Some of you might recognise that quote, it’s from Hell On Wheels, a TV show about a frontier railroad town in the wild west. I actually quite like the show, it has this wonderful dynamic with the main characters, one is a former slave owner and one is a former slave, but the slave owner has a bit of nuance to his character, he was born into a slave owning family, and he emancipated his slaves prior to the civil war.
Obviously this is because it’s a TV show, and it demands a sympathetic character, but what is so fascinating is how both of these men find themselves in the same situation but from opposite ends. One of them struggles with his strange innocence, having been a slave his whole life, he does not always understand the corrupting influences of life as a free man.
The other one of course, has lost his innocence, and is struggling with being a decent and principled man in a world that rewards cruelty and selfishness.
They are both trapped in the industrial revolution, and face the same crisis of how the future will define them as men. Seeing their interactions and how they both confront and guide one another is in my opinion, very good storytelling.
But as it is a frontier town depicting the construction of the Union-Pacific railroad, there will of course be lots of Indian wars. They fight several tribes, often as the aggressors, and often doing most of the killing. And the union soldiers are quite bloodthristy, which brings me to my quote: “Show me the heathen Plato, and I will read him.”
A quote from a rather charming officer who was going on a tangent about skull measurements whilst holding the severed head of one of his foes… who also happened to be an old lady. This is quite historically accurate to be honest, the Indian wars were a very one sided conflict.
But it made me think, where is the heathen Plato, so to speak? I’d use more polite terminology to pose this question, but what exactly is the philosophy of Indians?
Granted, lots of different tribes and peoples, but also, it’s not as if every European is Greek, and Plato sure represents us quite well at times.
I’ve read a few Indian books, and I enjoyed them quite a lot. Sadly they have varying degrees of authenticity, some were written by scholars, dictated to them by elders who shared their history and thoughts, others were written by authors looking to make money, often exaggerating the mystery and intrigue of their accounts in a sort of orientalist fashion.
But that is not to say that you can’t find parts that are consistent in all of them. That exist both in the authentic and opportunistic works. That on some level hints at how it is in fact a distortion and not an outright fiction, so I think as long as one is aware of this, it can be interesting to study as well, even for the fragments.
The first book I ever read was recommended to me by an old friend who was native, it was called Black Elk Speaks, I don’t know who wrote it, but Black Elk dictated it. It’s a fascinating book, that in my opinion blends philosophy, history and narrative in a ways that are subtle, and yet no doubt there.
And it makes me a bit conscious to the distinction of European and Indian writing, in how in Europe, we like to compartmentalise subjects. We like to separate philosophy from history, but we don’t see that here. It’s all very intertwined, the considerations and the events are both put together carefully.
And it is not the only time we see this interesting phenomenon. At one point, Black Elk talks about how his friend was feeling lovesick, for lack of a better word. He was very attracted to a young woman, and he could not stand the thought of not being with her. In European terms we’d say angst, depression or anxiety, we would consider it an emotional, mental or psychological problem. But Black Elk simply says that it made him sick.
And is this merely a primitive notion? Did they not have some kind of psychology or equivalent thereof? Of course not, it is in fact very sophisticated if you examine it in good faith. In fact a lot of things that we dismiss as spiritualism or mysticism actually have a lot of fascinating psychological foundations. Even the names, like Black Elk and Crazy Horse are explained in the book.
Of course he did not know all of it; but he said that Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world. He was on his horse in that world, and the horse and himself on it and the trees and the grass and the stones and everything were made of spirit, and nothing was hard, and everything seemed to float.
His horse was standing still there, and yet it danced around like a horse made only of shadow, and that is how he got his name, which does not mean that his horse was crazy or wild, but that in his vision it danced around in that queer way. It was this vision that gave him his great power, for when he went into a fight, he had only to think of that world to be in it again, so that he could go through anything and not be hurt.
I can’t help but notice how this is very similar to Carl Jung’s ideas about the psyche. This world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things? Sounds a lot like what we could refer to as the subconscious or superconscious parts of the human psyche. When we make this observation, we call it science, when they make the same observation, we call it paganism. But I digress.
What I find so fascinating is how it pertains to identity. Because rather than being given a name from parents, you find one. Your name comes from your own experiences and introspection, in a way, your name is not just some chosen affectation, it rather says something about yourself.
Crazy Horse was a famous warrior, and very fearless, reading his stories and you see how the name very much fits the character. His whole life, in his employment of guile, courage and strategy was very much a queer dance to the onlooker.
Is this a coincidence? I wonder to be honest. Perhaps when names are produced in this way, they speak more to one’s temperament, and the ways in which the mind and the spirit shapes the man he grows up to be.
I also want to say that I have no interest in somehow twisting this to suit European biases about metaphysics. Is there a world of spirits, or is it all brain chemistry? Or perhaps a bit of both?
I have no interest to weigh in here, because I am not studying this simply to affirm my own biases, but to develop more sophisticated biases, and moreover, when Europeans are eager to explain absolutely everything through the lens by which we see the world then frankly, we come off as very insecure.
It doesn’t matter if people call it spirit world or neurodevelopmental phenomenon, as long as you read it in good faith, and try to understand what they are describing. Generally speaking, people are only as stupid as you decide they are, and I see something very clever here that’s made me very curious.
Moreover, I do in fact regard my own faith as having a spiritual component, and I think there’s very little need for magical reasoning to understand it. Humans do have what is, in my opinion, an interconscious component to our minds, and it is generally what we refer to as memories. I describe it as such because I believe memories are the bridge between the conscious and the subconscious mind. Between our experienced selves, and the “reptilian hind brain” as it were.
I do think we are of conscious duality, and that our autonomic nervous system is controlled by something else, something that cannot merely be considered a mechanism. I don’t think mechanisms have phobias or adverse reactions. I don’t think a mechanism can interpret the environments we experience like this. The notion that we somehow program ourselves to let out adrenaline at the sight of big teeth or the sound of a snarl and yet have no recollection of doing it or even some intuitive capacity to undo it seems in my opinion to be a bit strange and short sighted.
The “core” or primary consciousness here that we actually experience life as is a consciousness defined both by our perception of the world, as well as to that of our minds. We can perceive our thoughts, and motives, and even fears at times. But we cannot perceive nervous responses, or what it is that makes our heart beat, or our palms sweat. Or the source of our dreams and imagination. I hope this might clarify my distinction of the two.
I do think there’s a second mind at work here, and it is not an acutely sensory one. It cannot see through our eyes, or smell things with our nose, it can only interpret these things through memories. And it is because of these limitations that we do develop irrational responses and pathologies, because of this limitation to the thing behind our conscious minds.
And that thing I believe is what most of humanity would regard as our spirit, and whether it is connected to something beyond our physical understanding of the universe or not is an endless debate that I find to be if you’ll pardon my elitism, frightfully pedestrian. It is merely the exercise of coming up with more and more elaborate ways of saying “Yes” and “No.” I leave that to people who get paid to study things, as I see no other motivation for it.
And I also think dreams are a fascinating way in which to explore this, because I think it is when we visit this other consciousness in some sense. As we shut off our primary sensory input, we suddenly become enveloped in this strange world where there is a mix of memory and imagination, a world built by something that both is and isn’t. I think this is where this other side to our being lives, and how it experiences things.
I think this is why our experiences, traumas, memories, relationships and whatever else has such a profound impact on the psyche, why we spend more time being defined by our past than our present. It’s a wonderful thing of nature, how we have this curious thing within us, this being of concepts and creativity. And I think both sanity and insanity comes from our relationship to this.
When the barrier between conscious perception and this strange dreamworld breaks we can see all manner of consequences. Fears, hallucinations, as well as great creativity and intuition. We can meditate and discipline ourselves, we can shape the way in which it influences us. It can be a voice in our head, or it can be beautiful paintings that we can somehow project unto a canvass. It’s extraordinary what we can do when we learn how to work together with ourselves, so to speak.
And a lot of these considerations came out of studying how other people regard themselves in relation to the world, by trying to keep a sense of respect and inquiry instead of simply dismissing things based on superficial prejudice. Psychology is by no means a modern phenomenon, it is only a modern word.
And I think that there is an Indian Plato, in fact I think there’s probably dozens of them. And we are very lucky in how, unlike Plato, they do not attach their names to their contributions in some proprietary way. How they seem more interested in the knowledge than the prestige, because it is precisely because of this that when Black Elk Speaks, it is not only his voice we get to hear. In some way, many live on through his words, and the compounding effect of these words leave a lot of things to reflect upon.
