We were so large in numbers we became expendable, easily replaced. A whole continent of people could be used to work the land, to be the tools used to get resources that create what human being need to live (stay alive) and to live well (in comfort). Then came greed as by product of human insecurities - the need to feel better than, more important than another. The best ways to feed ones greed is to control the source from which all things come. On Earth, those two things would be God and Land.
The land provides what we need to eat, drink, cover our bodies, protect us from the winds and rains of heaven. All that we put in our bodies to keep us alive come from plants and animals, in its rawest form. The plants and animals require fresh water as so do we.
The supply chain was designed and evolved to give life and sustain our lives and it has been disrespected, ignored, and taken advantage of. Rarely do we think about where our needs come from, the root source of the things we use daily. We have simply been getting what we need, often to the point that excess, because we arrogantly believe it is owed to us because we pay taxes alone.
Paying taxes is a function of every member of a society and each citizen member should have the highest of expectations for a return on the investment of their tax dollars into their local, state, and federal governments. However, the function of the government on behalf of the citizenry has always been fragile.
We are sliding deeper into the realization of our fragility as a nation, true. But, we are also falling deeper into the realization of our fragility as human beings - a fragility brought on in part by arrogance and self indulgence in our belief in American exceptionalism and our pursuit of an American Dream.
Individuals are a part of different kinds of groups. The first being the family.
Families form clans.
Clans from tribes
Tribes form territories
Territories become states.
States become nations.
Tribalism is used as a derogatory term.
American exceptionalism is an insidious form of tribalism. It says that being 'American' makes one special, better than others because material wealth and ideas that have not been fully enacted or attained.
The American Dream is the idea that all people can lift themselves up out of situations to live a life of leisure and comfort and make choices about how they want to function or exist in the world. One can dream while asleep or dream while awake. Sleep dreaming is random, uncontrolled thoughts and images that come to a person. Wake dreaming is (or can be) controlled thoughts and ideas had while eyes or open looking or staring at images. Wake dreaming can be what people with "vision" do when they are planning their next moves, their future. Some of us can see to the next hour, others the next day, and others to the next 10 years or the next 7 generations.
Some of us went to bed, fell asleep peacefully, with the hope of waking up from our sleep to a new day.
Others of us were knocked in the head, fell unconscious, to wake up to traumas of the unknown, not an unknown at the hands of the universe and its mysteries, but the unknown of humankind, the kind of humans that salivate to commit acts of savagery on the lives of those different from them.
