Carrying a Message Further • Part 6: Sacred Victims and the Land Acknowledgement

How vast inclusivity can inform our approach to human connections and justice work

This is the sixth chapter of “Carrying a Message Further,” section III of All We Are: Dispatches from the Ground Experience. This collection of writings explores the problem of ideological rigidity in social theories, the concept of "lived experience" (including my own), and the argument for using empowerment as a basis for education.

*Image above created with Midjourney by Marshall Æon and edited by Corey Smithson

In the spring of 2021, at a time when the cultural revolution and the counterrevolution in the western hemisphere—particularly the United States—was at an all time high and people were beginning to separate permanently into rigid ideological camps, I decided it was the right time to commit myself to writing so I could sort things out for myself and find my own way to clarity and settledness in a world of seemingly infinite chaos and conflict. To facilitate my sense-making process, I created the Ground Experience Substack page and dedicated it to “exploring the human impact of ideological frameworks from a contemplative perspective.” 

Since that time, I have explored Critical Social Justice theories, the postmodernist philosophies that inform those theories, some aspects of Marxist thought that have made their way into the culture at large, the widespread problem of ideological bullying, the burgeoning depolarization movement, group identity essentialism, how to mediate the patterned behaviors of ideological totalism and political cultism, and the impact on all these things on the relationships between individuals, among communities, and between demographic groups. For the most part, I have shied away from electoral politics and instead focused on what conflict mediator and facilitator Ryan Nakade has called Meta-Ideological Awareness (MIA) and the ways in which today’s social, political, and cultural climate has influenced not only the thought patterns of adherence to different ideologies but the effect of this climate on the human spirit.

In this chapter, I want to explore the relationship between the human spirit and ideology from an unambiguously contemplative angle, beginning with a very big perspective. 

A perspective I consider sacred. 

What a Wonderful World

There is a neat little space video about the Hubble Deep Field that was put out by astronomy software engineer and atmospheric research scientist Tony Darnell on his YouTube channel, Deep Astronomy back in 2006. What makes this video so compelling is the way Darnell marvels at the images taken by the greatly improved lenses and filters of the Hubble Space Telescope. His soothing yet commanding voice conveys a sense of magical wonder throughout as he deftly explains in layperson’s terms the details and photographic process of the captured images of deep space and its thousands of galaxies and galaxy clusters, clarifying for the viewer with real numbers not only just how small we all are but also how much larger the world really is.

One of my takeaways from this video is why we need to learn how to view personal and societal problems from a larger perspective. Admittedly, this is hard to do, and I won’t pretend that I have been able to puncture through the veil that separates the small-picture anxiety-prone people from the big-picture splendor-prone people. So, my sharing a link to this video is aspirational. It is a vast perspective that I aspire to. 

Click on this photo to watch the video “The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken”. Tony Darnell, the creator and narrator has a website called “Deep Astronomy” where he briefly explains his desire not to be “internet famous”, which is why he stayed away from content creation for over a decade. Fortunately, he is back with new astronomy videos and now a podcast called “Space Junk,” which is very much a must-watch for astronomy enthusiasts.

---

Another video that does the same thing for me is the Light Speed Tour of the Universe, which begins just above the Earth and then takes us up and away from our home planet, past all the other planets of our solar system and then vertically moves perpendicular to the solar system leaving behind what looks like a disk. The journey then continues past the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, on to the outer arms of the Milky Way galaxy, past the Burger Cluster and other clusters of galaxies—tens of billions of galaxies—all the way to the “theoretical model of the universe”, which we cannot possibly fathom, though we continue to try. The video ends by going backwards past all of the galaxy clusters into the outer arms of the Milky Way, past the other planets of our solar system and finally zooming in to a small moment with a woman walking on a beach.

This video is somewhat primitive in its animation, and there are far more sophisticated videos with a similar name (like this one called “An Epic Journey From Earth to the Edge of the Universe”), but something about the simplicity and the starkness appeals to me. 

I wanted to share these videos because when I think of the word “sacred”, it includes for me, not just the way we worship certain ideas, people, or things we hold dear, but the much larger mystery story of the cosmos. The larger world, including the cosmos, may carry a great deal of mystery, but it’s existence is incontrovertible and real, and in a post-truth world where everything is viewed as subjective, and in which mainstreamed ideologies view the belief in objective truth as a corruptive symptom of the ghostly force called the “cisheteronormative white supremacy patriarchy”, I am all the more inspired by what is true, good, and beautiful—that which is real. 

What is sacred to me has always been sacred to me, ever since I was a small child, and it hasn’t left me in all these years. I don’t need intersectional feminist post-structuralist theory to teach me about what is sacred, and I don’t need traditional Catholic liturgies or even the magnificent cathedrals (which are awe inspiring nonetheless!) to teach me what is sacred. And I don’t need antiracism “training” to teach me what is sacred. I need only look up at the skies, and, in my moments of well-rested clarity and ease of mind—the self-discipline to look within.

In this chapter and over the next two chapters, I want to allow myself to drop into a contemplative space and just allow my own perspectives around the sacred victim narrative, trauma, harm, and suffering to flow. I will occasionally make references to Erec Smith’s work as well as the work of other thinkers, professionals, academics, and philosophers. The general theme of this chapter is how our beliefs about the world shapes our identities and actions in the world, including the ways we experience trauma and suffering. I will also explore some of the ways in which we can act out against others from our trauma and suffering and how the belief systems we hold to and the ideological commitments we have made often reinforce this pattern, causing further harm to us all. Hopefully, I might find my way to some resolution of the paradoxes around all this, but it’s more likely that I’ll simply find some kind of temporary equilibrium heading into the next chapter.  

With that complex task ahead of me, I’d like to begin with a contemplative roam through the pools of pain, isolation, sadness, and violence that go all the way back either to the beginning of the unfolding cosmos or to the ground of this moment’s experience, depending on whether we believe the universe has a beginning, middle and end, or whether we believe it is eternal—without beginning or end, and only existing in the now.

Vast Inclusivity: Beyond the Land Acknowledgement 

To begin my exploration of trauma, pain, and victimization, I want to engage in a two-part contemplation around the many dimensions involved in the land acknowledgement ritual that has become mainstream in Canada, Australia, and more recently the United States over the past few years. In a nutshell, this ritual pays homage to the indigenous people who once owned the land that we have claimed for ourselves. For many people, this occupation is a continuing injustice and represents one of the worst legacies of what is often called “settler colonialism.”

Below, is a sample Land Acknowledgement from the Indigenous Land and Territorial Acknowledgements for Institutions website. It was drafted by Museum Studies expert Felicia Garcia (Chumash) in 2018. 

We are gathered on the unceded land of the ( ) peoples. I ask you to join me in acknowledging the ( ) community, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations. (Name of institution) also acknowledges that it was founded upon exclusions and erasures of many Indigenous peoples, including those on whose land this institution is located. This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to beginning the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism. 

This is just a sample, but it is similar to the variety of land acknowledgements that are out there. The first sentence represents an incontrovertible fact that must be reckoned with. We would be hard pressed to find anyone anywhere along the political spectrum who would deny that the land many call home was taken from other people. But, the last sentence is one that I am interested in exploring more deeply in the hope of gaining some clarity about just what it is that needs to be dismantled.

A few months back, I attended one of several college graduation ceremonies. All were positive experiences, and the young people I was there to support were lucky to have good commencement speakers, relatively short ceremonies and that wonderful moment when the student graduating body is declared graduated. One of those graduation ceremonies stood out from the rest.

At the beginning of this particular graduation ceremony, the officiator, a thin, graceful, warm-voiced, middle aged Black man with symmetrical facial features, a solid presence, and obvious erudition offered a land acknowledgement. He asked us all to acknowledge that the land upon which the college sits belonged to Native American tribes at one point, long before these lands were colonized by Europeans. And as he named each of the tribes, he alternated between looking up towards the sky and searchingly scanning the auditorium, with an air of repudiation and insistence that we join him in this acknowledgement.

I detected in him during this ceremonial acknowledgement a flash flood of contempt and anger that seemed to lie in waiting, just beneath the surface as he named the tribes, and I also experienced two hearts about what I was experiencing in that moment. I am saying two hearts because it was an intuitive, emotional resonance that was arising in me as I experienced this man’s presence and words rather than a mental scan of what I was witnessing.

One of my hearts was telling me that he has every right to feel anger and contempt. He is a Black man born into a world still reeling from the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and their continued aftermath, working in a professional field that is rife with racial anger and resentment in a highly politicalized region that holds to a high octane progressive worldview. However he personally felt in that moment, however nuanced his perspective, and however multi-dimensional he may perceive the entire catastrophe of the development of Western civilization and the impact of colonialism’s legacy to be, he also had to deliver a performance that would satisfy his constituents. Behind him sitting under the stage lights, nodding, lightly clapping, and sometimes shaking their heads and scowling were his constituents—public intellectuals, local luminaries, political figures, staff, deans, the college president, and ministers. Almost all were people of color. I felt a sense of natural, uncontrived solidarity with him and the rest of those present and an immense sense of pride of seeing people of color (mostly Black) commanding the space, providing the framing for how we should be regarding that space, and gracing all of us present with a kind of spiritual teaching that asked us to consider what came before and why it should matter to us now.

But, my other heart felt a deep sense of sadness, disconnection, and loneliness. Something about this ritual felt limiting and “cut off” for me, and I couldn’t help but feel that the perspective that this land acknowledgement was coming from was not only much smaller than it needed to be, but that the emotional affect behind the ritual revealed just how myopic that perspective was. In short, I felt that this man had acquired an intense identification with those he regarded as “his people” and that he seemed not to recognize that we are all his people, and that the people that he stepped forward to speak for, the indigenous tribes that were displaced, diseased into non-existence, smothered out, and murdered, were, in the end, our people, too.

There seemed to be a sharp, trenchant air of presumption on his part and, I suspected, on the part of the people behind him, and my other heart couldn’t help but sense an avalanche of ungraciousness in the way some of them felt and in the way in which the ritual was carried out. I had read the writings of some of those on stage, so the thoughts that arose in my mind were not mere projection. The truth of the matter is that the atmosphere I was in was very much influenced by post-colonial theory and the belief in flipping perceived social hierarchies in the name of equity to right the wrongs of history and to humble those who have been categorized as belonging to “the dominant culture.” From what I have read and from the short interactions I have had with some of them, it is clear that they have been greatly influenced by critical theories of social justice that presume to have discovered the secret workings of the inner lives of people who have been categorized in these theories as “not them”. I’ve written extensively about group identity essentialism, social hierarchies, and ideological capture throughout the chapters in “Beyond Cynicism” and “Carrying a Message Further”, so I won’t go into it here. I mention these influences because I was watching them play out during this ceremony.

In all likelihood, many who were present believed—due to the influence of the theoretical models about the intrinsic wisdom of BIPOC (Black, indigenous, people of color) they had absorbed—that they had special access to the inner lives, secret motivations, level of intelligence, and moral character of groups of people who were “not them.” No doubt, many of them believe that because they belong to the category that Erec Smith has called the “Sacred Victim”, they have unique access to wisdom, intuition, spirit, Mother Earth, goodness itself, the natural impulse to take care of others, and the spirit of community; and that they alone are the meek who shall inherit the Earth.

The reason for this belief in an almost magical ability to know life is because of the newly popular idea of “lived experience”, where contemporary Black, indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC) and members of other marginalized demographic groups who are said to have experienced systemic oppression over many years are believed to have learned to see almost mystically with different eyes into all of reality—and who are therefore able to see what others cannot see.

As we have seen over the past ten years (and as I will further explore in the upcoming chapters), the belief that some groups are good and naturally wise and that some groups are bad and naturally cruel is not only questionable in terms of accuracy and ethics, but has consequences for the health and well-being of the body politic.

Pictured (unknown photographer): The Lakota (Sioux) perform the ancient “Sun Dance” on the plains of North Dakota. The Land Acknowledgement ritual that honors these people and all other indigenous people does have its roots in a reality that we cannot deny. For centuries, the United States engaged in systematic genocide (death of a people) against some tribes, and in all cases, systematic ethnocide (death of a people’s customs and values and their traditions, history, and culture). One of the most disturbing outcomes of this tragic history is that Nazi scholars, officials, and policymakers studied the federal and state discrimination laws against Native Americans and other minority groups to help them create blueprints for the genocide of the Jewish population throughout Europe. In response to the indifference to these atrocities and continued injustice, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was formed in 1968 to advocate the civil rights of all indigenous people in America. More recently, the NDN Collective was formed in 2018 with the aim of defending the rights of more than 200 indigenous-led groups. The NDN Collective's mission is to "build the collective power of Indigenous Peoples, communities, and Nations to exercise our inherent right to self-determination, while fostering a world that is built on a foundation of justice and equity for all people and the planet." All these movements combined are part of the larger decentralized Land Back (#landback) movement, which advocates the return of lands to indigenous tribes in North and South America.

---

Land acknowledgement rituals have come under sharp criticism from many directions for their virtue-signaling performativity; their often empty gestures that are not backed up by concrete actions; the surprisingly common practice of not including people who a part of the indigenous diaspora in the drafting of the land acknowledgement for particular institutions that occupy the lands that they once owned (as opposed to being “stewards” or mere “custodians of”, which subtly suggests that they have no genuine claim to the land); and what the Atlantic calls the “moral exhibitionism” of engaging in “pedantic self-criticism.”

There is plenty of material to work through around this issue, and I can understand why many people believe it’s time to reform and reshape the land acknowledgement ritual so that it has more meaning for the indigenous people who are being acknowledged and more substance in how these acknowledgements might lead to real-world actions that can make a difference in the lives of the previous land-owners in the areas of housing, criminal law, addiction treatment, jobs, and educational opportunities.

For the purposes of contemplating the archetype of the Sacred Victim, I’d like to approach this issue from a different angle; I’d like to slow down and to take some time in this moment to zoom out and explore the potential for broadening the land acknowledgement ritual not only in content but in spirit. By content, I mean an acknowledgement that is born from what can rightly be called vast inclusivity, which I will examine in a moment. By spirit, I mean dropping into my belly center, feeling my feet on the ground, connecting with my breath (the word spirit means “breath” in Latin), and summoning my deepest capacity for sincerity, well-wishing, and humility.

Whatever I have to say about the suffering of others that has gone before and how I and others might have benefitted from that suffering, however much blame I can lay upon myself, my “people”, or others, and however sorrowful and angry I might feel about it all, I want to bow silently to it all and sort through it in the best way I can until I finally come to a revised land acknowledgement ritual that is vast enough to transcend and include the sufferings and joys of all living things.

Spirit and The Idea Bundle 

Let me begin by acknowledging for the reader that I am not a secularist. I believe there is a spiritual dimension that underlies the reality that we can empirically verify through our senses. My sharing this information with you is in alignment with common practice in academic writing related to social justice ideas. In contemporary social justice literature, we are all said to have what is called a “subject position” on a kind of map that places people on different points of the map to determine how much power we have, what our influences are, and, therefore, why we believe what we believe. It is considered good practice to be upfront about our subject position when we are exploring ideas. Sometimes, social justice scholars will use the noun “positionality” to indicate the author’s place on this map of influence with the understanding that many of the words that issue from the author’s lips are coming from that position on the map. A fancy academic term for this is Standpoint Theory, which is also known as Standpoint Epistemology, an academic theory developed within the feminist framework that posits that all of our beliefs, ideas, and commitments stem from our social position.

Let me be candid in saying that I do not ascribe to standpoint theory. I do not believe for a single minute that all or even most of our beliefs and ideas come from our social position, though I do believe that there is merit to the idea that some of what we believe and are committed to comes from our social position (which I also believe we can grow beyond and out of). When it comes to how we know what we know (epistemology) I believe we are capable of knowing far beyond our social position, and I believe that all people have this capacity, which includes the capacity for developing wisdom, understanding ourselves, and learning to appreciate the depths of others and how to navigate our ways through life with all its complexities, promises, and perils, no matter what walks of life we come from. I also believe that we can transcend our circumstances and that we can get out beyond our small ego selves and learn to experience ourselves in a broader way, unconstricted by ideology, by our personal histories, and even by the history of our ancestors. I’m not asking the reader to believe any of this. I just wanted to be honest about the world view that I’m coming from. 

A helpful term I just learned is “the idea bundle.” This term was coined by digital content manager and depolarization advocate Laura Walker-Beaven. In one of the articles she wrote for her Radically on the Fence Substack page, “we need to stop letting ‘thought leaders’ think for us”, she describes “the idea bundle” in the following way:

“The ‘idea bundle’ is a group of ideas that you subscribe to simply because you agree with a specific idea within that mindset. Whether stemming from human nature, from group-think or from sheer laziness, we find ourselves turning to figures whom we admire. We place the burden of decision-making and of critical thinking on them. We look to them for what we should think and blindly accept their judgements on highly complex and nuanced ethical and political issues simply because we respect or admire them. We accept all their views and ideas and find ourselves subscribing to their whole ‘idea bundle’ without any further discrimination or consideration. I’ve fallen fowl of this in the past and found myself advocating blindly in favour of views that I simply hadn’t thought through.”

I was fortunate to come across this piece just a week before finishing the draft of this chapter. For a long time, I have privately struggled about what to reveal about myself and what to keep close away from the public eye. Mostly this has concerned my spiritual beliefs. The last thing I want to do is insist that others take on my perspective on spirit, for the simple reason that I have always been wary of authoritarian influence and totalist belief systems that are imposed on us by others, whether by brainy quiet types who know how to frame things or charismatic types who want to set the world on fire with their truth.

So, I simply ask the reader to make some room for my woo woo, and just take it in as part of the whole picture of where I’m coming from. I trust that my idea bundle will be seen for what it is and that the reader will take what’s useful and leave the rest.

Now back to our program!

One of the reasons why I appreciated Erec Smith’s’ book on rhetoric and antiracism is that he touches on the epistemology (again, ways of knowing) of Eastern wisdom traditions and connects it to indigenous wisdom as well as the importance of maintaining our connection to the larger community around us (kairos) so that when we communicate, we are not limiting ourselves to a small identity, including the sacred victim identity which often serves to keep us apart from others (more on that later).

So, with all this in mind, I’d like to briefly share with the reader a small bit about my own view of life, the world and cosmos, and human cultural evolution and move on through what I hope can be a more inspiring acknowledgement ritual that transcends and includes the land acknowledgement. Bear with me; I promise that the little rabbit hole we will be going down for a bit will not last long and that we will be coming up for air shortly before moving onto the juicy stuff in later chapters.

The Big Bang Never Happened

Just a few days ago on August 3rd, 2023, a video came out called “Brian Cox Breaks Silence: ‘The Universe Existed Before Big Bang’,” which illuminates the reasons why he and other scientists are beginning to believe that “the Big Bang Theory is wrong and that the universe has always existed.” This video is fascinating and really brings to light the many questions humanity has been asking since the beginning of recorded time. So, the Big Bang is back in the news, and I think now’s a good time to examine the impact of this theory on the way we see ourselves the world, and life itself.

As I mentioned earlier, I cannot say for certain whether the universe all began at one point (providential) or whether it has always existed and always will (eternal). There is a fascinating book that covers this question called “The Big Bang Never Happened” by Eric Lerner. It's one of the most brilliant and intellectually vast books I have ever read, and it’s the first time I ever considered the impact of our individual and collective cosmological perspectives on our normal, every day beliefs, and even the extent to which we feel hope or hopelessness. The book covers plasma theory, subatomic theories of various sorts, the history of science and Western civilization, and the impact that scientific discoveries have had on culture and human psychology through the ages. Although the book was written in the late 1990’s, many of its insights about society, science, and ideology apply directly to our contemporary moment. 

From dapla.org: “Another strand of cosmology is known as Electric Plasma cosmology. This theory focuses on the behaviour of plasma currents and how they can be observed at all scales. The idea that the universe has no beginning or end, and that the whole universe is made of plasma, which is organized matter, is referred to as “plasma cosmology.” The theory was developed in the 1970s by the independent Russian scholar Immanuel Velikovsky. This theory has loads of information pertaining to ancient history, and even the formation of galaxies”. In another post: “The most compelling evidence for a constantly changing universe is the evidence of plasma cosmology. According to this theory, our universe is a constant source of electromagnetic force. It has no definite beginning and no known end, which supports the eternal nature of our universe”. 

---

For the most part, I try to avoid quoting too many extended passages, but I feel compelled to share some of Lerner’s insights in his own words from the final chapter of the book because he really nails it here when he describes how our view of the cosmos, time, the great human story, and life itself can have a profound impact on the ideologies we attach ourselves to, our moral choices, and our capacity for hope.

Beginning on page 413, in a subchapter called The Consequences of Cosmology, Lerner argues that the prevailing cosmological belief in modern society that the universe has a beginning, middle, and end encourages the pessimistic outlook on human progress. The next several pages cover some of the ideas elucidated in historian Francis Fukuyama’s essay “The End of History and the Last Man,” which triumphantly declared in 1997 that humanity has reached an impasse of sorts, a kind of end of a journey, where the only work now is to steward and curate what we have built.

Lerner writes:

“First, it [the belief in the beginning, middle, and end of the cosmos] gives a scientific veneer and cosmic endorsement to the [dark] pessimism that characterizes so much of today’s intellectual climate. It is hard to find a generation in history when leaders in the fields of art, music, literature—the “leading thinkers” generally—have evinced such a profound pessimism and nihilistic despair as at the end of the eighties. Both the visual arts and, to a lesser extent, the literary ones are pervaded by a general sense of purposelessness, the existential absurdity of life. The sudden popularity in intellectual circles of Fukuyama’s essay on the end of history is symptomatic of this growing intellectual despair. For only slightly beneath the superficial smugness of this article, which hails the final victory of the west, is a hopeless denial of progress, which has been central to western civilization for three hundred years.”

He continues:

“Fukuyama writes that history has ended because western democracy is the final form of human society; all alternatives— communism and fascism—have been defeated or discredited. There is nothing beyond what we have now: all the misery and injustice is the best that can possibly be achieved, the endpoint of human evolution. There is no sense in decrying what occurs in the west, Fukuyama implies, nothing can be done about it. Fukuyama’s bleak view becomes clear at his closing: ‘The end of history will be a very sad time.... In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy. Just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history.’”

Interestingly, Fukuyama writes that fascism and communism have been defeated, which, as we have seen over the past decade, was never really true, as we have seen a resurgence of both ideologies and their sub-strands emerge online and in real life in the United States. But, what is shared by many people regardless of political ideology is the belief in providentialism, i.e. that the universe was born and one day will die, which means that all we have is the material world which itself is ever in decay. Lerner warns us of the emergence of collective cynicism and despair and the choice to commit to a life of extreme selfishness that comes from the nihilistic belief in the universe’s inevitable winding down and final cessation. 

“This fashionable intellectual pessimism pervades society as a general aimlessness and despair, which becomes obvious in an explosion of greed and selfishness. When things fall apart, when there seems no clear way forward, when no alternative is apparent, the response is to save oneself from the general debacle: “I’ll get mine” and “The devil take the hindmost'' have, with examples from Washington and Wall Street, become the slogans of the decade. When society is advancing, or when it seems possible that it can in the future, human beings have proven themselves capable of the highest heroism and self-sacrifice for a common cause. But when that hope is gone, social bonds degenerate into an orgy of greed, the child of hopelessness.”

Lerner goes even further to indicate that this inevitable end in spite of our efforts is not only the fate of the universe but is “the tendency everywhere and always.” In science, the tendency of the gears of existence on any scale to be gradually grinding down to nothingness is called entropy, and cosmologically, this concept is applied to the supposed inevitability of the “entropic exhaustion” or the “heat death” of the universe. 

“Conventional cosmology today envisions a universe that is on a one-way street from an explosive start to an inevitable, ignominious end—a universe wound up twenty billion years ago and now running down. This, we are told, is not only the cosmic fate in the distant future, but the tendency everywhere and always, including here and now. In such a universe, progress or evolution is at best an accident or a miracle, contrary to the overall tendency of the cosmos. It should be no surprise, then, that human progress on this tiny planet has now come to an end—the accident is over and there is nothing to be done about it. Decay has simply caught up with us.”

(*Image above created with Midjourney by Marshall Æon). Many indigenous and aboriginal cultures around the world experience the universe as eternal, always existing in the now. This understanding is woven into their day-to-day lives, hunting, mating, planting, warring, and spiritual rituals that connect them to their ancestors and to the cosmos itself. The figure of the shaman factors large in many of these communities for it is he who connects his people to the eternal spirit that suffuses all of existence. In his book “Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World”, academic researcher and arts critic Tyson Yunkaporta describes the spiritual transmission that occurs between shamans and individuals and sometimes whole communities: “The chemical burst of pleasure we feel when genuine knowledge transmission takes place occurs from the creation of new neural pathways. There are connections between two points that were previously unconnected.” Of course, many would rightly argue that this phenomenon can be experienced by people of all ethnicities, skin colors, genders, and cultures and is not the sole province of indigenous people of color.

---

Lerner ends his contemplation with a sense of hope in his belief that a universe without beginning or end, unfolding continually for infinity has a chance to renew itself. Although he is speaking specifically about Plasma Universe Theory (also known as Plasma Cosmology Theory) replacing the Big Bang theory in an “emerging scientific revolution,” (note, there is no consensus on this, though this theory is the most popular alternative to the Big Bang!) he is making a larger point about how a belief in an eternal cosmos without beginning or end can bring a sense of renewal into the way we see reality and live our lives.

“But the new ideas of the emerging scientific revolution bring an entirely different outlook. If the universe is evolving from an infinite past to an infinite future, if human development is only the latest stage of continual progress stretching through the unlimited reaches of time, then the very idea of an “end to history” is ludicrous, an unfunny joke. History can no more have an end than time itself. If human development pauses or retreats, then it is only because some specific form of society has reached its limits. If there is something wrong, then it must be fixed”.

Being Here Now: Dropping Frameworks

The Big Bang Never Happened is still available on Amazon and other outlets, and you can find a free full version of the original publication at this internet archive link. You can also watch recent YouTube videos (as of 2023) featuring Eric Lerner and other scientists debating this issue. The book is well worth a read, as its chief argument is that we need to move away from deductive reasoning (beginning with a pre-designed framework, which clouds our ability to see clearly) and more towards inductive reasoning (beginning with an open question and collecting evidence until we discover a discernable pattern).

While Lerner specifically argues in the book that the scientific “consensus” around the Big Bang is based on theoretical speculation (deductive reasoning) which scientists then try to squeeze their findings into as a sense-making heuristic, this very same pattern of logic can be found in the sacred victim narrative, where speculative theories designed under the Critical Social Justice umbrella are often the starting point. In other words, in both science and politics, we have a tendency to try to fit everything we see into the pre-designed theory we have adopted (deductive) rather than remain open-minded and open-hearted enough to see what is before us with enough clarity and accuracy to confidently determine just what has happened (inductive).

By dropping attachment to the idea that the cosmos has a beginning, middle, or end, scientists are free to inquire into other possibilities (e.g. plasma theory, the possibility of the universe being eternal, the bending of time-space, etc.). By dropping attachment to the idea that “power and privilege” is the only way we can view a conflict between people from different demographic groups or the idea that bigotry is the only explanation for disparities in outcomes, we are compelled to engage with what we are experiencing in the here and now, again, with the possibility that we might discover something new. 

To further elaborate, we can certainly look at history including the history of sexism and racism and learn from it, and we can certainly verify that certain rocks from outer space can be Carbon-dated to go back billions of years, indicating that there has been some unfolding of events, both cosmic and worldly over a linear period of time. So, I’m not arguing for an ahistorical approach where we don’t honor the accomplishments—and atrocities—that came before us and the information, insights and analyses about those events that people have gone to the trouble to aggregate for us. We need to preserve the relics and records of what has gone before, as they can help to inform us of what is happening now and what could happen later if we are not conscious and informed enough to intervene. But, we also have to commit to being here and to dropping conceptual filters—including our supposed knowledge about history—that can potentially cloud our ability to see what is really here.

Nothing I am saying is new. 

Most people alive have heard of the phrase “be here now” which comes from a famous 1960’s book of the same title by Ram Daas, as well as the phrase “The Power of Now”, which is the title of the bestselling book by Eckart Tolle. Many, no doubt, have heard the phrase “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,” which is the title of a book by Zen teacher Shunruyu Suzuki who popularized the Japanese Soto Zen lineage and its teachings in the West. And there’s the word “presence” which has been popularized in many different traditions from the spiritually oriented writings of the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton and the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh, to the wide variety of secular fields, including psychology, education, and public speaking. What ties them all together is the commitment to being in the present moment. By committing to being in the moment and seeing what is there before us without relying on an ideologically influenced narrative or cosmic story, we can begin to relate to the world around us, including nature, animals, people, and even insects, unfiltered by frameworks that others have imposed on us or that we have imposed on ourselves. 

Shunryu Suzuki was a Japanese Zen Priest in the Soto lineage who came to America in 1959 at the age of 55. Within a short period of time, he became one of the most influential teachers in the American spiritual landscape, founding the San Francisco Zen Center and authoring the widely popular book, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,” which transmits the teachings of the Soto Zen lineage.

---

Four other books that cover similar themes are Buddhism without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor, The Unfolding Now, by A.H. Almaas, Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh, and A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield. What connects these books to the ones I mentioned above is the commitment to being in the present moment. What these specific four books together as a unit is the principle of non-sectarianism and the understanding that teachings, frameworks, ideologies, and beliefs are not ultimately real and that at some point they begin to hinder our capacity for seeing things as they are and especially our capacity to develop self-awareness and wisdom. The famous Zen parable is that we have to get rid of the boat at some point if we hope to reach the other shore. 

Reaching the other shore (truth, reality, what is) entails a commitment to “not knowing”, which involves some humility and the willingness to make room for anxiety—even existential anxiety. Some readers might reject this notion. They may hold the belief that there is only one true God (could be Allah or Yahweh) and that there are only a few formal representatives of the one true God (prophets) whom we should regard as the sole true representatives of the one true God and therefore must be regarded as exclusively reliable for quelling our anxiety. But, as I cannot be all things to all people, I have to politely register my rejection of the idea that spirit only shows up in small regions though a select number of people who can proclaim unique access to a divine Creator. And I have to register my disagreement with the idea that anxiety can only be reduced or eliminated if we agree to surrender to (and to accept the authority of) other entities outside of ourselves, including spiritual ones. I think the universe is far too generous for that. 

So, let’s now return to the overall point I’ve been working myself up to. 

The Universality of Suffering

The Land acknowledgement ritual is too small, too restrictive and narrow. It reflects a world view that does not see larger patterns over long enough spans of time and does not allow the possibility that suffering and strife, war and violence, land-grabbing and invasions, birth, aging, sickness, and death, building and destruction are all a natural part of life, however painful. It reflects a world view that romanticizes some cultures over others—for example, indigenous people of color over indigenous caucasians (such as one might find in Ireland or Scotland)—and that does not acknowledge the universality of human flaws that have existed in all cultures since time immemorial. It does not acknowledge, for example, that every tribe in the Iroquois Confederacy (which at one time consisted of six individual tribes) at different points warred with one another, captured one another, tortured one another, enslaved one another, sexually assaulted one another, and spent thousands of years fighting one another over land—land that switched hands over and over again over the course of those thousands of years. 

Noted by the National Park Service as America’s “shrine of democracy”, Mount Rushmore , which features George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, draws 3 million visitors a year, considered ground zero for the movement to take back the sacred lands. This piece of land was recommended by James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples as one of the first to give back to the indigenous population, the Lakota (Sioux) who regard the land as sacred. As one of the 300 treaties (the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty) that the U.S. violated, the land was seized after gold was found in the Black Hills. After the 1980 Supreme Court decision that the seizure from the Lakota was illegal, awarding $2 million to the Lakota, the Lakota refused the money and demanded the land back. Against strong opposition and with the inspiration of previous successes like the 1970 law that returned the Blue Lake area back to theTaos Pueblo tribe, the movement to take back the Mount Rushmore land continues to build momentum.  

---

When I walk on this land, I am aware that Europeans conquered certain tribes and settled here. I am aware that these settlements often caused displacements, which had to have been traumatizing for the native populations who were displaced. I am aware that at one point there were tens of millions of indigenous people from hundreds of different tribes flourishing in North and South America with highly advanced cultures, agricultural skills, oral storytelling traditions, spiritual rituals, extended family cultures, and a sacred regard for their ancestors. I am aware that in Canada, indigenous children were removed from their ancestral lands and indoctrinated into the Christian faith and European customs, far and away from their ancestral heritage, ancient customs and immediate families (even if the discovery of the mass graves of indigenous children found at Christian residential schools is inconclusive at best). I am also aware that Europeans brought diseases with them and that diseases were a major cause of death, even if this was not intentional on the part of the European settler colonialists. And I am aware that some who follow rigid critical theory influenced ideologies are quick to presume that Europeans intentionally brought those diseases with them (the infamous tales of intentionally lacing blankets with smallpox before gifting them to tribes notwithstanding), when in most cases, the local natives simply lacked the immunity to diseases that Europeans had built up over thousands of years roaming the same continent among microorganisms that sought to colonize their bodies as hosts. 

I am aware.

But, I am also aware of suffering beyond these sufferings, the suffering that continues all around me. That continues all around us. So, I want to go a step further and acknowledge the suffering of all living things—a common contemplative practice among Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Sufis, Christian mystics, and a preoccupation of non-religion-affiliated philosophers and psychologists like William James and Carl Gustav Jung as well as poets like Evelyn Underhill, and Walt Whitman, many eco-feminists and permaculture designers like Starhawk, and the anti-authoritarian spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti, who rejected his coronation as a the spiritual “world teacher” and spent his life teaching self-reliance and autonomy in the pursuit of self-realization and knowledge. However we feel about the need for community, lineages, and teachers in our quest to understand life, it’s hard to deny the fact that all of us are capable of seeing the dark side of life on our own. One does not need to belong to a spiritual lineage to contemplate the inherently violent nature of the cosmos from the explosive interactions of colliding galaxies to the ravenous consumption of healthy cells by their carnivorous cancerous cousins, to the coordinated “air strikes'' of 30 giant hornets against a honeybee hive, where the hornets come into the hive in attack formation, and kill 30,000 honeybees in minutes, tearing bees’ heads off, and severing their abdomen’s in half with their viciously sharp yellow mandibles before raiding the honeycombs.

The hard fact is that the cosmos is inherently violent to the core. Life eats itself. For human beings, most of whom have the misfortune of having a conscience, there is a great paradox in all this. On the one hand, we want to live in a “better world”, with freedom, human rights, and the lessening of pain and suffering. On the other hand, we don’t want to admit to ourselves that we participate in the suffering of other people and other creatures all the time, however subtly and however inadvertently in certain moments. In our exploration around the sacred victim narrative, it’s good to contemplate the ways in which we ourselves enact victimization, even in moments when that is not our intention.

For, as we will see in the next chapter, there is an untold amount of suffering, injustice, pain, and victimization that we often don’t consider or even notice as we move through our day-to-day lives and major life markers. This is something that we don’t need to feel bad about. If life eats itself, who are we to feel guilty about it? But, if we can step back and really see the roles that each of us plays in the great cycle of life eating itself, who are we to shirk the responsibility of reducing the overpowering influence of that natural instinct at least in ourselves and in the systems we create?

If we want to acknowledge with true sincerity the experience of a specific injustice that has taken place in a single era and region chronologically located in a breathtakingly long arc of time—whether it’s the Egyptian slavery of the Jews, the Islamic slavery of the Eastern European slavs, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Maoist Great Leap Forward campaign, or the American treatment of indigenous people—we will stand the best chance if we are willing to unflinchingly look at all injustices from a much bigger and much more generous view. From such a view, our chances of dismantling unjust systems, policies, and norms will have the optimal conditions for succeeding, because we will have dismantled the root cause of injustice.

Which ultimately lies in ourselves.

Continued in Part 7: Sacred Victims and the Grand Acknowledgement