In the midst of their great extinction, American Indians warned us: “What we do to the Red Man we will ultimately do to every man.”

Beginning with the decimation of native peoples, we’ve been continuously breaking down entire communities, forcing them into consumerism. This is a consumerism that demands each of us survive on our own. This is a consumerism separating us from one another. This is a consumerism taking naturally social beings out of their social context, creating feelings of loneliness and abandonment.

We once took away all that was truly wild and free in the name of domesticating the savage. Now, we’re now locking ourselves in economic prisons. Now, we’re spending our lives in cycles of production and consumption.

Nothing can replace the social fabric that’s been ripped away, or the sense of belonging obliterated alongside it. This lies at the heart of our depression, anxiety, and suicide epidemics.

We’re suffering the loss of the innate value of our relational selves, the loss of healthy interdependence, and the loss of our deep connection to forces greater than ourselves. All we’re left with is a consuming and producing version of ourselves, as we’re told to sooth our social emptiness through the consumption and production of goods and services.

These, of course, fail miserably at satisfying what’s been taken.

As these blog posts continue, we’ll talk about how we find our way back.

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