A Curious Sense of Guilt
This comes by way of Morford's Morning Fix
Hey Sorry About Gnawing Your Great Grandpa
Villagers in a remote Fijian community staged an elaborate ceremony of apology for the relatives of a British missionary killed and eaten here 136 years ago. The Rev. Thomas Baker and eight Fijian followers were killed and devoured by cannibals in 1867 in the village of Nabutautau. Residents say their community has been cursed ever since. In a mixture of ancient pagan and modern Christian rites, the villagers have staged a series of ceremonies hoping to erase the misfortunes they believe have kept them poor. The rituals -- which started about a month ago -- culminated with the offering of cows, specially woven mats and 30 carved sperm-whale teeth known as tabua to 10 Australian descendants of Baker. Past apologies have not helped. In 1993, villagers presented the Methodist Church of Fiji with Baker's boots -- which cannibals tried unsuccessfully to cook and eat. "Too chewy," said one tribe elder, in 1867,picking his teeth with a British femur. "Hey Nafastoous, you gonna finish your spleen? Cool, thanks."

When I read this I had to ask myself, why were they apologizing? Because they felt bad about killing and eating nine people or because they had been cursed ever since?
The first is a true sense of guilt over an awful crime of cannibalism.
The second has nothing to do with guilt, it has everything to do with selfishly trying to remove a curse that they (or their ancestors) brought on themselves by killing and eating Baker and some of his followers.
And let's not even really get into the whole concept of missionary work because this post could and would likely devolve into a long rambling rant about empericism and denying an established culture's sovereignity and the utter audacity of a more powerful religious culture to attempt to subvert and kill off native beliefs. On second thought, I will have to make time to blog about the practice of imposing religious beliefs on people who had been getting along just fine without them for centuries.

So why am I blogging about a stupid Fijian village of cannibals? Because they make a good example of the failure of so many "apologies". Its not about making up for killing and eating Baker, its about making the village a better place by removing the curse from his death and ingestion. Its about themselves and not about him.

Of course, I don't believe in curses like this although I can see how the shame and guilt of eating a human might incur a "willfull curse", as in they made their own bad mojo. Because they were guilty they invoked their own curse on themselves. I don't know, maybe I'm jut rambling to avoid sending out my bulk email this morning. Or maybe I'm just cursed with distraction on this Monday morning. Either way, I'm chopping this off and getting back to work for a little while.