It is true that some sages and yogis, and others, believe that one’s spiritual evolution takes place by making the right sort of vows—vrata in Sanskrit—and keeping those vows (which creates a kind of heat, tapasya in Sanskrit).
There is undoubtedly some truth in this.
Vows are a great thing, assuming they are great vows—and New Year’s Eve is the time we often make them, often stone-cold drunk and vomiting, which is curious in itself.
Nonetheless, these vows, they say, build the spiritual muscle (which is just above the liver) and creates the heat (tapas) to burn away that which is not needed—that, in fact, which is not you.
At least not any more.
But either way, one needs to relax and breathe to be one’s self, too. This is so important—and , garl darn it, you’re worth it. Even in meditation. Just let the tummy relax. I never relaxed my tummy until I was 38, and that was simply from exhaustion. And even now, I have to remember.
So I wrote this little blog to wish you fantastic love and clarity in the New Year, but also to pass on something I perused in the Utne Reader, which is taken from the Journal of the American Medical Association, November 7, 2007, (so it has to be true):
Overweight people have lower mortality rates than those in all other weight categories (underweight, normal, and obese) and are less likely to die from certain illnesses, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and respiratory disease.
Be happy, you’re beautiful. I am now breathing, relaxing my tummy, smiling—and also panicking, because I’m not at all ready to go out, and my beloved is.
Here’s one of two poems I wrote on a bus ride back from a beautiful family Christmas, on a road towards the New Year…
PRESENT TENSE
When families gather
there are more than presents
under the Christmas tree
waiting to be opened
more than decorations
shining light
on the flow of time
on loved ones
as gift-wrapped packets
of who we think we are
and who we’ve yet to become
fill the room
parcels of belief
tussle on the wings of unspoken words
familiarity surrounds us
a blanket of well-worn laughter
warming up
past glories and new stories
of beings not yet with us
and others long gone
family ties tied with bulging bows
unwrap countless combinations
of being
except for being
something other than the family plan
where presents arrive
as things you want
and things you want to be
and either way
checkered pasts and checkered pants
can always be returned
for a second chance at love
or at least fashion
mince tarts sweeten minced words
as everybody talks turkey
about books on the art of loving
and Empires crashing
stubbing egos
on fruitcake
a fight breaks out!
and fades away
we remember
skating outdoors
on a lake that once swam
with present-day memories
life is not easy
parental sacrif-ice
is not just genetics and sweaty nights
but your well-fed expression
yes
all of this
is entirely us and passing
learn what you can
love while eating the course
for we’re all eventually cooked
and stuffed
‘tis true
my beloveds
peer through a deep breath of gratitude
to soothe the wounded attitude
softening tension
in the family web
a trap and a meal
an answer
all-in-one
the source of all gifts
and unsustainable wrappings
that will be removed
the eternal present at your resurrection
is gratitude
unattached by the ribbons
of old stories
untie them!
believe me!
you gorgeous soul!
when families gather
and they do
there are more than presents
under the Christmas tree
waiting to be opened
and there is more to all of us
than the story
we give out
In the New Year, may we be as free and beautiful as the box around us allows. Stretch that bow. Stretch that bow!
Lots of love to you and yours—and if you can, always love more,
Speaking of energy, you just have to take a look at this scene from Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You, from 1939! (starting at just after the one minute mark). It’s a four minute, uncut dialogue between Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur.
Boy, the world’s been onto this for awhile. To not have it leading all of our great thinkers, one could almost suggest a conspiracy. Just kidding. But one early line from Jean Arthur—again, 1939, sounds remarkably modern: “…people commercialize on fear. You know, they scare you to death to sell you something you don’t need.”
An excerpt, beginning with Jimmy Stewart:
“[This college friend and I had an idea.] We…we wanted to find out what made the grass grow green. Now that sounds silly and everything, but it’s the biggest research problem in the world today and I’ll tell you why [and he doesn't even mention Iraq!]. Because there’s a tiny little engine in the green of this grass, and in the green of the trees, that has the mysterious gift of being able to take energy from the rays of the sun and store it up.
You see, that’s how the heat and power in coal and oil and wood is stored up.
“Well, we thought if we could find the secret of all those millions of little engines in this green stuff, we could make big ones. And then we could take all the power we’d ever need right from the sun’s rays, you see?“
It hints of nuclear energy, for sure, but it’s all about solar power, with Stewart saying, It’s about taking “all the power we’d ever need from the sun’s rays.” He goes on to say the two of them would work day and night on the research and…
“…if we made just one little discovery we’d walk on air for days.”
Jean Arthur asks:
“Then what?”
Here’s the remarkably revealing answer—in more ways than one—from Stewart.
“Then he left school and now he’s selling automobiles and I’m in some strange thing called banking.“
Who did kill the electric care, anyway?
Here’s the scene:
The dream continues. And don’t forget to do what keeps your beautiful, sustainable energy going too—and what helps you love more. We are incredible systems after all (among other miracles)…
Not a very Christmassy post, but a slight bit of hope for some spending grand portions of their life, and grand portions of taxpayer money, for questionable reasons, behind bars, with little hope.
Not only that, the change has reached the Supreme Court and Newsweek, so a little part of the extreme madness (little thanks to the government, yet again) may finally be being addressed.
An excerpt from an article in Newsweek called The Harm of ‘Get Tough’ Policies:
For two decades, the federal government has pursued, prosecuted and sentenced cocaine offenders in a way that borders on insanity—targeting petty criminals over serious drug dealers—while fostering contempt, instead of respect, for the policies that have sent tens of thousands to jail.
On Monday, the Supreme Court said enough was enough and empowered federal judges to reject sentencing guidelines rooted in hysteria and ignorance. The move has considerable support on the federal bench. It allows judges “who actually see the people and understand the local community,” to better consider their communities’ best interests, said Jack B. Weinstein, a federal district judge in New York.
For lots of information and references on the subject, check out a long essay I wrote called Noam Chomsky On Drugs.
In this time when families get together but also occasionally feel the suitcases of old baggage in the cellar being brought up and opened, may we all give a little more love, and a little more lightness and gratitude to the time together.
Happy Christmas, Happy Solstice—may they follow each other in bringing more light.
I know I’m not Britney Spears (or am I?), but I’ll still do what I can, in the name of humanity, to keep people out of the malls. And when or if you give one, two or, yes, even the full three CD pack of CDs to someone, and they stare at you blankly, like, “You cheap bastard,” just stare back confidently and say, “Man, he’s the hottest thing in Canada.”
Now, I’m actually only occasionally whispered about amongst a small group of friends, but who needs to know?
This set of three CDs actually includes my un-mastered, unfinished, only guitar and vocal always popular genre “non-sectarian, somewhat devotional folky” CD, with a little jazz thrown in for just $20.99 or yours today for nuttin’.
Speaking of friends, I sent this song to a friend yesterday, and had to type out the lyrics. It’s an older one, about forgetting our soul and forgetting to feed our soul, the cost of inflation and how it shrinks the Little Guy/Girl, not realising that what we do economically might seem good to us, but actually hurts us in the end and so on—all against the backdrop of a circus.
The kids’ voices at the end are my two nephews, now nearly teenagers. It’s called the Little Guy. Press here to listen, and the lyrics are below.
The Little Guy
History spins like a carnival real
Nobody knows for certain what is real
Hear ye all and bring out your kin
Open your eyes and the circus will begin
The strongman is lifting elephants with ease
The Riposoff Brothers are on the flying trapeze
And the show you’ve all been dying to see
It boggles the mind and defies gravity
So subtle it’s almost sublime
It’s the Little Guy getting smaller all the time
How does he do it well nobody knows
But he’s shrinking as fast as the fat lady grows
He’s shrinking into his stage right disguise
He’s shrinking as fast as, say, bank profits rise
The circus crowd cheers, stands and it sighs
Smiling but disbelieving their eyes
The ringmaster cries: “This is not in your mind!”
The Little Guy is getting smaller all the time
“Ma,” said a girl in the crowd, “What I fear…could the Little Guy get so small to just disappear?” And her mother smiled as mothers often do, and said, “Oh my sweet little child, listen to you…”
And the clowns and the jugglers all sing, “La la la la la…”
When the Little Guy shrank so small to be gone
I clapped my hands but I sensed something wrong
The ringmaster bowed and the crowd it did rise
The theatre was spinning before my eyes
Sick to my stomach my legs they went bandy
I blamed it on the malt and the pink cotton candy
I ran to the restroom and the answer was clear
When the back wall was all that I saw in the mirror
It was oh so painful to see
That the Little Guy who disappeared turned out to be me
Yeah, the Little Guy who disappeared turned out to be me
Oh, the Little Guy who disappeared turned out to be me
By the way, great thanks and love to anyone who’s read or written—it’s been fun and I’ve learned a lot.
Lots of holiday love to you, wherever you are, whatever you’re dreaming. If it all gets too crazy, sneak away and write a poem about it. It’ll help your soul from feeling too small.
Question: When and why did we (as adult humans) choose to become reserved, less free to express big (jofyful) emotions, and is this choice really us—or just an unnecessary joy inhibitor?
Be the change in the world you wish to see.
—Mohandas “Mahatma” Ghandi
Mahatma means great (maha) soul (atma). A great soul is one who sees things with a more and more expannsive view than others—one who can care about more people, understand more people, love more people. “No longer love your neighbour, love your enemy.” Now that’s meditation.
Despite a largely insane world that no one can truly grasp, let alone shift, I had for me the most wonderful li’l music concert last night…overwhelmed with joy and love and devotion with sisters and brothers. Goddess, that’s a big, fat beautiful emotion to hold, breathe in, believe in, make an asana out of (ah yes, to make an asana of one’s self). Bigger love. More love. Bigger love.
I only sang three songs, but it turned into a bit of a love fest.
The first song was the new one, I’m pretty sure, finally finished. These lyrics:
The earth is round spinning through sky
And I don’t know why we’re not crashing
Spinning through sky and we don’t fall off
God knows why we’re all not laughing
Will the mystery lead you to love or doubt?
Or a little of both shouting it out?
Will the beauty of it all tear your soul apart?
Or fill you with wonder and light up your heart?
Let it light up your heart
In Darwin’s eyes we are a curse
For what could be worse than self-reflection?
To be obsessed with love, beauty and faith
When what works best here is defend and mate
Will the mystery lead you to love or doubt?
In the middle of the night does it toss you about?
Will the beauty of it all be your guiding light?
When darkness takes over can you keep love in sight?
Keep it in sight!
I want to be sure of a love so pure
But we’re so mixed up in a world
That has no cure
No cure
We know the source of the River Nile
But what’s the Source of your beautiful smile?
Why are we here at all?
Evolution, carry on—love is my call
Love is my call!
Will the mystery lead you to love or doubt?
Or a little of both shouting it out?
Will the beauty of it all be your ecstasy?
Will it put you in chains or set you free
Let it set you free
I want love you right now all night somehow!
Somehow…
The earth is round spinning through sky
And I don’t know why we’re not crashing
We should be laughing
Speaking of Bigger emotions—and believing in them, and old poem.
IN THE LAND OF BIG EMOTIONS
In the land of big emotions
Little tears are joyful oceans
Handshakes are shaken loose and free
Into embraces eternally
Making love is wild surrender
With every gasp a Divine remember
Friends and lovers are brought inside
Ecstatic joy will never hide
A flower blooms to wild applause
Every miracle is given pause
To dance in bliss as a world spins by
Laughter fills the endless sky
Even sorrow pours every thing
Into the joy it’s bound to bring
Ancient stories of wicked lies
Are overcome with sudden cries
That spin their wildness into bliss
Where every glance is a secret kiss
In the land of big emotion
Every breath is sweet devotion
Every retraction is just a trip
Of going in to get a grip
On the joy and bliss and mystery
Bursting forth into the sea
To smother death without a trace
And see again your lover’s face
So remember next time hurt is near
Hurts are not as they appear
Endless beauty is not illusion
That’s just a frightened mind delusion
Thus gods and lovers don’t debate
They much prefer to celebrate
With all the world or in seclusion
They always reach the same conclusion
Yes, in the land of Big Emotions
Tears are truly joyful oceans
I know, I know…but if we can’t dream…and anyway, you are beautiful, you are joy…
Write poetry, write something (or dance, draw, design, scribble, doodle or noodle something, just let it out, set it free, what the hell)…We’re temporary here. People will only laugh at you for so long…
A little add-on to The Mission Blog I wrote. In the film commentary, director Roland Joffé mentioned that the Waunana, with money from the acting work they did, put together a document with their sister tribe, the Emberá.
Addressed to the Colombian President, it read as follows (paraphrased by Joffé):
“They created a federation which was called the Federation of the Waunana and Emberá of the lower Chocó. And they got some kind of agreement from the President of Colombia that they would be allowed to live in that jungle. And what they said was…
“You look after things that fly in the sky and that run along roads and we look after things that grow. This is the way God intended for it to be. Let us live in our jungle to tend the things that live.”
That was their letter to the President. And that letter was written in 1985—and we’re looking at a film that was 250 years before that [about decimating indigenous peoples].”
Isn’t that a beautiful request? Isn’t that a wonderful reminder that we are living beings, on a living planet, in a living universe, bathed in a living mystery called love?
Yes, the title sounds like a lonely man with a chronic addiction trying to look on the bright side of being member-disadvantaged. Actually, I’m talking about limiting consumption—and Small is Beautiful is a reference to E.F. Schumacher’s legendary economic book from the 70s of that title.
Me, I just really like second-hand clothes. They make me happy. I like the thought of them. Of not being new. I don’t know why. Either because my dad grew up in the depression or I’m suffering from depression (I’m not, fortunately), but I’m 42, and I like second-hand clothes and a napsack—and movies from the library. Forty-two! The instincts of a mogul I do not have.
Plus my beloved, brilliant, gorgeous girlfriend has way better taste than I, and also gravitates towards second hand clothes, so I end up looking pretty good. When she brings a shirt home and just says, “Eight bucks”—I already like it.
CONSUMING IDEOLOGY
As for consumption, some would say, at this point in the world, less is better—much better. Here’s a satirical piece called Greensumption that points this out.
I love when things last. I really do. Remember the old telephones? Granted, there was no call display, and they weighed about four hundred pounds, but they lasted—decades, literally. They still work. And they never went off in theatres.
Today, a year and a half in and the buttons on my Panasonic cordless (after cordless after cordless) no longer push down the number seven and three, the battery’s a bust, and the warranty’s in some drawer I’ll never find although I paid the extra thirty bucks and, well, I know you know the story.
Isn’t it interesting to think that the computer is seen as the height of technological progress, efficiency and a less-work future and yet there has very likely never been, in the history of humanity, any invention with such immediate mass obsolescence built in. Not to mention with largely unrecyclable, toxic parts.
And I know, I know, they create less paper. That’s good—except I like paper. I love books.
And I’m not saying the computer isn’t one of the answers for a better future, of course (and they are getting smaller), but work day hours are not diminishing and people do not appear to be getting along better or communicating more sweetly. Personally, I still believe in a more expansive kindness as an answer.
The endless release of new personal computer/ipod models is on some level a sort of international disgrace—or at least a prize example of a human being’s insatiable addictions. And here I am using yet another one to write this blog.
Ah, information. I can not live without it. I am nothing without it. I am a series of thoughts—thus more thoughts make more me! And the chance to have a voice. A voice! I have no voice without it!
Rumi wrote (this, of course, a translation):
Quietness
Inside this new love, die
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into colour.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick clouds.
Slide out the side.
Die, and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running from silence.
The speechless full moon comes out now.
My guess is that eventually, with evolution and no need to communicate in ways other than email etc, the human voice box will slowly diminish and digitize until we all sound like the great Stephen Hawking. Our bodies might go that way, too, hunched, with giant bursas in our mostly right shoulders, squished little lower spines (forming a thick nob of a tail), pasty faces and squinty little eyes—although we should remember that Hawking is burdened by the brutality of ALS, not addictive imposed non-movement.
I just asked a kid yesterday what his favourite thing in the world to do is, if he didn’t have to do anything:
Yep, video games. Then he shot me. Okay, he didn’t shoot me, but you never know. He was older than six, after all.
Good going, science! Well done! So glad you’re not causing any damage, like those religous zealots across the globe.
Sorry, gotta go, my battery’s dying…ha ha ha! I should walk, I need to walk, I must…but what if I have email? What if it changes my life? Email and second hand clothes…no, go towards the green, go towards…but what about research, and news, and things…things…I need more things…
Man, am I on the grid.
Lots of love to you—and me, and all beings hammered by excessive consumption.
Pete xoxo
PS Does anybody know if it’s possible to add wind energy to work effectively with a house in a city? Just a passing thought. Drop me a note. Send it in code. Good luck. Stay sane. You are beautiful.
Being in pre-production for a film right now, I have become obsessed, yet again, with film, and what it can bring to our journey, how it can serve, inspire, and fill us with emotion about the thickness and wonder of existence—and remind us of the individual and collective journey of humans, and other beings.
I just saw the film The Mission for the second or maybe third time in my life, many years between—and its nuance and subtly and message were deepened on many levels—although debate about its value has always been hotly contested (as usual, I’m about twenty or so years behind the times).
Some say it’s just confused with no center, no clarity, no one specifically to root for (that seems to me unavoidable in this particular setting, although I was fully behind the Guaraní people being free—the rest, noble-intentioned or not, were at the least, arrogantly imposing their views, or worse, in the depths of human degradation, imposing slavery etc).
Others say the film defends missionary Christianity as well-intentioned, ignoring the brutality of its imposition and proselytizing on cultures all over the world.
Others say it’s a defense of Marxist-oriented Liberation Theology (see the point on Liberation Theology from Chomsky farther down).
Others say the aggrieved voice of the Indians is ignored (that’s a given no matter what, anyway, historically, massively, spiritually, physically, environmentally, endlessly).
And so on.
Based on so-called true events from 1750, the film re-tells one moment in the colonial battles between Spain and Portugal in South America (specifically the borders of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil), at a time when the oil of the day was gold and slaves.
THE WAUNANA
Perhaps ironically, it wasn’t the DeNiro or Jeremy Irons characters, or any other famous character, that held my attention.
The indigenous people in the film, the Guaraní, were mesmerizing, and were actually “played” by the ongoingly threatened Waunana people of South America (mostly Colombia)—who, according to director Roland Joffé in the commentary, had barely if ever seen a white person before.
As for the Guaraní people, historically at the beginning of the 1600s, being decimated and brutalized by the influx of slave-traders, they fled to the missions (whose goal was to “convert and civilize” the indigenous people) as a last vestige of protection from slavery.
In the making of the film, although the Waunana can’t read—and thus couldn’t read the script for the Mission—their individual responses to the scenes were revealed so often with such natural emotion and nuance, you’d swear they just came out of Julliard.
The relaxed flow of their bodies in their nakedness, in their movements, is enough to make a stiff-backed former Englisher exhale deeply and say, “Wow, that relaxed tummy belongs to a fellow sister (or brother). How do they do that?”
I’m tight, man. Hamstrings. Back. Shoulders.
UNSTONED
After the film was complete, a few of the Waunana actors wanted to visit New York and London. They went with Joffé, and what one of them said after a while is so revealing, and reminds me of what I was trying to say in a piece I posted as a blog a while back.
The comment paraphrased by Joffé:
…in the end they said they wanted to go home. They said: “We really admire your people, Roland, because you are so skillful with stone. But we feel we are people who are skillful with living things like trees and plants, and we find so much dead material oppressive. Can we go back?”
There is a balance yearning to be discovered, lived, remembered.
THE FLOW OF BEING(S)
I was further reminded that actually, yes, all sorts of relationships are possible in this world: with people, art, stone and text books, of course. But even more deeply, with plants, soil, animals and, dare I say, the divine—depending on where one is raised, and how, and depending on one’s propensity and any number of other mysteries.
From the World Culture Encyclopedia, describing Emberá spirituality:
White people interpret the jai [which the Waunana describe as the essence of things, natural phenomena, animals, and people, and are manifested as animals] as spirits because they are purported to exist invisibly. The Emberá (sister tribe to the Waunana) are emphatic in their belief that the jai are material forces or energies.
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
The trailer from the film and scenes of the Waunana—justice is not done on youtube, check out the DVD. The Waunana, incidentally, use the same word for good and beautiful, which is kind of interesting.
When the film was screened on the mammoth forty foot screen, one of the Waunana stood up with his hands in the air saying how beautiful the Waunana are.
Watching the piece below, out of context, the famous Christian choir-like score from Ennio Morricone, as gorgeous as it is, may for some at times be challenging as a back drop, if one considers the effects of colonization—physical and spiritual—on indigenous people, and the environment, on all of us, all over the world, and continuing in myriad forms of exploitation, at the cost of love, dignity and sustainability.
We are beautiful, garl darnit! Just to remember, here’s Wide Open.
CONTRA TO POPULAR BELIEF
The film came out in 1986, right in the thick of the Iran Contra affair, and when the post script comes up, one can’t help but think of the Liberation Theology that was taking place in Central America at the time—the church in pockets fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised and oppressed campesinos.
The postscript:
“The Indians of South America are still engaged in a struggle to defend their land and culture.
Many of the priests who, inspired by faith and love, continue to support the rights of the Indians for justice, do so with their lives.”
And one can’t help but think of slain archbishop Óscar Romero—which also became a film, titled by his last name.
That fight for the oppressed—what I would call the good fight—has always been brutally suppressed or contested by various forces, with the State, the invader, the Vatican, economic ideology and foreign powers almost always pitted against the cause for freedom of the indigenous people.
Chomsky: Well, it’s a long story actually. I mean, look, the first couple of centuries of the Church, it was a church of the poor. It was a revolutionary church of the poor. That’s what the gospels are about. When you read the gospels, that’s what they say.
There’s an interesting moment in the film (set in the 1750s) when Altamirano, the Cardinal, has to decide whether the missions can remain in place (which is a conflicted question in the first place). Anyway, he is surveying one of the missions, and winds up in conversation with one of the Jesuit priests there, Ibaye:
Altamirano: “What was your income last year, Father?”
Ibaye: “Last year, a hundred and twenty-thousand escudos.”
Altamirano: “How was it distributed?”
Ibaye: “It is shared among them equally [the natives in the mission]. This is a community.”
Altamirano: “Ah. Yes, yes, there is a French radical group that teaches that doctrine.”
Ibaye: “Your Eminence, it was a doctrine of the early Christians.”
Altamirano: “Well, I am inexpressibly impressed by your achievements, Father.”
Ibaye: “And will that save us, Father?”
Altamirano: “I hope it may.”
Chomsky:
Chomsky: [The early church] was picked up by the emperor Constantine and he turned it into the church of the rich and the powerful. The cross—which was the symbol of suffering and oppression—became the symbol on the shield of the Roman soldiers. From then on, the church was the Church of the rich and powerful.
It’s changed to some extent—in fact, very dramatically, in Latin America, primarily, in the 1960s and 70s. The church went back to the gospels. It was called the “preferential option for the poor.” Priests and nuns and layworkers were working with peasants and running base communities in which they studied the gospels as they really are.
You know, that caused a violent reaction. The U.S. went to war against the Church in Latin America. I’ve got a picture right back there [points to his wall at a painting of the angel of death standing over Archbishop Óscar Romero and the six murdered Jesuit intellectuals] which describes it. The 1980s, particularly under Reagan, was largely a war against the Catholic Church. A massive war against liberation theology and it’s not hidden.
The ’80s opened in Central America with the murder of an archbishop [Romero], and ended with the murder of six leading Latin American Jesuit intellectuals, all by forces closely linked to the United States or trained and armed by the United States—who meanwhile killed tens of thousands of the usual victims.
The School of the Americas, the famous school that trains Latin American officers, states as one of its talking points, its advertising points: the U.S. Army helped defeat liberation theology. That is, we got the church back to the church of Constantine—not the church of Christ.
The Vatican helped out. They didn’t carry out massacres but they got rid of the troublesome priests who were going out to work with the poor and so forth. This happened all over the world.
Once again, we are inherently beautiful, but that’s not all we are!
If you ever get a chance to sit in meditation and really let your tummy relax, while still being aware of the flow of your breathing, over and over, it creates a wonderful mood and a real bliss. I find myself, in that position, reminded how much I love my sisters and brothers—and this entire miraculous planet.
Love to you and your tummy, and all sisters and brothers, and to the mystery and how little I know,
From Ted Nace’s book Gangs of America, a description of the East India Company, that ravaged India for hundreds of years.
I won’t say much about it. Ted’s description is sufficient—and granted, other writers disagree with his overview. Nonetheless, it’s difficult to deny so many of the brutal facts.
At the time of the American Revolution, the British East India Company was nearly two centuries old, having received its charter on December 31, 1600 via a signature by Queen Elizabeth.
“The Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies,” as it was formally knownor simply “The Company”received the largest grant of any of the trading companies: everything east of the Cape of Good Hope.
Despite the queen’s largess, the company’s early years were difficult. A rival group of Dutch investors had gotten a head start and had access to ten times more capital than the English.
In 1623, the Dutch captured ten employees of the British East India Company in Indonesia, tortured them on the rack, and executed them [how reminiscent of such acts today].
Reluctantly—since Indonesia (known in those days as “East India”) was considered a more lucrative source for trade goods than India—the English retreated to the safer shores of India, whose coastline was large enough to absorb the trading settlements of multiple European powers…
Although scholars disagree about how the legal doctrine of limited liability first emerged in England, one of the first verifiable early sightings was an act of Parliament in 1662 that applied to gentlemen who owned shares in the East India Company or two smaller corporations.
Besides pioneering the use of joint-stock capital and limited liability, the East India Company is historically significant because it was quite simply the most powerful corporation that has ever existed.
Imagine a private company so unaccountable it conducts its own criminal trials and runs its own jails, so dominant it possesses an army larger than any other organized force in the world, and so predatory that for more than two centuries it squeezes the economy of the richest country in the world until observers report that some regions have been “bled white.”
The King is dependent on periodic “loans” from the company. A third of Parliament owns stock in it, and a tax on its tea constitutes ten percent of the government’s revenues.
A 250,000-man army (twice the size of Britain’s) fights the company’s wars, and the four out of five soldiers in that army who are “sepoys,” i.e. Indians, are kept in line by punishments such as “blowing away”strapping an offending soldier across the mouth of a cannon and firing the weapon…[sort of a twist on suicide bombers]
Far from enhancing the prosperity of areas under its umbrella, Pax Brittanica, by all accounts, proved highly ruinous to the unlucky inhabitants of India. In 1773, a Parliamentary committee investigating the Company wrote, “In the East, the laws of society, the laws of nature have been enormously violated. Oppression in every shape has ground the faces of the poor defenseless natives; and tyranny in her bloodless form has stalked abroad.”
In the same year, an anonymous pamphleteer wrote, “Indians tortured to disclose their treasure; cities, towns and villages ransacked, jaghires and provinces purloined: these were the ‘delights’ and ‘religions’ of the Directors and their servants.”
To guard its own revenues, the East India Company issued edicts prohibiting local trading or the development of local industries. Typically the extraction of revenues exceeded sustainable levels, to the point where entire regions became economically broken and socially ruined— reduced from relative health to destitute poverty.
SOURCE: Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (Vintage Books, 1989), 149.
[The above table] shows the devastation suffered by India’s manufacturing sector and the corresponding ascent of Britain’s from 1750, shortly before the East India Company extended its control over most of the subcontinent, to 1880, two decades after Parliament finally terminated the charter of the Company and converted India into a formal colony.
I’ve read Paul Kennedy’s tome—well, most of it. Man, is it thick. I don’t know what this means, but it was suggested reading to me from the monetarily richest person I’d ever met.
Kennedy’s warnings, from 1988, about the signs of an empire crumbling (empires since 1500) are relatively clear, and I paraphrase here: Excessive military expenses, insufficient manufacturing, and excessive consumption—and, I’m serious here, I think excessive influence of religion, too, or maybe that’s my own fear.
I read this passage about India, from Nace, recently, and by writing it down, it always clarifies the information in my brain.
One of my favourite sayings of the great Indian sage, Caitanya, from the 1500s:
We [as souls and humans] are inconceivably, simultaneously one and different.
I can breathe deeply on that, with hope and love for my sisters and brothers. Wishing you great joy and clarity. Now to finish the song I’ve been working on…
The first lines are quite whimsical:
I tried to save the world today but couldn’t find my keys
I started out so hopeful and ended on my knees
But I won’t give up, no
I won’t give up!
‘Cause I’m still learning how to love! I’m still learning how to love…
Are you learning too?
