Be Indigenous
What does Indigenous mean? It means something belongs to a place. And this is key. Something is indigenous is it belongs to a place. But empire has taught us that we do not belong to a place. Empire has taught us that places belong to us. And that is the virus. This idea, that places can belong to us is the seed of empire. The idea that you can own the world is the seed of the Hungry Empire.
You can occupy the world, but it does not belong to you. Look at the vastness of the world. There are an estimated 8.7 million species on earth. There are more than ten thousand species in the human body. We a part of ecosystems and we are ecosystems. The scale of the biosphere engulfs us. Despite our ability to destroy the biosphere, we are not its masters. We are not its owners. It does not belong to us. We belong to it. You belong to it.
Those who defy this fact will inevitably seek or build the Hungry Empire. Inequality is borne from the idea that the world can be owned. kings and slaves spring from the idea that the world can be owned. Extinctions spring from the idea that the world can be owned. This is the seed. This is the root of everything. If you don’t hold this, the empire will rise again. If you don’t this to heart, the empire will not fall.
The world doesn’t need us to protect it. The world does not need us to steward it. The world just needs us to stop trying to rule it. The right of ownership often is held in law to include the right to destroy. And that is what the idea that we can own the world inevitably leads to, destruction. If you define ownership by the right or the ability to destroy something, then the only way you can prove that you own something is by destroying it. And what has the empire been doing to the world? It’s been trying to destroy it. Because we think we own it. And we think the only way we can prove that we own something is to break it.
So. If. If we want to not destroy this world. If we want to retain a world that gives and sustain human life. If we want that. Then we have to give up the thing that is causing us to destroy that. The world doesn’t belong to us. We belong to it.
Belong to the Land.
Recommended Reading
- The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, by David Abram
- Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, by David Abram
- Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, By James Lovelock
- Tao Te Ching by Laozi
Professor Harbinger's School for Villains 