I was watching this documentary called Guns, Germs and Steel the other day and had a small revelation. The idea stayed with me and blossomed little by little into a tiny braid of questions. Queries if you will. The kind I love to pose if only to fulfill my hunger for wonder. First it occured to me, from watching the film, that early civilizations were affected by Westerners in more ways than a million. Ultimately I feel that the people in these communities were literally duped out of their own understanding of self-sufficiency and fulfillment. In the film the narrator, Jared Diamond, said that some of the earlier peoples of New Guinea spent most of their days gathering food. Together these communites of gatherers would collect the nutritionous parts of trees and plants to use for food and basically it took up too much time. This got me thinking about the relativity of the phrase haves and have nots. Why is it that those who come with a faster aparatus or machine to gather food are consider haves and those who gather the SAME food slower with their bare hands are the have nots? The question arose again later in the film when Diamond spoke of the Spanish conquistadors and how the Mayans and Incas were shocked and in some ways amazed to see the way these men had trained these large animals to let them ride around in battle. They had horses, fancy steel swords, metal hats and an air of indignance and entitlement that the natives had never seen. Clearly these people had to HAVE errr something, right?
The troubling part in both instances to me is the fact that before one is introduced to an idea of deficiency there is no real doubt or void to speak of. In other words we are neither the haves or the have nots unless there is some outside introduction of that "other." This idea to me seems very rudimentary and yet still fascinating because I believe you can apply it in most cases of satisfaction and desire. Its like when two little babies are playing with a bunch of toys side by side and one is having a lot of fun with their toy and the other kid catches a glimpse of the sparkle in the eyes. It could be the exact same toy in a different color but the child automatically sees the other's as being better because they haven't found the same satisfaction within their own achievement. They haven't mastered contentment. So what usually happens is the one child tries to take the other kid's toy for themselves only to find that there really isn't anything different about it.
Western ideology is guilty, in my opinion, of robbing that idea of self-fulfillment from a job well done. Today we, yes even us on the wealthy end, are guilty of the have not mentality. We get fly with our paper-light phones and computers and are part of the group of haves for all of five minutes until the newer version explodes on the market and then we're back at the bottom wishin for another chance at the rattiest race we can get our minds around. Granted I am using Americanized references and my people in Somalia would not hesitate to correct the spectrum of needs and wants (Food & Computers). I just find it interesting that in this day an age many of us western folk are so quick to run toward the love of deficiency that relatively does not exist. Meanwhile the people that really do not have food and clean water are fasting for Ramadan. Hear me now... Fasting. HAVE you NOT wrapped your mind around this yet? Its a new era... Our goods may not be able to define us for much longer folks. Its time we get talented, ease up on the blame, the vanity and the filling of unnecessary voids. Work together with what we all have. Brainpower.
