An assumption
driving the great diaspora of European culture for at least the past five
hundred years has been that the acquisition of land and knowledge is a sacred
duty. Colonialism and European culture
are not separable but are aspects of the same urgent meditation. We will not be in a post-colonial age until
we are in a post-European age.
We are engaged on a
cultural project in which we define human existence as something that is in
need of a cure and we retain a deeply ambivalent love/hate tension with the
land we occupy -- both our resource and victim, the ancient dark of our
spiritual wellbeing.
If we live long
enough, everything we learned when we were children is reversed and there comes
a time when instead of knowing everything, as our wise elders once did, we know
almost nothing at all and must rely on our children for accurate information about
our own society and how it works.
