The Catch-22 of a Conquering People: Death to Drive Us All (A Conquest Rant)

I was born out of Conquest.  And I'm here now, trying to rationalize the borderline between understanding the wrong of the Conquistador's actions, and humanizing them, if only for selfish reasons...otherwise, would I be able to say that the possibility of my birth, centuries after, would have still been made possible?

The problem with violence is...it has to grow from somewhere, from someplace.  In the case of the violence between Aztec and Conquistador...it never needed to grow...it had already seeded itself on both sides.  I hope I don't offend anyone when I say the Aztecs were not blameless in the War for Gold.  What is striking to me even now, after so many years of study, is how no one saw the brutal carnage coming!  If you sacrifice your children to God, chances are, you'll be sacrificing peace at all costs, to make sure you don't defy your God.  In this way, Aztecs were already mounting their own way of life against the backdrop of blood, of the very fabric which would tear them to shreds as soon as Cortes stepped through the jungles and told them only Gold could cure their hearts' disease.  I should mention that just now I almost mistyped  Gold as God, and ironic isn't it, that I'm not entirely sure it was an honest mistake...God and Gold, after all, went so hand in hand for Cortes.

All I'm trying to say is, calm can't grow out of chaos, and surely, Cortes and his Spaniards did not mean to go gently into that good night.  No matter how much we emasculate Montezuma and the Aztecs (which Diaz absolutely does just by sheer description of what they wore, how they lived, etc.) they too worked under the very same violence the Conquistadors did.  In fact, I'd say more so, because they SEXUALIZED their violence in a way Cortes and his men didn't...you guessed it, until they arrived in the New World.  Something quite curious happened, I believe, the moment Aztec and Spaniard came together, giving birth (well...not birth, but at the very least create a new chapter in its evolution) to an entirely new form of violence, one which, to this day, gives many of us pause...

The violence of desire and the body.

Hear me out now.  I think it was the audacity in which the Aztecs threw themselves at the glory of their bodies, of the sacrificial quality of Body, that proposed, almost instinctually, the Spaniards' own equally Violent response.  It isn't enough that the heart is ripped out, but that it is shown to the Glory of God, raised high above the death, and in truth, signifying the life that has just been taken, taken in a most ritualized, and most eroticized manner.  How else could Cortes have responded in kind?  Montezuma took them in, suspicious and full of the fear that'd eventually cause his empire's crumble, but it's not as if Cortes had been unaware of what the Aztecs did to appease their God.  It was the very thing the Conquistador did for his Gold.  When two forces collide, two forces so similar in means and so similar in ways, there isn't any end or beginning, there is only an expansion of the Violence, a growth of tensions between the winning side and the side that has to inevitably lose.

Take a box with infinite squares inside, all of them boxes too, and take a people that grow to believe Violence and Ritual to be nearly co-dependent, to be normalized, and understood as traditional and expected...take all of this and put it in the box, then add a Conquistador, another people with the exact mindset but for opposite ends (i.e. the abolition of the former occupants in this hypothetical box)...what will you get?  Violence...infinite amounts of it, because no matter how evolved and how much each box grows within each box, within each box, within each box...the violence IS the norm, and for two cultures unwilling to try Change and unwilling to bend and break to the wills of Nature and the cultural landscapes on which both Aztec and Conquistador traversed...there is nothing doing except the vicious cycle on which they based their own mutual destruction (and creation).  Make sense?

Despite all of this, and though The Aztec is now essentially lost forever, a part of that Symbol lives inside the Spaniard, for that is the greatest piece of the story that many people seem to forget: Cortes and his men may have slaughtered thousands, may have pillaged and raped in the name of the Lord, may have called Mexico their home when they had no right whatsoever to do so...but if they really wanted, if they really understood that to erase the past one cannot leave any traces behind, there would be no Diaz, there would be no Conquest of New Spain.  There would only be silence.

I was born out of Conquest, out of the impossible catch when two warring people crash into one another.  Cortes was King, but Montezuma was King first, and it is from those two stories that I can form my own.  Violence begets violence, it's true, but sometimes it deigns to spring new life...

Here is a particularly adequate link, concerning Freud's Death Drive and one that I think holds true ESPECIALLY for the context in which the Aztecs and Conquistadors existed in.  It's super long, so obviously, watch at your own risk, but I do advise that a little skimming might be very helpful, and even illuminating in a way you may not have known before.  Enjoy!

To Die Would Be An Awfully Big Adventure

Adapting the Self: Stockholm, Stockholm! (A Captivity Rant)

Native Americans, first and foremost, were adapters.  They acquainted themselves with Land, with Nature, with their Mother, and over the years, managed not to tame it, but to co-exist within it, blurring the lines constantly between where they ended and the wilderness began. Puritans were never meant to do this, nor would they have ever attempted it, given the chance.  It's a twisted irony that the Puritans, in a very real way, stood for everything the Native Americans did not.  It is for this reason above all that I remain unsurprised their meeting ended in the bloodshed and the heartbreak from which we derive our current understanding of the relations between the New World and the Old.

In Women's Indian Captivity Narratives, Mary Rowlandson is indeed taken by Indians, and throughout what she calls Removes, she accounts the harrowing, at times unbelievably so, tribulations she endured, on her way back to her family.  And yet, I say tribulation, when in reality, something stranger, more intriguing was at work...she learned to adapt, in some bizarre crossroad forming from Indian culture and her steadfast Puritan faith, to the way of life she was stolen into, she was forced to assume.  Now, judgment be not made here...but if one is so easily adaptable, is it not possible, is there no chance, that one can also tolerate another, can let another be and lead his or her own life, without imposing one's own truths and beliefs?

Let me get to the juice here...despite the wrongness of the actions, and the Eye to Eye mentality, which, let's face it, leads nowhere fast...in these captivity narratives (Mary's, anyway), I can see a subtle transformation, a changing of the tides for this Puritan women, as though the Woods have taken hold of her, and though she may fight strongly against its stronghold, there are just too many inconsistencies in her character for me to believe she is the same Mary she began the narrative in, witness to the murder of family, and even the carrier of her Babe's unbearable corpse.  Perhaps the most striking example for me remains the moment in which she snatches a piece of meat from a boy's hand, his teeth still too tender to bite into it.  What a savage act, no, from a woman so delicately cloistered amongst her religion and her home.  This is what captivity does to you...it backs you into a corner, only for you to exit from where your back is facing, a new woman (a new being, really), that looks the same, but is no longer.

To flash forward quite significantly...how many of you are familiar with Patty Hearst?  She the captive of the Symbionese Liberation Army, and later to become the poster child for Stockholm Syndrome.  I'm not saying she's a modern-day Mary Rowlandson (on the contrary, their situations vary too greatly for there to be any real comparison aside from the surface of things), but to believe that a person, either of these women, can turn to their captors and say, Yes, if only for a split second, can mold their existence, if only momentarily, to mirror that of those who have refused her the comforts and knowledge of her old life...this is something extraordinary, and extraordinarily human.  So what if Mary enjoyed smoking from a pipe, so what if she delighted in taking the meat in her hands and letting its juices flow freely, so what if she...you get the idea.  The point is that no matter how furious her religion and her passions, even she could not contain her instincts, her own survival tricks in order to stay alive.  I wouldn't go as far to say came to love her captives (nor did Patty Hearst, in case you're wondering), but it's not a simple/clean metaphor any longer...the victim is, in a way, just as much in power when she/he relinquishes her right to be afraid in public, when she assimilates into the way of life of a prisoner, but REFUSES to be that prisoner she/he is playing the role of now.  Does that make any sense?

Perhaps it's too raw an idea for this blog, even, but all I'm trying to say is that, force or not, these women learned valuable lessons that they would have never even encountered stuck between the halls of their Puritan religion...the freedom and the fright of choice, of simple adaptation.  These women were strong!  Mary did not give in, did not give up, no matter how it may have seemed all throughout that she had...but what if she had never been taken to begin with?  What then, would she have learned of herself, of her mind, of her body, of the resilience of her spirit, of her Faith?  One could call this the slap to the face one needs to really wake up to the world, and I only wish it had happened some other way, one that didn't involve the mass killings of so many innocent lives...for they were all innocent, even the guilty few.

I'm so angry with the Puritans, even now.  Angry that it took captivity for them to see what they were really prisoners of...and yet, who knows.  I could be wrong, and I could have misinterpreted the whole thing.  More room for discussion, then, more room to breathe and talk about this ever-changing landscape on which the Puritans forced their Home.

In all of us exists, I think, the passion, and the will, to be caught, to be taken against our very wills...and then...

set free.

I leave you all with an intriguing little slice of Patty Hearst's endlessly fascinating story (I highly, highly suggest you all read on it, if even on Wikipedia) and some of the quotes I thought stood out for me (and probably some of you, I bet):

The Simple Truth Isn't Ever Simple

Quotes of Note:

"So little do we prize common mercies, when we have them to the full."

"...I cannot but admire to see the wonderful providence of God in preserving the Heathen for farther affliction to our poor Country."

"I have learned to look beyond present and smaller troubles, and to be quieted under them..."

- Mary Rowlandson.

Burning the Witch, part II: You're A Goodman Brown! (A Puritan Rant, continued)

Well, leave it to Mr. Hawthorne to take my argument from me in the most aptly succinct manner...if Young Goodman Brown is not the perfect illustration of precisely what's wrong with Mather's On Witchcraft, call me a Devil and send me off to the stalks!

He illustrates the very hypocrisy on which I left off last week...that Mather is condemning these people (let's be frank, these Women more often than not) for precisely the very thing, the VERY THING, he recognizes in himself...is it not Puritan doctrine that we carry evil inside of us, in potential or action, irregardless of whatever good we may be able to bring to the table?  Why then say that Puritans (their name alone, seriously...let's not go there) shall be responsible for the, pardon the redundancy, purification of this New World?  Isn't that a lot to ask from evil?  Or is Mather confused, as all other Puritans must be if he is their spiritual leader (of sorts, I know), and there is a dichotomy at work that has led them all precisely to this contradiction and to this problem...these trials?

It's a lot to take in, no doubt, but I for one don't believe calling oneself Goody will instill a sense of good, period.  It's an innate ability, a kinship one must have with one's body and mind, and Mather, may he rest in some semblance of Peace and Dignity, was trying to fight the very notion of struggle and celebrate the very stagnation of a peoples' identity...Here we are in this new land, flawed and broken, exiled and lacking in resources, carrying the inevitable evil of sinners and attempting, as best we can, to bring fruitfulness and joy and Good to all around us.  Pardon the expression: but I call bull.  There is nothing holy about damning people on the basis of illusions and tales (very tall ones too), it is merely an attack on one's evolution as a being, on one's potential to be both good and evil, to weigh those options independently and with CHOICE, with a sense of responsibility that one must carry alone, and only alone.

It is not surprising to me that Goodman Brown, dream or no, ended up alone in those woods...because those woods, those are the woods of fear and hatred, the woods that Mather constructed, built from his very fingertips in his insane accounts of the so-called Witchcraft of Salem!  Those woods Brown walked with the Devil are the woods we must traverse through life, through the toils and the tribulations, the passages of uncertainty, of that doubt that can blind us and paralyze us as I'm sure it must have frozen Mather.  It's as if the trials themselves were created to HAVE the people confess evil...as though Mather (and here it is again) was projecting his own anger at carrying even the slightest hint of a Devil inside of him onto the others, to purify himself, become one of the Chosen.  Are the trials then not completely foolproof?  They become a trap for the good because they suck all good out and leave only this fabricated malice, this Malady that Mather tried so obsessively to control and destroy.  Hell, I'd lose my Faith too...

Also (and my apologies for the ranting, truly)...why when Goodman Brown is supplicating his wife, Faith, to look to the heavens and repent...why is that when the spell is broken, and he's left alone?  Hawthorne is very clever there, isn't he, to leave our hero alone the moment he needs the most comfort and security.  This is what the Trials did.  Instead of helping you, they locked you out...well, hung you, really, which might be a form of escape (but that's an entirely different conversation).  In a very real way, this country was formed by fear...a fear of everything that consumed one until one didn't know what was real and what was imagined, what was the projection of our selves and how little we knew those selves, and how (pardon my French) fucking frightening that seemed.

Some say Hawthorne's short story is an allegory for Evil and Humanity's relationship with it...let's be more specific: it's an Allegory for America, for what religion did to those poor, helpless youths that grew into old men and women, that grew into generations, into families, into you, into me, into the Culture and Cult of the country...and where do we stand now?  Just as Goodman, we are left alone, probably cold, miserable, unaware of what to do, too afraid to try anything for that Judgment and that Doom...and as Hawthorne puts it so genius...

For the "dying hour was gloom."

On that note, I am disappointed I wasn't a part of the conversation, as I'm sure these two entries would have benefited so beautifully from them...but alas, what we can do about the past if not correct the present tense of it?  So here are my thoughts, rambled and disjointed they may be, on Mather and the poor, doomed Goodman Brown...

Let's leave on an equally important note, with a rather interesting find concerning Arthur Miller's The Crucible (which I promised I'd talk of, but found Goodman Brown to be too hot to pass up!)...I think the video says it all.  But hey, be the judge yourself...just like Mather would have wanted you to be.

Abigail Williams: A Puritan Study

Burning the Witch, part I: Projection and the Limits of Control (A Puritan Rant)

I've tried, and found, that there is no escaping the fact On Witchcraft could just as easily have been called On How to Hide One's Desires Lest We Fry in Hell!.  Excuse the ramble that’s about to follow, as I will attempt to skim the text in as best an imitation of free verse as I can.  And…here…I…go…

Cotton Mather spends, pardon the pun, an ungodly amount of time condemning witches (excuse me, Witches), and talks on and on about Spectres, and the Power of God, and other capitalized Ideas that, in the end, amount to a whole bag of simple air...that stifling, Puritan variety that caused such a commotion back in that heyday...the fear of what we want, and the ignorance of that we do not already know and have.  Yes, Mather talks about Evil, in all the capacities he sees It (yes, I too can capitalize to make sure you understand the Gravity of the text!), but I’m more intrigued by all the things he doesn’t say.  For example, what exactly was the foundation for all this talk of witches in the first place?  The new world?  Native Americans existed long before Plymouth Rock was mounted, and they never burned their family members because of a deep-rooted fear of this unknown territory.  Did Mather really believe the trials were the surefire way to get the masses (no pun intended here, either) to unify under one cohesive whole (in this case, fear)?  For my money, he fails almost completely in convincing that what his book is about is truly witchcraft.  No, it’s about the stifling and miscommunication of an individual’s needs and rights not only as a proper human being, but as a proper inhabitant of a fresh colony, meant to start anew, and yet, grounded by the very notions that will seed themselves into what we now call America.

Let me explain simply: A part of Mather, perhaps secretly or unconsciously, desired the very thing he was fighting, in this case the bizarreness of original thought, the road only the true Individual can follow, i.e. free will.  Now, I have nothing against religion (only Religion!), and even less with faith.  With that in mind, very little makes me angrier than sanctimonious little priests (perhaps he was tall, was he?) daring to speak for God (or a God) and daring to control and stifle two of the gifts we are given at birth: our voices and our minds.  Being an intelligent man himself (I know, I begrudgingly admit this much, otherwise his influence on the Trials themselves would have been marginal at best), he knew how to manipulate the people, the groundlings so beyond from achieving his higher Purpose or Station, in order to mask the truth he would have never wanted to let them see: he too is a wanting, hungering creature of God.  What better way to make oneself better in the Eyes of the Mighty Lord if not to point the finger and enact a national hunt for the Witches preying on our children and our lives?  Even Freud (Bless his soul) would have sat agape at the blatant display of Projection Mather has enacted.

This isn’t to say Mather is a Witch (ha!) but that his accounts of the trials are really a reflection of his own frightening notions under the Hands of God…that feeling of unworthiness, of sinning and sinning without an end…things that could have been avoided had Mather (and, well, the rest of Puritan County) accepted that which comes from their very nature: instinct and desire, yes and no, right and wrong.  Yes, he believes Evil is wrong and he believes Witches are evil, thus he is Right and Good and they all deserve to BURN!  But, no!  This is precisely the problem.  All this becomes is punishing the people brave enough to confront their own wills and their own selves…all this becomes is the Scapegoat on which we lay all the blame for our mistakes and our incapability to realign our faith with our good will and our understanding that humanity is an imperfection, not a doomed culture at the hands of an angry God, not the sinning mob of useless cretins Mather no doubt was in despair for (or rather, ‘despair’).  I wonder, had Mather been another kind of man, what would have become of Puritan County, there yonder…what of Witchcraft then, if Mather did not feel so desperate a need to project his own fears on the rest of his world?

Anyway, more to come soon, I promise.  This is but a brief taste of my beginnings with the text (soon to be finished on Tuesday!).  Quotes will surely follow, as well as the obligatory connection to that classic slice of Puritan pie...The Crucible.  Until then, adieu, adieu...


In the meantime, here are two links.  The first for Mather, who I think should have heard these immortal words before sitting down to scribe his maddening sermons, and the second for all of us, and in a way, Mather too, because I'd like to think now, so many years after the fact, so many feet under ground to think on his deeds...he's grown a sense of humor.  Here's to you, Mather, here's to you:


Know Best Yoda Does

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