Reflections of Columbus

When I was going to school we celebrated holidays when they occurred, not when they created three-day-weekends.

And one of those holidays was Columbus Day—October 12.

Columbus now affords us an extra day off school, a day when the post office and other government buildings are closed, a day of respite for jurors.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, President Franklin Roosevelt designated Oct. 12 as Columbus Day, and in 1971, President Richard Nixon declared Columbus Day a federal holiday to be observed on the second Monday in October.

How positive or negative was Columbus’s “discovery” of the “New World” depends on your perspective.  To Europe, embroiled for centuries in crusades and inter-kingdom wars, it provided a new game. To the native population of the Americas it was the beginning of the end of their sovereignty and culture.

The Ayn Rand Institute rejects this concept, stating anyone who claims the Westernization process was cruel and oppressive is simply being “politically correct,” and that preserving one’s culture is a sham as a rational goal in life.

History.com clocks in with a different rendition of history: ”

As governor and viceroy of the Indies, Columbus imposed iron discipline on what is now the Caribbean country of Dominican Republic, according to documents discovered by Spanish historians in 2005. In response to native unrest and revolt, Columbus ordered the a brutal crackdown in which many natives were killed; in an attempt to deter further rebellion, Columbus ordered their dismembered bodies to be paraded through the streets. In addition to the controversy over enslavement and violent rule, the “Age of Exploration” Columbus led had the additional consequence of bringing new diseases to the New World which would, over time, devastate the native populations of many New World islands and communities.”>>

I prefer to look on Columbus Day as a microcosm or what is good and bad about Mankind:

• The striving for a better way of life–exploration, courage and advancement, but coupled with
• A shortsighted insular vision of the dynamics of life.

In Scientology we have a concept called “The Eight Dynamics,” Described in this video:

The pitting of one group (one 3rd Dynamic) against all others is irrational, as it intends the destruction of all others who are not a part of that group—a tendency that was all-too-prevalent in the culture of 1492—the same year Queen Isabella outlawed Judaism in Spain.

Far better to embrace a policy that provides for the survival of the greatest number of the dynamics–one in which the cultures, values, futures and prosperity and the coexistence of peoples, no matter their differences, is taken into account.