ADAPTING

adapt [uh-dapt]

1.to make suitable to requirements or conditions; adjust or modify fittingly: They adapted themselves to the change quickly. He adapted the novel for movies.
2.to adjust oneself to different conditions, environment, etc.: to adapt easily to all circumstances.

I remember seeing Yahudi Menuhin, in speaking of his mother’s survival of Nazi Germany, say something to the effect that she came out the other side of the horror of that time intact because she never adapted to the artificial conditions; she always remembered who she was. That has stayed with me ever since as the understanding of the two diametrically opposed definitions of the word adapt.

I was well into this post when I interrupted it to catch this morning’s Democracy Now Thanksgiving Day broadcast, featuring:
• Eloise Cobell, a Blackfeet Indian and the plaintiff in the landmark lawsuit Cobell v. Kempthorne, on behalf of 300,000 Native Americans and is the largest class action lawsuit ever filed against the U.S. government.
• Felix Villca, an Aymara Indian and a senior advisor to the Bolivian Foreign Ministry in the government of Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous leader.
• Sheila Watt-Cloutier, representing the more than 150,000 Inuit of Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and Russia (no pic available).
• Mililani Trask, speaking about the U.S. invasion of Hawaii and the entire Pacific, all speaking at the "Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization a Celebration of Victories, Rights and Cultures" teach-in put on by the International Forum on Globalization.

No more fitting program could be imagined, here during the most arrogantly hypocritical celebration of United States’ hubris, to face the facade with what it would prefer remain under the rug. I highly recommend watching every minute of this broadcast for the inspiration of seeing the power of an indigenous population unified in speaking for their equal rights to institutions based on ignoring them. Felix Villca, in speaking of the realization of the Bolivian indigenous people that they were 80% of the population without representation, being robbed by the government, said to themselves, “We can do this!” and elected Evo Morales president and are renegotiation all the corporate contracts for fair distribution of wealth.

We need a citizen's union in the United States in lieu of a common indigenous, ethnic background in solidarity with the Native Americans to begin to truly represent ourselves, not only to the government, but to ourselves as a way to realize the enormity of the part of our population that can agree on what we have only grumbled about under our breath, on finding a better way to live than being the pawns in the elite power establishment's misrepresentation and pilfering of the national treasury to the neglect of basic human needs. This citizen’s union would not be a political party as much as a council of tribes reappearing to haunt the ancestors of Custer. I feel sure that at least eighty percent of the United States’ population could sign on to an alternative to the present treatment of the environment and the populations of other countries and neglect of people’s rights at home.

Not only was the program no interruption at all, but a real life paraphrase of Menuhin’s observation of his mother’s life, in that each of the speakers expressed their subjugation to globalization’s tyranny as a result of preferring to remain in harmony with nature rather than adapt to the artificiality of western culture being led so stridently by the country that celebrates Thankstaking Day. “Thanks, I’ll take that, and this, what else ya got?”. As Sheila Watt-Cloutier said of the human rights aspect of global warming, "I want the governments to respect our right to be cold!"

So, with no diversion, more a synchronistic emphasis of the subject, adapting, I’ll carry on with where I was going with this. There is definitely two definitions to the word, adapt: number one above is covering the world in leather and number two is learning to wear ones own shoes. Western civilization is showing itself to be be a case of a people perfectly adapted to life on earth in harmony with the nature being taken over by the notion that it was their right, nay, their god commanded duty to adapt nature to their whims as befits the exclusive gift they received.

The only example of insanity in nature is the willful refusal to adapt to nature’s way, which makes western civilization the most insane idea to occur in our history of human thought. Insanity within western civilization is willful refusal to adapt to civilization’s way. Call me crazy, but it seems much more sane to wear my own shoes than to try to make the world suit my feet everywhere I choose to wander. Besides, being a natural being myself, I feel like my adaptation to nature’s way was ensured at birth and is finally being realized more and more every day I pay attention.