The Flowers Of Wrath
On great evil, our dharma to fight that evil, and also the deep hopelessness of it all
The actual western development model is to steal from the rest of the world, which obviously isn’t going to work for the rest of the world. So they made some shit up about a development model which they never followed and used it to gaslight us into another few decades of exploitation.
The actual western environmental model is to steal from the future, which obviously isn’t going to work for the future. So they make some shit up about a ‘green’ capitalism which isn’t possible and are using it for another few decades of degradation more.
The actual enemy is, of course, them, the people that have invaded multiple countries, couped innumerable, dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, tortured quite publicly, and even impoverish their own people. But these oligarchs hide in plain sight, their reputations laundered by expensive universities and presses and think tanks. The governments they bought get branded as democracies and any alternative is autocracy to be feared, sanctioned, and ideally bombed.
The actual enemy is actually within, because we let this shit happen, just as my people let colonialism happen, because we like the stuff and we’ll sell out our poor neighbors to get it, even if it kills even us in the long run.
Indeed the actual enemy is no one because we actually have no control as a species, even our wiser indigenous cultures genocided megafauna as we spread across the continent, and even the arrogantly named homo sapiens seemed to kill the other conversational species of homo. The past few centuries of industrialized genocide have certainly been a crescendo of destruction, but geologically speaking, not an entirely different song.
Then, however, you have to unwind this train of thought to understand the contradiction that while you cannot change anything and while you cannot ultimately blame anyone in particular you must still fulfill your dharma. Like Krishna explaining to Arjuna why he must fight even his relatives, it is yet our duty to fight western civilization for all we’re worth. Because understanding our insignificant place in the world is not a call to do nothing, it is simply a call to fulfill your…
