Praying and Preying

Teotonio R. de Souza
http://www.readwhere.com/read/c/5848958 (click for the published version)

Among many anecdotes current about the traditionally pious Irish people and their tight-fisted
nature, there is one that conveys well the message of this text: They pray on their knees and
(prey) upon their neighbours.
Unfortunately, the anecdote helps to understand how the animal instinct gets the better of
rationality in the humans. Since the birth of humanity man has been enemy of man.
Technological advances have taken them to the confines of the earth and to the outer space,
but they have also helped to globalize the predatory activity. It is ambiguously termed human
progress.
The Portuguese epic Lusiads, which celebrates the so-called Portuguese Discoveries, sings in
its seventh Canto with some Portuguese bravado, se mais mundo houvera l chegara,
meaning thereby that had there been more of the world they would have discovered it.
The internet portal Good has recently translated the same challenge / achievement less
poetically in a list it elaborated about the most dangerous animals in our world on the basis of
human deaths they cause per year --- after the mosquito-borne malaria that kills 725.000, it is
the humans who occupy the pride of place with 475.000 killings.
Had it not been for invention of Culture this deadly human species would cease to exist long
back, but it has survived the dinossaurs and many other less harmful creatures that appeared
and disappeared on the face of the earth. It is on the basis of such a culture that humans were
declared to be crowning glory of Gods creation, transferring thereby to a supreme being the
responsibility that the humans are as yet unwilling to assume.
The binary praying and preying is forever present as a method of transferring the
responsibility of the misdeeds upon others. The Europeans started the process that has
brought us to the present by appropriating the Asian Christ and placing him in Rome. The
Christianity was made into the essence of Europes Medieval civilization which demonized
Islam since its irruption in the 7th century. Basically they represented contending cultural
values seeking to appropriate wealth, always under cover of religious shenanigans.
The so-called Modernity that followed the age of Enlightenment after crossing the Medieval
dark tunnel, the human ability gained more subtle ways, now called scientific, of denouncing
the resistance to its plundering instinct in the New World as uncivilized and primitive. The
Industrial Revolution enabled the West to overcome the Chinese and Indian market
dominance with limited human labour and use of superior firearms.
Andre Gunder Frank, a freak product of the Chicago School of neo-liberal economics, was a
rare exception. He took history seriously as an economist and sociologist, and spent his lifetime demonstrating that the European modernity was only 500-years old and bound to be
ephemeral, as compared with the 5000-year old Chinese modernity in particular. He defended
in his last book Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (1998) [http://bit.ly/1HRlZBY]
that the Asian giants were about to revert the process and resume their economic power that
permitted Europe to modernize itself.

He puts it graphically when he refers to the European looting of Latin America and West Africa
for their silver and gold in the name of Discoveries in order to buy the ticket for the Asian train.
China and India demanded bullion in payment for their goods in the absence of anything
worthwhile the Europeans had for exchange. We may recall the account of the first meeting of
Vasco da Gama with the Samorin of Calicut. This meeting was made difficult because of
protocol that required exchange of valuable gifts. Vasco da Gama who claimed to be an envoy
of a powerful ruler of Europe had only some scarlet hoods, sugar, honey and olive oil as gifts.
He was told that even the poor merchants of Mecca brought better gifts.
[http://bit.ly/1dPJiOs] We can read in the diary of his voyage that this incident left him
humiliated and depressed. He then cooked up a solution and declared that his was only an
exploratory journey and next time would come with more precious gifts.
Following the Industrial Revolution and use of firearms, they stormed the train and declared
themselves masters of the world-system, laying the foundation of the capitalist economy.
Gunder Frank turns the Eurocentrism on its head, and had he lived till today he may have
enjoyed to see the West and the world community turning to Yoga and its sirsasana!
Incidentally, Dnyan which is the soul of Yoga, became Chan in China and later Zen in Japan
through the Budhist trail that linked the whole of ancient Asia, between c. 200-1200.
To conclude, ever since the Wall St. led western financial capitalism has taken control of the
global economy and political fortunes, we are condemned to see new and subtle forms of
violation of human rights and crimes against humanity, far worse than the chattel slavery
which inaugurated the European modernity. Today it has replaced it with waves of refugees
from the countries where it foments conflicts and orange revolutions, and then bombs them as
a benevolent saviour. Europe can thus have at its disposal a massive flow of illegal and cheap
labour.
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