Yesterday we spent part of the evening with some of the San (bushmen) people of the Kalahari desert. They spoke to us via an interpreter (in their fantastic click-clicking language) of their traditional ways, and how they survived in this harsh environment for millennia. The San have always been my favourite culture/people based on readings and documentaries, and it was awe-inspiring to spend a bit of time with them. These ancestral people survived for thousands of years as hunter-gatherers (actually living in a balanced and harmonious way with nature), until the white/European colonialists came and forcibly displaced them. Since then the San have had a very difficult time - today we drove by a more modernized settlement where, their culture eroded and their traditional lands stolen, they have developed significant social problems (eg rampant alcohol abuse). This story is all too familiar - the same thing has happened for example with Native American peoples and Australian Aboriginals. The San we met last night are able to maintain many of their traditional ways by showing foreigners how they live or used to live. They felt happy and natural and seemed to be having fun proudly showing us healing herbs, how to hunt and gather, make fire and soften leather, etc. It was very cool to see and learn and be around them. They seemed to me a far gentler people, connected to the earth without being sappy about it. The oldest man in the group (I can't pronounce his name) is an accomplished hunter who did not know how old he was, except to say he remembers a time when white people just used ox-wagons.
The more I learn about African history the more I feel that the arrogance and greed of the colonial (and unfettered capitalist) attitude, in all its varied past and ongoing forms, is one of the most destructive and uglifying evils there is. It's the attitude that the earth, its creatures and plants and (especially native) peoples are all there for the taking. The belief that the earth is ours rather than that we are of the earth. The belief that militaristic might is right. Africa had some problems before the white man came (eg the pre-existing African slave trade facilitated the colonial slave trade). However, a lion's share of the reason so much of Africa is in a heartbreaking shambles has to do with what Europeans started doing here centuries ago. This exploitation is still going on now - much of Africa is still an economic colony and garbage dump for the developed world - and even where it isn't what's been left behind is a gaping wound that is still bleeding out. This has happened and is happening, in one way or another, all over the world. That the planet's on fire (or flooding, or whatever other calamity) is no surprise.
The more I learn about African history the more I feel that the arrogance and greed of the colonial (and unfettered capitalist) attitude, in all its varied past and ongoing forms, is one of the most destructive and uglifying evils there is. It's the attitude that the earth, its creatures and plants and (especially native) peoples are all there for the taking. The belief that the earth is ours rather than that we are of the earth. The belief that militaristic might is right. Africa had some problems before the white man came (eg the pre-existing African slave trade facilitated the colonial slave trade). However, a lion's share of the reason so much of Africa is in a heartbreaking shambles has to do with what Europeans started doing here centuries ago. This exploitation is still going on now - much of Africa is still an economic colony and garbage dump for the developed world - and even where it isn't what's been left behind is a gaping wound that is still bleeding out. This has happened and is happening, in one way or another, all over the world. That the planet's on fire (or flooding, or whatever other calamity) is no surprise.