Why Our Civilization Is Insane

The Mad Hatter's Tea PartyIn his introduction to “Columbus and Other Cannibals,” by Jack Forbes, Derrick Jenson writes that he thinks this is “the most important book ever written on one of the most important topics ever faced by human beings: why is the dominant culture so excruciatingly, relentlessly, insanely, genocidally, ecocidally, suicidally destructive? … How could any group of people, no matter how insane, no matter how stupid, actually destroy the planet on which (or rather, whom) they live?"1  Its a good question. I doubt that anyone has a complete answer, and surely I do not claim to. But if we are to have any hope of curing this illness, then perhaps we need a better understanding of its nature and causes. The purpose of this essay is to make a contribution to this understanding.

The full title of Jack Forbe's book is “Columbus and other Cannibals: the Wetiko disease of Exploitation, Imperialism and Terrorism.”  As a Native American,  Forbes writes as a member of a culture that has seen the full fury of western insanity.  The central thesis of his book is that western civilization has suffered for centuries from a mental/spiritual disease he calls by the Native American term “Wetiko” --  a Cree term which means "cannibal" or a person who terrorizes his neighbors with violent acts. He goes on to explain: "Cannibalism, as I define it, is the consuming of another's life for ones own private purpose or profit" 2 In western parlance, we in the dominant civilization on the planet are collectively insane.  

Perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of this madness is found in the words of Christopher Columbus in his description of his first astonishing encounter with Native Americans.

"The lands... are all most beautiful... and full of trees of a thousand kinds, so lofty that they seem to reach the sky. And some of them were in flower, some in fruit, some in another stage according to their kind. And the nightingale was singing, and other birds of a thousand sorts, in the month of November... The people of this island, and all of the others I have found and seen... all go naked, men and women... they are artless and generous with what they have, to such a degree as no one would believe but he who had seen it. Of anything they have, if it be asked for, they never say no, but do rather invite the person to accept it, and show as much lovingness as though they would give their hearts... they believed very firmly that I, with these ships and crew, came from the sky; and in such opinion they received me at every place where I landed, after they had lost their terror. And this comes not because they are ignorant; on the contrary, they are men of very subtle wit, who navigate all those seas, and who give a marvelously good account of everything... And as soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island that I found, I took some of them by force, to the intent that they should learn and give me information of what there was in these parts. And so it was, that very soon they understood and we them, by what speech or by what signs... To this day I carry them who are still of the opinion that I come from heaven, from much conversation which they had with me. And they were the first to proclaim it whenever I arrived; and the others went running from house to house and to the neighboring villages, with loud cries of "Come! Come see the people from heaven!..."
And he adds,

"These people are very unskilled in arms... with fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished..." 3