I was fascinated in my 9th grade science class when when studied Easter Island. We were learning about population dynamics. How two fruit flies in a jar will multiply blindly until all the resources are consumed, then bust. We learned about deer populations in Michigan, that without hunters to cull the herd in place of predators, the deer would ravage the landscape until there would be nothing left, and they would starve.
Then we read a chilling tale of warning- of what we are doing to our planet- on the micro scale.
The story goes like this: Polynesian people arrived on Easter Island and began to thrive. Over the centuries, the population grew, the resources dwindled, and the natives made bigger and bigger statues seeking favor from the ancestors, until it all crumbled in starvation and violence. They had broken their system.
The Fall of Civilizations Podcast had me revisit that narrative with a clearer lens. The Rapa Nui (Easter Island) episode turned my understanding upside down. It appears from primary sources of western visitors to the island that the Rapa Nui people were thriving until the arrival of Westerners. Then, like the decimated populations of North American indigenous people, it is likely that the Rapa Nui succumbed not only to foreign diseases, but to the shattering of their worldview precipitated by illness and violence.
According to these primary sources, the islanders made tools from obsidian, but not weapons. Not until the fateful encounter with the Spanish, when curious islanders reached for the guns of the sailors and felt their wrath. The next westerners to visit were greeted by islanders with spears. They no longer lived in a paradise, protected by their ancestors.
They had been forsaken.
I find it endlessly disturbing that the beautiful, sustainable culture of this Island, this beautiful worldview should fall to the indifferent hand of capitalism, yes eventually the islanders were relegated to a small area, had to work for western sheep farmers in order to buy food from the outsider’s store. Enslaved in their homeland.
How can we make sense of such tragic events?
What can we do to stop the continued perpetration of such selfish and short sighted acts as pushing oil pipelines through indigenous lands that had been promised to be protected?
It comes down to story and economics. People at the helm of oil companies operate under a story of separation, and of scarcity. In this worldview they compete for resources, for power. In their hearts may be love for their families and their friends, but in service of these they’re willing to subjugate the other. Pragmatically, the system is at the mercy of economics. If oil wasn’t the cheapest fuel source, the market would not support its continuation. Sadly, they look at a weighted ledger, which does not include the costs of oil production to ecosystems, climate, and their own wellbeing. They only see the part of the picture where they make money, provide for their families, stay competitive in the global market.
Seeing the whole picture through a story of interdependence, connection, and abundance would assuage the fears that justify the current system’s stratagems.
They could see they’re running the car with the exhaust routed back into the window. That what they do to the other, they do to the self.
When I look back at my experience with self-abuse, I see that I was operating just like an oil company. With my story of separation, I believed that being thin meant safety, being thin meant love, being thin meant that I was good and lovable. Any action I needed to take to meet that end to me was justified at the cost of my physical and emotional health.
Sadly, it took 15 years living this way for my body to give out. It gave up. None of my stratagems worked anymore. Only then, feeling completely helpless and hopeless did I consider shifting the story I believed about what made me safe, lovable, and valuable. It’s a common understanding in AA as you watch someone you care about struggle, that they’ll continue to struggle, no matter how much you try to help, until they reach their “bottom”.
It just hurts too much to consider that your basic assumptions about reality have been wrong all along.
All the while as I struggled, there were people out there who had been in my place of despair doing the work of weaving the healthier story, supporting each other, and keeping vigil at the oasis, ready to welcome me home when I was ready. So that is what we do. That is what we do when we garden, when we share our harvest, when we listen. We tend the healthy alternative, cultivate it and care for it, for each other, ready to share the wealth of knowledge we’ve grown when the old structures fall apart.