Columbus and other Cannibals by Jack D Forbes

Columbus and other Cannibals

NSP Meditations ,

I recently reread one of the more important books I’ve read in my life. I pored over my old annotations and added new ones. I refreshed old insights and conjured new ones. I poured the new insights into a forthcoming book of my own.

My discovery of this book has an interesting provenance. One morning, a year ago or so, on a wind-whipped walk down the beach, my friend Glen had recommended Columbus and other Cannibals by Jack D. Forbes. I’d never heard of it, but I always pay attention to Glen. His book recommendations have changed my life. A week later the book arrived and I devoured it in one setting.

In Columbus and other Cannibals, Forbes introduced the Cree word wetiko and defines it as, “a disease of aggression against other living things, and more precisely, the disease of the consuming of other creatures’ lives and possessions…for one’s own private purpose or profit.”

In other words, Forbes’ words, “cannibalism.” He called it the “greatest epidemic sickness known to man.” He called it “insanity.” It began with the genocide of indigenous peoples, expanded to the destruction of nature, and kept going on from there to slavery, imperialism, colonialism, endless wars of greed, religion, racism and conquest, and, unique in American society, mass incarceration.

Interestingly enough, Forbes barely writes of incarceration because when the book was originally published in 1977 we didn’t have mass incarceration in the US. We now have almost four times the rate of incarceration in the country. It’s a new strain of the cannibalism that has proven incredibly profitable.

It made perfect sense the first time I read it. It slapped me in the face the second time. Forbes presented wetiko and cannibalism as a thesis. It is no thesis. I saw it proved beyond a reasonable doubt in the criminal justice system the past three years. I witnessed insanity. I will never forget what I saw nor do I want to. I hope it will inform the rest of my writing life and perhaps one day I can raise awareness.

There is more to Columbus and other Cannibals, much more. And I urge everyone to read it.

Current Reading

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I continue my exploration of the detective fiction genre in preparation for writing my novel: Simenon, early Michael Connelly, etc. I feel many writers in this genre are exploring topics of race and class in a much richer way than writers of literary fiction.

I just finished E.L. Doctrow’s Ragtime for the fifth time. I consider it one of the greatest American novels. Everything is in that novel that still troubles us today: racism, poverty, acceptance of immigration, gender roles, the deleterious effects of living in big cities, police brutality, anti-unionism, terrorism. But everything that is often good about American life is also in there: music, creative imaginations, the willingness to accept other races, the genius and work ethic of immigrants, helping those in need, and the ability to reinvent one’s self. I heartily recommend this novel to everyone.

Chekhov is back. I found a collection of his short stories for a buck and try to read one every night. Some don’t hold up, but most do.

I completed a massive history of the Columbia River Watershed, also in preparation for writing the novel. Interesting new fact learned: virtually none of the native grasses on the High Columbia Plateau exist anymore. Agriculture and grazing obliterated them.

I’m reading manuscripts in process from five different writers, one of whom is dead and left behind almost 600,000 words and just might be the best writer of his Oregon generation that no one has read. That is going to change soon.

I recently finished Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges, an absolute tour de force about the rapid decline of American culture in the face of sheer spectacle, the onslaught of debasing and enslaving entertainment, the infiltration of corporations into every part of our lives and the college educations most students receive that prepare them quite well to ruin the planet. This book was published in 2009 and eerily predicts the rise of a fascist like Donald Trump. His election was the culmination of 20 years of the debasement of American literacy via television, politics, radio, social media, movies, etc. Hedges is especially brilliant on the role celebrities have played in this decline. It makes for arresting reading and I urge people to pick up this book. I don’t think it’s too late for the US. I’ll probably never think that until it is.

I’m going through The Scarlet Letter again. No one remembers the ending, no, not when the reverend’s heart explodes, but how Hester returns to the town that pilloried her and becomes a sage. People forget that ending.

I’m also leafing through section of Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen, a hugely influential book when it came out in the mid 1950s. I know a lot about Zen and then….I don’t. It’s always something that requires relearning and rethinking. This book is helping with that and providing some historical context for the movement.

I devoured Columbus and other Cannibals by Jack D Forbes, an undisputed classic that was originally published in 1978. Forbes makes a powerful case that American culture is afflicted with what Native Americans’ call wetiko, a spiritual disease of insanity and lack of heart that leads to the real and metaphorical cannibalism of human beings by other human beings through exploitation, politics, capitalism, religion, imperialism, and violence. The thesis is compelling and one merely has to look around at what our culture does to nature and human beings for confirmation. Forbes suggest we combat the disease through “acts of beauty” and I thought that one of the more beautiful phrases I’ve read in a long time. I will try to perform them daily. Perhaps others should as well.

My friend Glen recommended Columbus as well another one, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. This book is inspiring me to rethink many of my cherished assumptions about American history. It’s also providing excellent background for writing the detective novel. That book is forming in my mind. I think about it all the time.

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