Am beginning a new book, "Heretics and Heroes" by Thomas Cahill - an author who is able to simplify a vast array of history for the casual reader. This is good for me, usually, but towards the beginning of the book he discusses Columbus's exploitation of the Americas in terms of what is called the Black Legend, and it is a point in history with which I was once an expert. Overall, the book is about how the medieval period ended and the modern era began, something I have been concerned with in this blog on many occasions, as it also marked the beginning of the turn from the spiritual to the material. In Cahill's account of the Spanish exploitation of the Indians, he highlights a pivotal point in that change, but for a reason different from the one I wish to explore.
The Black Legend controversy is Spain's answer to the charge that its Inquisition and enslavement of the Americas was as brutal as historians (largely from Northern Europe) said. The Spanish apologists claim that the north, especially a very hostile England, either exaggerated or holy fabricated the horrors - to make the Spanish Empire look bad. A history professor of mine in undergrad years sided with the Spanish - but my own subsequent research largely verified the legend - the Spanish, indeed, had been horrendous, as Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish priest, confirmed in his extensive notes during the 16th century. In effect, many of he conquistadors were criminals who could not abide by the laws of Spain - and the Spanish royalty was far more concerned with accumulating wealth for power than with any sort of human rights. Where the Legend becomes complicated is in comparing the North's own colonial enterprises favorably with Spain's.
In America we have all too many of these comparisons, and they don't come out favorable to us. Unfortunately, this has led to a Black Legend of its own, with racist overtones - against the Europeans. And this is the second point of the title to this piece, "hole in the dike." In the past half century, we have more and more taken a certain posture on national morality for granted - which states (more and more emphatically) that Americans of old (Euro Americans by in large) were greedy and immoral and murderous. This largely ignores a more populist nation than Spain's, whose citizens were much more responsible for national policy - and who, by and large, were not any more "greedy and immoral and murderous" than anyone else - or were even less so. Laura Ingram of "Little House on the Prairie" fame was a much more common personage than General Custer. Yet the American Black Legend not only persists, but is codified in hate-crime laws and affirmative action policies aimed particularly at Europeans, as if the very DNA is satanic.
And this is the fissure, the hole in the dike. Consider: it is NOT universal law that has condemned European behavior during the colonial period and beyond, but rather European morality itself. It was, for instance, at the insistence of the European, and later American, powers that slavery was outlawed worldwide. Elsewhere, it existed in every civilized (complex) society in the world, with little or no fanfare or complaint. Even in the New Testament, slavery is simply taken for granted. But it was in the consideration of the New Testament, particularly the golden rule of treating others as one would like to be treated oneself, where the fissure was formed. While the political mind was often kept blissfully schizophrenic about such matters, more and more people began to see the discrepancies between power and Christianity, which was magnified many fold in the colonial period. In this, the average citizen became more and more confused about the righteousness of his own culture. Many began a tradition of self (cultural) hatred, which has found a comfortable home in modern Marxism, with its racist and sexist emphases.
In short, the European and Euro-American cultures had within themselves the very seeds of their destruction - with a lust and means for power countered at the core by a moral condemnation of those desires. Now we have a hole in the dike that is spreading beyond repair - so that even the moral roots of the culture are demonized for their evil designs (although well-hidden at times) for hegemony and control.
It is anyone's guess what is coming to replace this (and I could go on and on with guessing, but will save that for other blogs), but within this short history of colonial Europe we can see the larger history of civilization itself. Once any society moves beyond the family, or band, level, it becomes, in Anthropological terms, "diachronic," that is, mobile and mutable. Such an atmosphere of change is brought about, as the theory goes, by imbalances of power that are built into the system. Whether or not this is the case, it is true of civilized society - that it carries the seeds of its own destruction within itself.
How to make a balanced, long-lived and healthy society? That is what many are reaching for today, including many of the European self-haters who are actively trying to destroy what is left of Euro culture. But it has always seemed to me that it can never be achieved by haters - and never, especially, by power. It has to come from the spirit. To affect that, spirit must be raised at the popular level. This may be helped by aiding the sick and the poor, so that they might rise above the level of mere survival, but at heart and at all times, it must be the spirit that is entrained. That is what is at the heart of the New Age and all the worthy religions, and what we talk most about here. Paradoxically, it was spirit that helped cause the Euro hole in the dike - and it can only be with spirit that a society can be made that is not so torn. However, it will be a long time coming before China, say, installs the Dali Lama as leader of the East - another factor to consider, for what is sought now must be, of necessity, global in extant; global without power hierarchies - certainly a miracle requiring spirit. FK
The Black Legend controversy is Spain's answer to the charge that its Inquisition and enslavement of the Americas was as brutal as historians (largely from Northern Europe) said. The Spanish apologists claim that the north, especially a very hostile England, either exaggerated or holy fabricated the horrors - to make the Spanish Empire look bad. A history professor of mine in undergrad years sided with the Spanish - but my own subsequent research largely verified the legend - the Spanish, indeed, had been horrendous, as Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish priest, confirmed in his extensive notes during the 16th century. In effect, many of he conquistadors were criminals who could not abide by the laws of Spain - and the Spanish royalty was far more concerned with accumulating wealth for power than with any sort of human rights. Where the Legend becomes complicated is in comparing the North's own colonial enterprises favorably with Spain's.
In America we have all too many of these comparisons, and they don't come out favorable to us. Unfortunately, this has led to a Black Legend of its own, with racist overtones - against the Europeans. And this is the second point of the title to this piece, "hole in the dike." In the past half century, we have more and more taken a certain posture on national morality for granted - which states (more and more emphatically) that Americans of old (Euro Americans by in large) were greedy and immoral and murderous. This largely ignores a more populist nation than Spain's, whose citizens were much more responsible for national policy - and who, by and large, were not any more "greedy and immoral and murderous" than anyone else - or were even less so. Laura Ingram of "Little House on the Prairie" fame was a much more common personage than General Custer. Yet the American Black Legend not only persists, but is codified in hate-crime laws and affirmative action policies aimed particularly at Europeans, as if the very DNA is satanic.
And this is the fissure, the hole in the dike. Consider: it is NOT universal law that has condemned European behavior during the colonial period and beyond, but rather European morality itself. It was, for instance, at the insistence of the European, and later American, powers that slavery was outlawed worldwide. Elsewhere, it existed in every civilized (complex) society in the world, with little or no fanfare or complaint. Even in the New Testament, slavery is simply taken for granted. But it was in the consideration of the New Testament, particularly the golden rule of treating others as one would like to be treated oneself, where the fissure was formed. While the political mind was often kept blissfully schizophrenic about such matters, more and more people began to see the discrepancies between power and Christianity, which was magnified many fold in the colonial period. In this, the average citizen became more and more confused about the righteousness of his own culture. Many began a tradition of self (cultural) hatred, which has found a comfortable home in modern Marxism, with its racist and sexist emphases.
In short, the European and Euro-American cultures had within themselves the very seeds of their destruction - with a lust and means for power countered at the core by a moral condemnation of those desires. Now we have a hole in the dike that is spreading beyond repair - so that even the moral roots of the culture are demonized for their evil designs (although well-hidden at times) for hegemony and control.
It is anyone's guess what is coming to replace this (and I could go on and on with guessing, but will save that for other blogs), but within this short history of colonial Europe we can see the larger history of civilization itself. Once any society moves beyond the family, or band, level, it becomes, in Anthropological terms, "diachronic," that is, mobile and mutable. Such an atmosphere of change is brought about, as the theory goes, by imbalances of power that are built into the system. Whether or not this is the case, it is true of civilized society - that it carries the seeds of its own destruction within itself.
How to make a balanced, long-lived and healthy society? That is what many are reaching for today, including many of the European self-haters who are actively trying to destroy what is left of Euro culture. But it has always seemed to me that it can never be achieved by haters - and never, especially, by power. It has to come from the spirit. To affect that, spirit must be raised at the popular level. This may be helped by aiding the sick and the poor, so that they might rise above the level of mere survival, but at heart and at all times, it must be the spirit that is entrained. That is what is at the heart of the New Age and all the worthy religions, and what we talk most about here. Paradoxically, it was spirit that helped cause the Euro hole in the dike - and it can only be with spirit that a society can be made that is not so torn. However, it will be a long time coming before China, say, installs the Dali Lama as leader of the East - another factor to consider, for what is sought now must be, of necessity, global in extant; global without power hierarchies - certainly a miracle requiring spirit. FK
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