Pridesgiving, Thankstaking

A few weeks ago I was just sitting around in the AM and a thought about Thanksgiving popped into my head. The "story of Thanksgiving" is the perfect example of the difference between the evils of the new world and the virtues of the old world, the social disease that infected the European colonizers and the naivety of the native peoples.

The story of Thanksgiving roughly breaks down like this: [The settlers came to the Americas but did not know how to subsist on the land. They began to starve and things got worse as fall deepened and winter approached. The natives, seeing this, had much compassion for the alien visitors and taught them how to plant and harvest on the land. A feast was had in celebration of human victory over hardship and the food was shared by all.]

So on this particular morning that idea crossed my mind in a different way that went like this: [The settlers had little and the natives had enough. The natives being thankful for this but lacking a prideful society shared because without pride being thankful for what you have prompts you to share because you would want everyone to have enough. The settlers were thankful for this but being from a prideful and greedy society took more than what was necessary until the natives no longer had. For their generosity, the natives were destroyed.]

I next thought to myself how this happened nearly everywhere in the world. Where the colonizers were welcomed and shown generosity they took and destroyed. But this translates into our society today, born out of this settlers disease. Every day we are all proud of what we have, especially when faced with those who do not have, and what do we do? We continue to take more, hoard more, "stack" more, focus more on ourselves and our own because we are all infected with this now ingrained ideology no matter what background we come from. 

What to do...? It is truly complex to do surgery on yourself and detach something that seems to be connected to every organ inside of you. However, that is what we must do first as individuals and then as a society.

~hallah