Lessons from Time Travel

Travel through Peru is a dizzying experience. It's time travel!

There are, in the highlands and mountains, the remains of human settlements that date from 8,000 BC—think about that! In the Toquepala Caves, there are seven-color paintings done by hunter-gatherers dating back to that time, sequences of the trapping and harvesting of guanacos by use of axe, lance and spear-throwers.

Peru’s Sacred Valley was settled around 800 BC. It’s a remarkable ecosystem: there are corners where crops can be grown year around, although the altitude ranges from just below 7,000 feet to almost 10,000 feet above sea level. Water is abundant from both natural watercourses and the channels and fountains devised by pre-Columbian peoples.  While most people think of the Inca as Peru’s original civilization, the Inca were actually late-comers, emerging around Cuzco during the 14th C.

Before the rise of the Inca, Cuzco seems to have been a center for the rise and fall of several cultural groups, including the Chanapata early on, and the Wari, an aggressive people that preceded the Inca. The Wari collapsed around 1100 AD, after initial success at conquest of neighboring peoples. Legend brings the Inca on to the scene. Myth attributes the founding of Cuzco to them.

The Inca were a talented society; they adopted and adapted useful elements of previous cultures, and wove together surrounding peoples into a single entity. They did this not so much through armed conquest as with diplomacy: persuasion, negotiation, alliances through marriage. Part of their strategy was the offer of stability and protection to replace costly tensions and conflict. The Inca were apparently masters of administration, for their territory ended up reaching from today’s Columbia southward deep into present-day Chile.

The pre-Inca and Inca ruins in the Sacred Valley are marvels of architecture and engineering. What’s particularly impressive to me is both the longevity, the permanence of the constructions, and the not-entirely-unrelated design that worked with terrain, geology and ecology rather than trying to dominate the indomitable.

The famed ruins of Machu Picchu are a case in point. Even when discovered in 1911, some 500 years after its abandonment, the “ruins” were largely intact. Oh, the roofs, originally thatch, were gone, timbers fallen, and vegetation had managed to weaken some parts. But by and large, the buildings stood entire, the fitting of the stones so securely done—without mortar!—that the stones remained unmoved. In a land of earthquakes! Channels for water still directed the water through the citadel; terraces for support continued to shed water and provide stability.

As they do today, though the impact of thousands upon thousands of tourist feet has begun to affect the passageways and walls. Some shifts appear in the previously unmoved stones, here and there, prompting the authorities to consider limitations on access.

There’s much we could learn from the model we are told that the Inca left us. Their reliance on non-forceful means to unify disparate peoples and thereby expand trade and cultural exchange offers food for thought. War is directly destructive of human life; it also disrupts trade and wastes resources, including labor. If accommodation can be reached with one’s adversaries, then cooperation can ensue, enhancing everyone’s security. The question posed today was probably an issue even then: what is a people ready to give up for increased security, and what must be retained? Religion is often a sticking point, particularly if there are significant numbers of fundamentalists (“my way is the only TRUTH”); certain cultural values may cause stresses if infringed. But it’s worth looking for points where peoples can find common ground and starting from there, rather than trying to force an adversary into a mold it’s unprepared to fit into.

Likewise, and perhaps even more importantly, it appears that the Inca, and their predecessors, didn’t try to dominate their landscape. Instead, they learned how to work with it. Looking at waterworks today that were built thousands of years ago and still function, one is struck with the fact that maintenance is minimized if you don’t try to force a system into a place where it doesn’t naturally fit. The terraces and drainage channels in the pre-Columbian ruins of Peru remain whole; erosion hasn’t carried it all away. Even in the high country around Lake Titicaca (elevations average above 12000 ft.) where frost is frequent, the indigenous peoples figured out how to use a kind of raised bed and channel growing system that acted to modify temperatures enough to allow abundant crop production. (There’s a great description of this in an article by researcher Clark L. Ericson at https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/articles/Exped.pdf).

The indigenous peoples of the United States are actively exploring their cultural roots and the ancient knowledge that informs their cultures. Tension continues between forced domination, which is philosophically a foundation of Western European culture (See Genesis: 1-26, where god charges  mankind with to dominate all animal life and subdue plant life), and seeking commonality. To date, the urge to domination has resulted in the primacy of Western culture. There is now, however, a profound question about whether we, as a species, can survive if we continue using the old models.

Maybe it’s time to start listening to the voices of indigenous peoples who have adapted to their environments. Domination isn’t working out so well…

Wind/ice cause collapse of communication tower at Sugarloaf, Maine, 24 Feb. 2019
Photo by TDS Communications
taken from News Center ME site (NBC)

Presidential Pronouncement: Pretend Proposal

Portland Women's March 01/19/19

I didn’t hear the president’s remarks when they came fresh from his mouth. I was engaged in demonstrating in support of rights that his administration has put in jeopardy: women’s, environmental, racial equality, immigration, LBGQT+, voting… in short, all of the rights that U.S. citizens have fought for through the years and apparently must now fight for again.

I heard about the remarks, and today, as a strange series of weather wave shifts —sleet, snow, freezing rain—argue about which should dominate through wind gusts, I listened to the proposal. Now, you have to understand that I assumed that the point was ending the government shutdown.

I admit it: I thought the crisis to be addressed was the economic sledgehammer coming down on federal employees and those who depend on them, directly (like their families) and indirectly (small businesses, lenders, services…), an economic impact that will ripple out beyond those now immediately involved as time goes on. In my naiveté, I was waiting for the president to acknowledge a problem well on its way to affecting everyone in the country in one way or another and to propose its solution.

Instead, I learned that the president has suddenly discovered that the conditions his policies cause on the border have created a humanitarian crisis. This isn’t news to anyone who has been following the situation pretty much since the president was elected, but evidently it wasn’t clear to him. The other border problems he referred to are ongoing and hardly constitute a crisis; moreover, a wall won't do a lot to forestall them for multiple reasons I won't regurgitate here.

When the president's remarks were finished, I was left perplexed and a little angry. The anger strengthened when I listened to specific parts of his comments again, just to be sure I didn’t miss what I was looking for.

First, in this nationally broadcast statement, in the midst of a government shutdown that is, among other things, on the verge of being a national security crisis (if it isn’t already), the president’s reference to it was limited, and never did he speak to or of the men and women that bear its heaviest burden. At the start of his remarks, he described his plan as providing a “path forward to end the government shutdown”; toward the end, he said his plan “immediately opens government,” and then he talked about how, “once the government is open,” his administration would take bipartisan steps toward a consultation on comprehensive immigration legislation. How this works in practice regarding the shutdown is apparently that Senator McConnell will “bring up legislation that would immediately reopen the government and incorporate President Trump’s proposal to offer temporary protections to some immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion for his border wall,” this according to a McConnell staffer. [ Emphasis added; New York Times on line, 20 January 2019.]

Second, insisting he was being reasonable and that the Democrats had been taken over by radicals supporting open borders, the president urged acceptance of his "common sense" plan. But the only people I’ve heard talk about "open borders" are those  fixated on a border wall from sea to shining sea. The president made it sound like anyone who opposes his wall opposes any border security at all. Yet the Democratic Party platform provides "Democrats will continue to work toward comprehensive immigration reform that fixes our nation’s broken immigration system, improves border security, prioritizes enforcement so we are targeting criminals – not families, keeps families together, and strengthens our economy.” [Emphasis added.] I've heard no Democratic spokesperson refute this principle. (Interestingly, in a kind of footnote no one seems to have remarked, the president appeared to imply that the border would be more or less open for agricultural workers as he conceives border reform, saying that "lawful and regulated entry into our country will be easy and consistent" for them so "our farmers and vineyards won't be affected.")

500 year old wall, Machu Picchu

So why am I angry? Because the cynicism and political gamesmanship of this “solution” is so clear. The president’s only concession is an indication that his wall will be built at strategic locations rather than trying to follow the entire border. (How "strategic locations" are actually defined should be closely watched in the language of any relevant legislation.) Most importantly, he still insists on 5.7 billion dollars for wall construction, without further detail, before he’ll agree to sign anything that will reopen the government.

But the Senate Majority Leader bears responsibility for this situation as well. His cynicism in coupling the president’s plan with the reopening of the government in an effort to force Democrats to agree to the 5.7 billion is transparently obvious. If they don’t do so, presumably the GOP will claim (as they’ve been doing), that the Dems are obstructionist and for “open borders.” McConnell COULD just allow the spending bills both houses previously approved to go to the Senate floor for a vote, and the Senate could exercise its constitutional duty by a veto-proof vote. Even McConnell must see that the precedent of allowing a president to hold the entire country hostage through a government shutdown is unacceptable and contrary to every principal of good governance to which we supposedly adhere!

Perhaps McConnell feels that upholding his oath of office would cripple the president who, among other things, is giving him the judges he wants.  McConnell’s already managed to reshape the U.S. federal court system significantly. He should take his wins and run. It's past time for him to do his duty and reopen the government. The immigration and border security aspects of the president’s plan can then be debated, discussed, negotiated and settled--without harming federal public servants who are now being punished for choosing to serve us. Because, in case anyone's forgotten, WE--all of us, whether or not we voted for the president--are the boss of all of these people. Including the occupant of the White House.