Confronting the truth of human history is a daunting task
“There are so many ways of being despicable, it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.” James Baldwin
We have committed terrible acts against our fellow humans.
Slavery was a normal practice from the earliest times. Romans, Egyptians. Africans.
Henry Louis Gates, an American historian, suggested that the people who sold Africans into the Transatlantic slave trade were Africans themselves, and without them, the trade would not have been possible. Harming our brothers and sisters is as old as humanity.
In the Pacific Islands, where I was born, cannibalism was normal.
Inca tribes were bloody and cruel. Human sacrifice to the gods happened in many other communities around the world.
Patriarchy was more common than matriarchy.
The Vikings were raiders and pirates. They also enjoyed slavery.
The children in the playground practice bullying and cruelty to anyone who stretches the stereotype of acceptable.
From culture to culture, our history is soaked in cruelty. From Genghis Khan to Alexander the Great, to the Gladiators, to the wars on the British Isles, we have left a bloody wake.
The Indigenous people from what we now call Australia were an exception. Waring was not so common for them.
My partner Tony’s ancestors were thrown, against their will, into boats to sail across hostile seas to a land they did not know. As convicts, they didn’t have a choice.
The Jews and Gypsies have been persecuted for their entire history.
We have terraformed the land. Killed the waterways. Polluted the skies.
We treat immigrants and refugees, particularly black and brown people, as less than human.
And we are determined to remove the Palestinians from the face of the Earth.
We fight and kill over religion, Gods, and the God of Profit.
We have exterminated millions of people for their land. Or to mine silver to enrich our coffers. Or we starve 12 million Indians to death so that the British Empire might Empire more.
We created ovens to consume the bodies of 6 million Jews, Gypsies and Gay people.
If we truly examined the entire bloody arc of human history, we might never feel any hope at all.
There are rare exceptions to our ability to be cruel, to dehumanise, to rape, war, kill, and sacrifice.
We must learn it all. Know it all. The shadow is within us as much as out there. The persecuted so often becomes the persecutor.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin.
And now, knowing, facing, really seeing, we might find the courage to turn our eyes towards a world where all life is sacred. Where we never lose our humanity. Where kindness swallows cruelty.
A Syntropic World. This is my daily prayer.
Photo May 6th 2023, Article written May 17th 2025
