Bear with me as I step with trepidation into philosophical murk with this question: If one accumulates a great deal of small quantifiable things, does it necessarily, by accumulation, equate to something larger, more complex? Huh? Get to the tl;dr dude! No way. I am never that organized. I might not even be sure what…
via Piles of Things — CogDogBlog
I originally saw this photo above at the National Museum of the American Indian. While Alan Levine’s using it metaphorically (on his CogDogBlog) I would rather tell you what it is. It’s bison skulls collected and piled taller than a barn. Who killed them? Why did they kill so many of them. What purpose could killing so many living things serve? Let’s pin that one on a form of ethnic cleansing of the prairie lands. Lands that already given to the Indians in trade or out of threats of violence to get off more valuable land. But even that wasn’t enough. Every treaty and agreement was further eroded and re-evaluated. Indian Schools were put into operation. And bounties were placed on killing as many buffalo as one could shoot. So that’s what people did. Can imagine a “rancher” these days if someone drove though even just the public “grazing” land and proceeded to shoot the cattle? Wouldn’t you imagine law enforcement being involved, someone investigating the killing of the rancher’s livestock? But not so when it was buffalo and on the prairie lands. There was no investigation, no involvement with law enforcement. Extincting the bison was a choice, and all the people in power got on board. It’s so crazy that this ever happened anywhere on this planet. But it did.
Carpet Bomberz Inc. 