Earthen Gods

cross posted at Right Michigan

No one knows for sure how many people were sacrificed to the Earthen Gods of Mesoamerica.

In 1487, just a few years before savage Europeans were to begin their genocidal assault on the New World, the Aztecs themselves claimed to have sacrificed 80,400 victims over the course of only one four day festival. The claims of that celebration, in honor of the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan, were spread far and wide on the tongues of the Aztecs who bathed in the glorification of blood and sacrifice. A more likely number, one not inflated by the ego of conspicuous sacrifice, a mere 2,000 to 10,000, were probably killed during the festivities, each one ceremoniously butchered on one of several specialized tables located at the top of the temple from where the body could be easily flung aside to carom down the bloody steps of the pyramid.

Estimates of the annual carnage are widely disputed, though Victor Davis Hanson has speculated that 20,000 is a plausible number while others have guessed that as many as one quarter of a million people were sacrificed annually. The author Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl has estimated that one in five children met his or her fate through ritualistic sacrifice, be it by knife or fire.

Sacrifice was not the burden of the captured soldier, slave or servant alone. According to legend, the King Cóxcox had his own daughter sacrificed and skinned at the founding of the city-state capital, Tenochtitlan, on the ruins of which Mexico City stands today. His example of selflessness helped serve as a model for generations.

The Gods of night (Tezcatlipoca,) sun (Huitzilopochtli,) rain (Tláloc,) and fire (Huehueteotl) were not easy to appease, and each, according to custom, demanded sufficient ceremony in death.

Huitzilopochtli would require his victims to:

[...] be placed on a sacrificial stone.[19] Then the priest would cut through the abdomen with an obsidian or flint blade.[20] The heart would be torn out still beating and held towards the sky in honor to the Sun-God [...]

Not to be spared the fear of pain and death, child sacrifices to Tláloc were only sufficient if the children wept on their way to final passage, their tears to be repaid by nourishing rains falling from temperamental skies onto a fragile Earth.

To the Aztecs, all life sprung from these protectorate Gods of Earth. Food, rain, sun, health and every other particle of good or distress was bestowed upon the Aztecs through Godly blessing or wrath. Life literally sprung from the Earth at the command of the Gods--the Earth was the ultimate source of life; penance and tribute were worthy and reasonable.

Humanity has an ugly ancient history, the Aztec chapter being but one of many. We would like to think that, at least in the Americas of today, that this sort of unconscionable loss of life is as deeply buried as most of the Aztec's cultural reminders.

Liking a thought does not make it true.

Today's Earth is worshiped to the same depth and breadth that the Earthen Gods were worshiped those few centuries ago just south of our border. Though the celebration of the death ritual may have changed, there is still a candid acceptance of what is necessary for the survival of our planet and its life giving essence, and that necessity, though absent of ceremony, demands the death of millions.

It is easy to point to Rachel Carson's writing of Silent Spring in 1962 as the gambit of the environmentalist movement. In her work, Carson, though falling short of demanding that DDT be totally banned, created a largely unfounded world wide hysteria over charges that the pesticide was harmful to human health, the environment, and birds. Shortly thereafter, DDT was banned in many countries. Malaria, dengue fever and typhus exploded.

With the help of DDT, the global malaria death rate--which had been 1,740 deaths per million in 1930--dropped more than 70 percent, to 480 per million in 1950.

Since Uganda stopped using DDT, however, malaria has ravaged the country. Government officials have decided to rebuff environmental activists and once again use it to combat malaria.

Niger Innis, spokesman for the U.S. branch of the Congress of Racial Equality, said, "Environmentalists always claim to be stakeholders. But every day that they succeed in delaying the use of DDT and other insecticides, another 3,000 to 5,000 people die from malaria. Those victims and the half billion who get this disease every year, who lie in bed shaking with convulsions, who can't work or go to school, who end up with permanent brain damage from malaria--they are the real stakeholders. It's their views that count."

Well, that depends on who you ask, for those championing environmentalism today pay little attention to the anonymous millions that die silently outside of camera range because of their advocacy. They still worship Earthen Gods, humankind a reasonable sacrifice, their faith killing millions of innocent people every year over the simple misfortune of having been born off the beaten dirt paths of a third world country.

DDT is but one example of a pervasive elitist attitude that devalues distant human life in the cause of environmentalism.

Dr. Charles Wurster, one of the major opponents of DDT, is reported to have said,

"People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this (referring to malaria deaths) is as good a way as any."

Today's hysteria over global warming and climate change, if alarmists are allowed to pursue their restrictive tactics, will claim millions of lives as its wealth choking mandates and regulations drive more and more people into poverty, ill health, and starvation.

As Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger travel back and forth between mansions, work, and conferences on private jets fueled, apparently, only on carbon credits, much of the rest of the world is starving--their diets shaved of calories so that my Buick can burn food instead of gasoline in its fuel tank.

And, while Al and Arnold no doubt adopt a less calloused stance than some others in the environmental movement of today, there are countless proponents within the movement that strongly advocate zero population growth and population reduction--by whatever means.

The Seguin Gazette quotes [Dr. Eric R.] Pianka saying, “Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine.”

“[Disease] will control the scourge of humanity,” Pianka said in his March 3 speech. “We're looking forward to a huge collapse.” He said, “We've grown fat, apathetic and miserable,” and described the world as a “fat, human biomass.”

Of course, the environmental movement today is diverse and filled with many people who advocate environmental issues on Saturday, quickly followed by outspoken advocacy for the homeless, or battered women, or children in foster care on Sunday. Most environmentalists are not evil people and they do not celebrate human suffering.

However, most environmentalists engage, ignorant or not, in activities that are not consequence free, as most people of sub-Sahara Africa could easily attest. In the same tone of voice that environmentalists use to admonish the rest of us for daring to reproduce and survive on gasoline, it is our duty to admonish the environmentalists who ignorantly take part in the sacrificing of millions of people around the world to Earthen Gods.

Dying silently in some remote hut in Uganda doesn't have nearly the shock value that a corpse has while tumbling down the side of a stone pyramid.

Shouldn't it?