Monday, November 22, 2010
Gambling Casinos and the Vengeance of Chance
America is beautiful.
Geography is probably destiny, therefore every person who lives in any particular country should be required by law to travel it, up close and personally: in the USA, there should be a Cross - Country Driving Law passed by the US Congress, whereby by every family is required and provided with the government funding to drive from their home to another city far, far away. Information about their travel route would also be provided by our government, so the kids (as well as the poorly educated adults) could learn fun and interesting facts about the things they're seeing along the way. They would be required to stop at certain key places, where they would receive official tags of some sort, proving they had made that part of the trip! Photographs would be taken, as further proof , and to supply an official scrapbook at the end of the trip, for the entire family to enjoy, in memory and conversation around the dinner table.
Then, maybe we would begin to understand people better, and come to more deeply appreciate our particular piece of the world . For example:
The Cherokee and Iroquois Nations, in Oklahoma and Texas, have regained some footing on their historical lands by opening mega-church - like gambling casinos on them. Yesterday, we passed several enormous structures dedicated to greed, avarice, surface thrills, and good old fashioned worship of Lady Luck, and it got me thinking: why is this so oddly thrilling? Almost like vengeance!
At the same time, why does it dismay me to see these noble peoples create temples to the very worst in mankind? What is possibly explicable and right about that? How did it happen that the "noble savage" stooped low enough to finally get us at our own game? When did they learn to be cynical enough to adapt the guise of being so successfully "white"? These guys are fulfilling the good old American dream: they are raking it in! To the envy of many of their white counterparts in places like Reno, Vegas and Atlantic City, these original American natives are beating the Mafia at their own games! And breaking no knees or noses, in the process.
Sure , we white folks did ruin them, rape, pillage, decimate and destroy their native cultures...Filled their bellies with "fire-water" and their blankets full of small pox....put them on "reservations" and took their power away so completely, most kids now grow up not even knowing what place the Native AMerican tribes have in our country's history. But...gambling casinos??? What's that about?
Like fortresses, these gargantuan cathedrals of gambling rise out of the flat lands, and i had a thought :
Native Americans have always been connected to The Land in primally deep, spiritual ways...always believed in the animus of every deer or antelope they killed for food, and in the primitive and mystical life force in trees, in all of Nature. And what could be more primal....more primitive, if you will...than man's belief /dependence on Luck? Since the first frightened human built an altar to the god he hoped would protect him when lightening struck, Mankind has believed in the good Fortune of some and the very bad Fortune of others, and has worked hard to be the one to whom only Good happened! Man gambles every single day of his life...to breathe is to take a gamble on the next breath!
SO , it's somehow fitting that the modern Indian nations are connecting to the deeply rooted "Nature" of man to re-gain his place: it is appealing to such a basic quality - Fear - a fear allayed only by deep belief in the power of prayer for Good Luck, in hopes of gaining MORE and more and more..that it's almost as natural as man can be...and the Indians have always trusted Nature, haven't they? So, once an idea like a gambling casino came to be - as a way to appeal to our deep belief that the next stroke of Good Fortune is only waiting at the next table to happen to us - it grew like the solid idea it was, and has become concretized in these huge glamorous buildings (more Western fixations: largeness and glamour)....and we flock to these palaces of Chance, as surely as thirsty herds of antelope gravitate to the nearest pond of fresh water! The Indians? Well, I'd say they consider these particular antelopes fair game..... wouldn't you?
Geography is probably destiny, therefore every person who lives in any particular country should be required by law to travel it, up close and personally: in the USA, there should be a Cross - Country Driving Law passed by the US Congress, whereby by every family is required and provided with the government funding to drive from their home to another city far, far away. Information about their travel route would also be provided by our government, so the kids (as well as the poorly educated adults) could learn fun and interesting facts about the things they're seeing along the way. They would be required to stop at certain key places, where they would receive official tags of some sort, proving they had made that part of the trip! Photographs would be taken, as further proof , and to supply an official scrapbook at the end of the trip, for the entire family to enjoy, in memory and conversation around the dinner table.
Then, maybe we would begin to understand people better, and come to more deeply appreciate our particular piece of the world . For example:
The Cherokee and Iroquois Nations, in Oklahoma and Texas, have regained some footing on their historical lands by opening mega-church - like gambling casinos on them. Yesterday, we passed several enormous structures dedicated to greed, avarice, surface thrills, and good old fashioned worship of Lady Luck, and it got me thinking: why is this so oddly thrilling? Almost like vengeance!
At the same time, why does it dismay me to see these noble peoples create temples to the very worst in mankind? What is possibly explicable and right about that? How did it happen that the "noble savage" stooped low enough to finally get us at our own game? When did they learn to be cynical enough to adapt the guise of being so successfully "white"? These guys are fulfilling the good old American dream: they are raking it in! To the envy of many of their white counterparts in places like Reno, Vegas and Atlantic City, these original American natives are beating the Mafia at their own games! And breaking no knees or noses, in the process.
Sure , we white folks did ruin them, rape, pillage, decimate and destroy their native cultures...Filled their bellies with "fire-water" and their blankets full of small pox....put them on "reservations" and took their power away so completely, most kids now grow up not even knowing what place the Native AMerican tribes have in our country's history. But...gambling casinos??? What's that about?
Like fortresses, these gargantuan cathedrals of gambling rise out of the flat lands, and i had a thought :
Native Americans have always been connected to The Land in primally deep, spiritual ways...always believed in the animus of every deer or antelope they killed for food, and in the primitive and mystical life force in trees, in all of Nature. And what could be more primal....more primitive, if you will...than man's belief /dependence on Luck? Since the first frightened human built an altar to the god he hoped would protect him when lightening struck, Mankind has believed in the good Fortune of some and the very bad Fortune of others, and has worked hard to be the one to whom only Good happened! Man gambles every single day of his life...to breathe is to take a gamble on the next breath!
SO , it's somehow fitting that the modern Indian nations are connecting to the deeply rooted "Nature" of man to re-gain his place: it is appealing to such a basic quality - Fear - a fear allayed only by deep belief in the power of prayer for Good Luck, in hopes of gaining MORE and more and more..that it's almost as natural as man can be...and the Indians have always trusted Nature, haven't they? So, once an idea like a gambling casino came to be - as a way to appeal to our deep belief that the next stroke of Good Fortune is only waiting at the next table to happen to us - it grew like the solid idea it was, and has become concretized in these huge glamorous buildings (more Western fixations: largeness and glamour)....and we flock to these palaces of Chance, as surely as thirsty herds of antelope gravitate to the nearest pond of fresh water! The Indians? Well, I'd say they consider these particular antelopes fair game..... wouldn't you?
Labels: Cross-Country Journey
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