How the west lost its glory...
Albinos were outcasts but these albinos were different! They - the albinos from the other side of the great divide were glorious to behold – the loose flying hair of all colours and shades, the unrepentant hedonist – – the swash buckling visitor who had no gods - representative all of we always wanted to be but were too cowardly .....too afraid of HIM who had our fate in his palm and dealt a treacherous hand when we stepped ever so slightly out of line.
Albinos were outcasts but these albinos were different!
We had always wanted to treat our gods with disdain because they turned our most begotten dreams to ashes and lent a helping hand only when we made burnt sacrifice of the last of our fattened livestock. We thus quite simply fell in love with him and his feckless ways... his godlessness was refreshing to behold and don't forget - he was a magician of sorts - a spell binder.....he had the stick which belched thunder, he had the great houses which floated on water....he sucked fire into his mouth and burnt his intestines but did not wince - I swear he burnt his insides and his nose was the chimney from which the smoke curled out from his bowels...
...but with the passage of time, lots of it, his magic became boring and common place and all too pervasive and quietly in our hearts we lost our enchantment. We lost our enchantment when we realised that the smiling loose haired visitor was a rogue of sorts. We had welcomed him and had given him land to practice his goodness... but so ungainly was he.... CARAMBA!!...not even one generation had passed...can you believe!... he wanted to be top dog... nay he became top dog and the smiles vanished. He turned out to be mean hearted, had a forked tongue, poor hygiene, and you realised that the great magician like a great work of art, had no soul and above all did everything for money - even the goodness he practised on us was tainted by his love for filthy lucre. He hated his craft but was frozen in his purposes - constrained to perform, and through his magic and wondrous arts sought to steal your soul.
You wonder and say to yourself: This guy cannot be my master! Perfidy! You realise you are probably the stronger in this relationship. You cannot bear to think the thought but realise that his godlessness was the bane of him - the cause of his soulessness.
You thus retrace your steps to your gods, and tell them of your great insight into the weaknesses of the magician. You truly are grateful for the constraints of your traditional ways and the restraints of your mean hearted gods. Grateful for your return, your emboldened gods whisper in your left ear close to your heart:
"He is your servant - destined to carry you through to your final confrontation with destiny. Let him invent those things, pay for them. See how dirty and unkempt he is..."
Emboldened by the voices of your gods, you turn your searchlight on the matter and to your chagrin realise that the half-eyed has somehow talked you into abandoning your purposeful march up destiny's ladder.
Like Etsu, the west-African god of mischief, the magician has tricked you. You have supplanted your destiny for one of consumerism. A destiny where your sense of worth is ultimately determined by sheer volume - your consumption index. You find yourself in a world in which you are condemned to be nothing. Not just in the eyes of all others but in your very own eyes because even you know it. You have little. Little to consume, little to show off with...and Etsu-like, the erstwhile foreigner ensures that you never will – he controls the fabrication of goods... don't you know?? It suits him to have you robbed of your profundity and emotional edge.....ensuring that the master remains a servant - in his very own garden..
Juxtapose the magician against those who have sustained civilisations for many thousands of years whose proud bards still sing and speak with awe of their heritage - of "ancient glamour keeping their youth", I speak of the land of Mencius...speaking of which we cannot but notice that the 'Mencians' have risen out of a fate prescribed for them by the magicians and also how the magicians (envious behind their masks) had only recently wished to draw them into war (over a spy plane) - in order no doubt to have a reason to destroy that which has been built by superior purposes and nobler endeavours..... The magicians like their ancestors seek to convince the rest of the world that the discredited, the puerile, the meaningless chaff which surround us are our gift from heaven - that to hanker for God, for things spiritual is to cop out.
The West has lost its glory. It lost it when it offered everything for the senses but nothing for the soul. It lost its glory when
the sad, the sullen eyed, the befuddled, the struggling are still today being stolen from and insulted with donated aid.
They no longer steal at musket point from the wretched of the earth - this they do by economic sleight of hand
which ensured perpetual servitude for those who groan twice - under the yoke of circumstance and under the yoke of the dispossessor. The West must rid itself of its filth - buy its glory back - and literally repay the hundreds of billions of dollars for all the wealth – human and natural stolen from all God's children (From the valleys of Montezuma to the 'verdant valleys' of Shaka the Zulu).
The brave new world promised by the technological marvels of the age has simply not materialised and our collectively stupidity as a race is underlined by the emptiness of the world we have tried to create. I hate the situation I find myself in: cursed to write and forever postulate here in the hidden rooms of my hidden heart.
I hate writing!
'On whose side is God on?' I once heard the BBC ask a Sage. 'On the side of suffering humanity', he had answered.
I hope he is damn right!!
