking at maps of rain forest decline in National Geographic in the early 1980s and feeling both alarm and relief – relief because at least the scientists and everyone who reads National Geographic is aware of the problem now, so something surely will be done.

"Nothing was done. Rainforest decline accelerated, along with nearly every other environmental threat that we knew about in 1980. Our Story of the People trundled forward under the momentum of centuries, but with each passing decade the hollowing-out of its core, that started perhaps with the industrial-scale slaughter of World War One, extended further. When I was a child, our system of ideology and mass media still protected that story, but in the last thirty years the incursions of reality have punctured its protective shell and have ruptured its essential infrastructure. We no longer believe our storytellers, our elites. We don’t believe the politicians, we don’t believe the doctors, we don’t believe the professors, we don’t believe the bankers, we don’t believe the technologists. All of them imply that everything is under control, and we know that it is not."

Charles Eisenstein

Read the full article on alternet.org

Visit his website

As they say, when there are too many elephants you shoot the elephants, when there are too many humans, you shoot the elephants...

This is the first article I have read in 2013 and I'm so glad it was this one and no other. How beautifully stated. Yes, we need a new story. All of humanity, all people need to rethink their stories of the world, so that we can start to live without fear, without violence, and with love and with respect for all including human animals, non-human animals and nature.

Hamba kahle Russell Means

The only possible opening for a statement like this is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of "legitimate thinking": what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world's ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.

This is the opening paragraph of an article "written" by Means in 1980: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/russell-means-mother-jones-interview-1980 

Russell Charles Means (November 10, 1939 – October 22, 2012) was an Oglala Sioux activist for the rights of Native American people and libertarian political activist. He became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) after joining the organization in 1968, and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage. 

Substitute animals

We used to live immersed in the earth. We used to be part of the corporeal earth, along with the other animals, along with the plants, the rocks the dust. Now we are separate, we make concrete models of them and place them in parking lots in strip malls.

Mute, they watch us buying things we don't need, with money we don't have, driving cars we don't own.

This is a tribute to the substitute animals.

http://youtu.be/Ir7FBwn1yPg

The hunter
The lion watches over us
Ever present
The heart of the lion
Coeur de lion

Humans used to have such a heart. Now the human heart is hardened. It is no longer expansive. It can no longer properly connect the body, mind and soul. The heart is ischaemic, it contracts, it gets blocked.

Humans stuff their heads and hang them on the walls of their bars.

Humans hunt them, eat them, devour them and their homes, their places of refuge. Blasting, extracting, drilling and fracking.

Searching for my soul

A thousand lifetimes we have wandered this sacred land
Together
Yet apart
From Timbavati to Amatola, I have known you
But still our lives refuse to collide

Each time we meet, I remember you
Yet the universe conspires to keep us separated
Together
Yet apart
From Tulamela to Tsitsikamma, we have walked side by side
But never have we combined

I have followed your footprints in the sand
Just when I get close, rain washes them away
I have heard your footsteps ten paces behind
But when I turn around, you are a hundred years away

You will always know me, remember me
Together
Yet apart
Decades may pass, but when I see you again, I know it will not be the last
Why oh why are we always separated by time, by space?

Wildesering

Colourful South African ancestry, the search continues

So my paternal ancestors arrived in South Africa on a ship aged 19 and 20 years of age. Yes they were colonisers and I apologise for that, but hell I do exist and it is interesting to know where I come from.

Great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather Stephen (19 years of age at the time) was a labourer and great granny (x8) Mary was 20 years old and according to the ship's list she is not given a profession, she is simply "the spouse" ... go figure?

They had no children. Thank goodness, because babies and young children often died during the 3-month voyage from England to South Africa. The Trollips travelled from Wiltshire to Portsmouth harbour on the coast of England from where they sailed on a ship called The Weymouth to Algoa Bay in the Eastern Cape.

My ancestors were part of the Hyman party. I have come across the group's motivation for why they should be picked to go to South Africa. (Times were tough in England where unemployment had hit an all-time high. There were 90 000 applicants and only 4 000 were accepted, so it's interesting to try and figure why my ancestors' application was accepted.)

Here is the Hyman party's motivation:

THE SETTLER PARTIES
HYMAN'S PARTY
 
No. 30 on the Colonial Department list, led by Charles Hyman, a labourer of Short Street, Westbury, Wiltshire. This was a joint-stock party made up of labouring men and their families from an area that was hard hit by unemployment and excited by the prospects of emigration. Hyman described to the Colonial Department the basis on which his party was formed: 'The eleven men are persons of an irreproachable character, each having some small property and being unwilling to be in actual servitude have unanimously chosen me their Representative - if we are allowed to proceed to the Cape tho', I will not boast of any superior Degree of Wisdom to some of the others (who are my Elders) yet going in this Brotherly way I make no doubt by our joint exertions we shall be able to surmount those difficulties which will naturally be in the way'.

Hyman assured the authorities that he had no selfish motive in assuming the direction of the party, other than 'to become settled on a piece of land I can call my own and Every Person going under my direction will enjoy everything equal with myself.' The parish authorities vouched for his good character, but there is no evidence that they contributed directly to his party's expenses.

Deposits were paid for 11 men who sailed from Portsmouth in HM Store Ship Weymouth on 7 January 1820, arriving in Table Bay on 26 April. Benjamin Trollip obtained employment in Cape Town, where he remained. A son of Daniel Farley was born and died at sea. The Weymouth reached Algoa Bay on 15 May, and the party was located on the right bank of the Lynedoch River, naming its location Standerwick. The three Wiltshire joint-stock parties under Hyman, Ford and James were exceptional among the settlers in remaining virtually intact under their original leaders for the first three years of the settlement; Hyman ascribed this to their 'having encouraged and cultivated a spirit of unamity (sic) amongst each other'.

LIST OF HYMAN'S PARTY
ADAMS, Edward 21. Mason.
DEBNAM, Isaac 38. Weaver. w Mary 39. c Eliza 17, John 16, Ann 13, Isaac 11.
FARLEY, Daniel 28. Labourer and naval pensioner. w Elizabeth 29. c William 5, Sarah 3, Joseph 2,
James (born and died at sea).
HYMAN, Charles 21. Labourer. w Elizabeth 26.
HYMAN, John William 16 (brother of Charles Hyman).
KING, John 23. Labourer and naval pensioner. w Eleanor 24. c John 2, Sarah 1.
NEAT, William 22. Labourer. w Susan 23. c Jane.
TROLLIP, Hester 18 (daughter of Joseph Trollip).
TROLLIP, John 22. Labourer. w Elizabeth 20.
TROLLIP, Joseph 38. Labourer. w Susan 39. c Benjamin 16, Rhoda 13, Jacob 11, Joseph 9, Mary Ann 7.
TROLLIP, Stephen 19. Labourer. w Mary 20.
TROLLIP, William 24. Labourer. w Patience 22. c Alfred 1.
WEAKLY, Joseph 27. Gardener. w Emma 26. c Mary 5, Joseph 3, John 1.

THE SETTLER HANDBOOK by MD Nash
http://www.genealogyworld.net/nash/hyman.html

I'm interested to know my extended ancestry including the De Wet side (my paternal grandmother) and the Venter side (my maternal grandfather) as well as the German settlers in my maternal ancestry (my maternal grandmother) the Kriedemanns came to South Africa in the 19th century from Wollin in East Pomerania in what was then part of Poland, settling along the Eastern border of the Kei River.

German settlements abounded encompassing in addition the current towns of Stutterheim, Cathcart, Berlin, Hamburg, Macleantown and many other smaller settlements that were swallowed up with the establishment of the "Homeland" of Ciskei by the apartheid South African Government which prompted the eviction of the ancestors of the Kaffrarian German Settlers from their historical farms in these districts.

http://www.safrika.org/kaffraria_en.html#BGL

We sure do live in an interesting country!