“The war stopped as suddenly and as universally as it had begun. The world lifted its head, surveyed the scene of ruin, and victors and vanquished alike drew breath. In a hundred laboratories, in a thousand arsenals, factories, and bureau, men pulled themselves up with a jerk, and turned from the task in which they had been absorbed. Their projects were put aside unfinished, unexecuted; but their knowledge was preserved; their data, calculations and discoveries were hastily bundled together and docketed for future reference by the War Offices in every country. The campaign of 1919 was never fought; but its ideas go marching along. In every army they are being explored, elaborated, refined under the surface of peace, and should war come again to the world it is not with the weapons and agencies prepared for 1919 that it will be fought, but with developments and extensions of these which will be incomparably more formidable and fatal.
“It is in these circumstances that we entered upon that period of exhaustion which has been described as Peace. It gives us, at any rate, an opportunity to consider the general situation. Certain somber facts emerge, solid, inexorable, like the shapes of mountains from drifting mist. It is established that henceforward whole populations will take part in war, all doing their utmost, all subjected to the fury of the enemy. It is established that nations who believe their life is at stake will not be restrained from using any means to secure their existence. It is probable – nay, certain, – that among the means which will next time be at their disposal will be agencies and processes of destruction wholesale, unlimited, and perhaps, once launched, uncontrollable.
“Mankind has never been in this position before. Without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, it has got into its hands for the first time the tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own extermination. That is the point in human destinies to which all the glories and toils of men have at last led them. They would do well to pause and ponder upon their new responsibilities. Death stands at attention, obedient, expectant, ready to serve, ready to shear away the peoples en masse; ready, if called on, to pulverize, without hope of repair, what is left of civilization. He awaits only the word of command. He awaits it from a frail, bewildered being, long his victim, now – for one occasion only – his Master.”
– Winston S. Churchill in The Aftermath, January 1, 1929
“At the first Earth Day protest in 1970, Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist and proto-environmentalist, issued a call to action: ‘We have to learn to cherish this earth and cherish it as something that’s fragile, that’s only one, it’s all we have. We have to use our scientific knowledge to correct the dangers that have come from science and technology.’”
– pg. 44, Newsweek, October 25, 2010
When Kremandala, in its first incarnation as the UBAD movement of 1969, embarked on the project of crash education of the Belizean people, we practiced the philosophy of black nationalism. To a great extent, we excluded Europeans from our process, although individual, enlightened Europeans, like Mike Allen from Oakland, California, participated on a limited basis.
A lot of very important developments had taken place in our region and on planet earth during the decade of the 1960s, developments which required the urgent attention of the Belizean people. In 1969, the Belizean people were still a very, very innocent people. We were in a state of mental darkness, because it had been the agenda of those who ruled and exploited us to keep us ignorant.
The nationalist revolution of 1950 was a reactionary revolution, if such a revolution is possible, insofar as its attitude to education was concerned. All the apparatus and curricula of racist, colonial thought were maintained completely intact in Belize under the People’s United Party (PUP).
During and following the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, things had speeded up dramatically in our region and in the world. Importantly, these developments provoked and activated the young people in European countries all over planet earth, and rebellions broke out in the European societies, which were and are the most wealthy and powerful on the planet. (For the purposes of this essay, we have chosen to consider the United States of America and Canada as European societies.)
European young people rebelled in the 1960s because they realized that their future, their very lives, had been mortgaged to a philosophy of white, Western supremacy and crass materialism which had as an integral component – a commitment to untrammeled militarism at a time when mankind had developed the capacity to destroy itself with nuclear weapons. The world had become a terribly frightening place in the 1960s: the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 triggered the uprisings of European youth which followed.
There is a way to view planet earth and her bounties which respects the belief that man came from the earth and must return to same. In between, man lives on earth, but he must not violate planet earth during the course of his existence. Individual man is a temporary phenomenon: even as man has come to be because of men and women who lived before him, so man must appreciate the rights of those who will come after him. In appreciating and respecting the rights of his children and his children’s children, man’s priority should be the love and care of planet earth and her “wealth untold.” This was the guiding philosophy of those so-called primitive peoples in Africa, Asia and America who were invaded by the Europeans in the fifteenth century and afterwards.
The invader Europeans believed that this philosophy which had guided the lives of the Africans, Asians and Americans whom they conquered and subjugated, was a primitive and childish philosophy. The guiding philosophy of Europe, as manifested in the centuries since the various conquests of our ancestors, has been a massive greed for wealth, power and personal pleasure. Europeans ignored the wisdom of native peoples. Might made them right: this was Europe, and this was white supremacy.
The 1960s changed some of that, and there arose a new breed of Europeans who, if you really think about it, began to appreciate the humble wisdom of those peoples whom their ancestors had considered stupid and primitive. The Europeans who organized and run Oceana are products of the generations which grew up during the 1960s. These enlightened Europeans have much to offer our region and the world, because they can prove their points with the same science and technology their ancestors developed while our ancestors were working as slaves to make them wealthy.
The humble wisdom of our ancestors at the time of contact five hundred plus years ago derived from the knowledge and data base of great civilizations which preceded them in Africa, Asia and America. Our ancestors had “been there and done that.” Greed had essentially been removed from their DNA. That’s if it had been there. The Europeans who invaded Africa, Asia, and America, had never been rich and powerful before the conquests. They were eager and savage and greedy, and it took them five hundred years to learn. Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shall return. What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul? It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Of what value are all the baubles, bangles and beads when there is emptiness in the heart and the soul of a man? Respect, Oceana, for these are Europeans who have come to see the light. We welcome enlightened Europeans.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.