Overused Logic: Why Intuition was Systematically Sabotaged
Too many people try to bring about harmony through using the logical mind. Words and ideas twist around, spewing out of peoples’ mouths, but logic cannot bring about the full balance that combining logic with intuition can achieve. I become exhausted amongst these overly rational folks, who insist that they know better how to fix things, or else I should logically prove to them otherwise.
We live in a world that has been thoroughly influenced by Western rationalism, even when that heritage is not part of our own. There is nothing wrong with incorporating Western rationalism. Rather, it is the fact that we (when I say we, I do actually mean everybody) have thrown out our spiritual lineage of intuition and deeper knowing. We’ve made a practice to discard and scoff at our unseen inner wisdom because we will not be able to prove it to a scientific mind that only acknowledges what it can see with its physical eye. The problem is and has been, we don’t always see the same thing. However, who gets to dictate which lens we’re looking through… has been the Westerners.
This survival-level overemphasis on rationalism is tied to the overemphasis on materialism. If you only matter if you can prove it physically, you will feel enormous psychological pressure to produce and display tangible things that will indicate that you are of substance and that you are worthy. When Western imperial powers forcibly infiltrated, broke, and sabotaged the nations of the global majority, they forced the rest of the world into a fundamentally different framework than what was before. The various nations of the global majority had their respective strengths and respective cosmologies. In essence, they know who they were and they had a better recognition of their sovereignty. I will pause to acknowledge that the global majority was not perfect in its ways and there are many internal cracks that have eroded the spiritual power of the people in all these nations. However, the impact of colonialism and extortion from Western imperial powers impacted so many nations in such a singular manner that these patterns have to be noted.
Firstly, Western imperial powers focused on destroying commonplace economies that are often not thought of, but are essential to everyday living. Concentrated efforts were made to destroy subsistence agriculture and textile economies: two main needs we have as humans. If I can grow my own food and make my own clothes, why do I need to listen to someone else or tolerate someone else’s bullying?
Subsistence agriculture refers to when you are mainly focusing on growing a diversity of crops to support your own daily living needs. The focus is not on profit. Damage to subsistence agriculture systems typically occurs when the common folk lose access to communal land. When land becomes privatized, daily essentials such as food and clothing for the common folk are dependent on the mercy or cruelty of the landed elite. Landed elite could be a longstanding local elite class from the culture, or it could be colonial invaders. The impact of colonial invaders is more harmful as opposed to the impact of the landed elite on the common population. That is because colonizers do not necessarily intend to live in their colony and don’t care long term for the colony’s population, environment, or long-term economy. Colonizers are focused on extraction and maximization of certain target resources that benefit their own country. This is where subsistence agriculture practices are replaced with cash crops operations and plantations. Folks who cannot grow their own food must earn money somehow to buy food. So instead, they are working on the original land they grew up subsistence crops on, but are now growing something like coffee, sugar, or tea for other people in other countries. Growing just one crop is also not healthy for soil long-term, but at this point, the common folk have lost their sovereignty to oppose monocropping.
Textile economies are something that most people today do not think about. Fast fashion is very prevalent, where people see clothing as cheap, disposable, and easily replaced. However, the foundation of every civilization rests on textile economies. We all need cloth to cloth ourselves, to keep ourselves warm, and to keep our life medically hygienic. We need fibers to create rope and cord for industry and infrastructure. Essentially, every culture and group developed with the knowledge and skill to produce their own clothing. It was essential. Historically, textile goods like Indian cotton and Chinese silk were incredibly popular in the West and these European countries paid so much money over to Asia to acquire textiles. In order to dismantle these textile economies, Western imperial powers used tactics such as destroying the raw material industries from which cloth was made. This again goes to the destruction of agriculture. Western imperial powers also would foment dissent amongst craft guilds to destroy the human and operational infrastructure of textile economies. One of the most notable changes was that Western imperial powers introduced industrialized machines into the textile industry which produced way more fiber and cloth than humans could do by hand. I can’t fully blame the Western imperial powers for introducing machines, but I will note that the manner in which it was done had the intent to destroy other cultures’ existing textile economies, render a country dependent on the imperial powers, and engage them in a cycle of extortion and extraction.
I’ve highlighted a few ways in which Western imperial powers systematically destroyed certain foundations of the nations of the global majority. These nations did not become colonized because they were naturally ‘weak’. A systematic dismantling of core survival economies was deployed by the Western imperial powers for the purpose of creating a superior-subordinate relationship with other nations. Let’s focus now on how this impacts the psyches of the colonized nations and its people. When people lose the material means to their independence, they also begin to lose faith in themselves, their history, their cosmologies, and spiritual lessons. Because they now exist in a world where they must appease and fawn (** this is a trauma response) in order to obtain their basic necessities, their worldview shifts to center the perspective of their oppressors. If the Western power does not respect or understand the cultures’ spiritual practice and values, slowly those very own people begin to discard their own spiritual heritage. When Western rationalism denounces spiritual healing and holistic medical practices, it does so because the physical eye cannot discern the flow of progress. But at this point, the people in the culture are so accustomed to centering the Western oppressor, that they have also forgotten the power of the unseen. Or rather, they force themselves to forget because the need for food, water, and clothing is more urgent than their remembrance of who they are.
These days, colonialism is more a thing of the past. However, the psychological impacts of these events remain. The rampant materialism contributed by the global majority is a product of centering Western rationalism, of worshipping the visible evidence of one’s success and worthiness. It is all but forgotten that inner worth comes from inside a person, and that many of the traditional wisdoms teach this. It is forgotten because the peoples of once colonized nations have not had the privilege to be themselves and know themselves for a long time. Their sovereignty was out of reach because others destroyed the foundational economies that allowed them to thrive as humans.
So when people wring their hands about, lamenting about how wrong the world has gone, and they are trying to logically trace the most recent rhetoric of politicians, I point to food and cloth and say “This is what’s wrong with the world.” Instead of focusing on hypocritical leaders of the developed world trying to use Band-Aid measures to fix the ‘broken’ other nations, I would ask them to sit in the discomfort of how much foundational suffering they or their ancestors have wrought. If you didn’t have food or cloth, how much better could you act? If you lost the path to your own autonomy, how soon would you too forget yourself?
