Emu's Folly; The Dangers of Superiority Complex

Indigenous Stories that help keep us in balance...

Every being on earth has the possibility of being life-affirming givers and also being destroyers. These lessons are embedded into cultural teachings, creation stories, ceremonies, and initiations that help keep us humans in check from the destructive parts of ourselves.

It's our collective culture that either safeguards us ( and the Earth we live inside) by having layers of initiated understandings to be the checks and balances and guides us to stay in our relational interdependence or the collective uninitiated power corrupted culture that allows the worst of human nature to run rampant.

Cultural teachings in the form of stories and songs help create the layered web of understanding that we are held inside from birth to guide us to be animated by the life-affirming, interdependent values that assure a collective life in balance for all our relations.

For instance, in many Indigenous stories around the world, Coyotes, Emus, and other trickster characters show the people what not to do by doing these things and showing us the consequences of not listening to the cultural values that keep us, humans, in balance. Sadly, because of the cultural upheaval from centuries of colonialism and imperialism and what experiences prior to that birthed those tendencies, many people no longer have these cultural understandings and teachings and initiations, and it's allowing what my elder Martín calls " unthinkable thoughts" to proliferate into a dysregulated culture that is destroying life on earth. This culture is the epitome of collective narcissism and is animated by the one cardinal sin that many Indigenous stories warn us of, which is superiority complex.

Tyson Yunkaporta says in his incredible book Sand Talk; "All Law-breaking comes from that first evil thought, that original sin of placing yourself above the land or above other people." He speaks of how they have stories of Emu, who warns us of this grave mistake.

Tyson shares: " Emu is a troublemaker who brings into being the most destructive idea in existence: I am greater than you; you are less than me. This is the source of all human misery. Aboriginal society was designed over thousands of years to deal with this problem. Some people are just idiots—and everybody has a bit of idiot in them from time to time, coming from some deep place inside that whispers, “You are special. You are greater than other people and things. You are more important than everything and everyone. All things and all people exist to serve you.” This behavior needs massive checks and balances to contain the damage it can do.......I think the Emu deception got out of hand somewhere and spread, causing more and more people to think themselves greater than the land, greater than others, greater than the women who hold our lives in their hands and bellies. Whatever it is, this cataclysm is growing, and I wonder how we can stand against it."

I think underneath his "yarning" about Emu's folly and what we can learn from this in the present day is how the vast collective impacted by this superiority complex ( which is embedded into their stories in endless places such as religious texts and science textbooks) can be unraveled and metabolized and deprogrammed. Yet, it leaves many people in an endless state of adolescence, which is the hallmark of this uninitiated culture. A collective people who never " grew up" to understand the cultural stories and checks and balances of what it means to be truly human in our best relational capacity. And this collective cultural adolescence is killing the planet.

Tyson shares: "The stories that define our thinking today describe an eternal battle between good and evil springing from an originating act of sin. But these terms are just metaphors for something more difficult to explain, a relatively recent demand that simplicity and order be imposed upon the complexity of creation, a demand sprouting from an ancient seed of narcissism that has flourished due to a new imbalance in human societies....The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity."

As it relates to the way individuals who are a part of this unanchored culture operate, Tyson says it's a collective cultural responsibility to rein in this narcissistic individualism that shows up as what I can call cultural insanity inside of people. We cannot dismantle this diseased fragmented worldview alone, nor can we reweave cultural intactness back together alone either. (especially not in the comment sections of social media lol )

"Emu made a hell of a mess, running around showing off his speed and claiming his superiority, demanding to be boss and shouting over everyone. You can see the dark shape of Emu in the Milky Way. Kangaroo (his head the Southern Cross) is holding him down, Echidna is grasping him from behind, and the great Serpent is coiled around his legs. Containing the excesses of malignant narcissists is a team effort....

The combination of social fragmentation and lightning-fast communication today, however, means we have to deal with these crazy people alone, as individuals butting heads with narcissists in a lawless void, and they are thriving unchecked in this environment. Engaging with them alone is futile—never wrestle a pig, as the old saying goes; you both end up covered in shit, and the pig likes it. The fundamental rules of human interaction do not apply to them, although they weaponize those rules against everyone else. The basic protocols of Aboriginal society, like most societies, include respecting and hearing all points of view in a yarn. Narcissists demand this right, then refuse to allow other points of view on the grounds that any other opinion somehow infringes their freedom of speech or is offensive. They destroy the basic social contract of reciprocity (which allows people to build a reputation of generosity based on sharing to ensure ongoing connectedness and support), shattering this framework of harmony with a few words of nasty gossip. They apply double standards and break down systems of give-and-take until every member of a social group becomes isolated, lost in a Darwinian struggle for power and dwindling resources that destroys everything. Then they move on to another place, another group. Feel free to extrapolate this pattern globally and historically."

Tyson says "We have looked at Emu's story, but it is also worth looking at stories from the northern hemisphere to discern the patterns of narcissism that prevent the functioning of sustainable systems. The word “narcissist” comes from a Greek story about Narcissus, a man who fell in love with his own reflection in the water. A girl called Echo was in love with him, but she was cursed to hang around and only repeat his words forever. This is what you find with these narcissist flash mobs: one loud person will start shouting silly things and attract followers who repeat those things without thought. Not all strange attractors are benevolent. Narcissism isn’t incurable though. Survivors of this plague emerge without any memory of who they really are, needing support to begin again and relearn the nature of their existence, their purpose for being here. They are like children, and leaving them to their own devices at this stage is not advisable. Entire cultures and populations recovering from this plague have been left like orphan children with no memories of who they are, longing for a pattern they know is there but can’t see. They grow up eventually, but it takes a long time if they have no assistance. There are so many adolescent cultures in the world right now, reaching for the stars without really knowing what they are."

We need to work together and lean back into the time-honored stories and true Indigenous ways of reciprocating and belonging that help guide us foolish humans into seeing ourselves within a kin-centric way of being. This cultural work is urgent but also is long-game work, but I place my faith in it. It takes every one of us.

More than ever, we need to uplift Indigenous leadership who can help us rehydrate the world made of the connective tissue of stories. We can do it.