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What was this continent called before Columbus chanced upon it and termed it the New World (as if it didn’t exist before he blessed it with his presence) and helped a race become extinct? There were people here on these lands. We know that. I hope we remember that. There were natives of the land with their cultures and dreams.

Why is it that some of us feel the need to rise up above our own kind and say: those people serve foolish gods and must be forced to accept our god, killed if they refuse; or those people are too wild to deserve what they have; those people look like monkeys and should be used like donkeys; those people’s noses are too big and their hair is not that perfect shade of wheat, gold, sunshine, whatever, hence they ought to be hunted down, kept locked, harassed and murdered on a whim. Or those people just got to go. . . we’ll figure out why after they are gone.

I come back to this question often: when we claim that we’re intelligent, what level is that intelligence and to what do we compare it? Animals? If so is not that insufficient? As animals (and some do argue that we’re all animals ——which makes a lot of sense to me) seem to operate differently, i.e. on a more instinctual level than we do, and rightly for the kind of life they lead.

Happy Columbus Day fellow Americans!