cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9205071

"I have spent 6 years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that is not inhuman and I generally think this can only be the case as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine.’ I affirm that what you call 'money is the devil of devils, the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils, the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one can preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity-of all the world’s worst behavior. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false-and all because of money. In light of all of this, tell me that we Wyandotte are not right in refusing to touch or so much as look at silver.

"Do you seriously imagine that I would be happy to live like one of the inhabitants of Paris? To take two hours every morning just to put on my shirt and make up? To bow and scrape before every obnoxious galoot I meet on the street who happens to have been born with an inheritance? Do you actually imagine I could carry a purse full of coins and not immediately hand them over to people who are hungry? That I would carry a sword but not immediately draw it on the first band of thugs I see rounding up the destitute to press them into Naval service? If on the other hand, Europeans were to adopt an {note the following word - I’d replace it with indigenous, not ‘American’ as in a type of settler-colonial European-based nationality} American way of life, it might take a while to adjust but in the end you will be far happier.

“You honestly think you’re going to sway me by appealing to the needs of nobles, merchants, and priests? If you abandoned conceptions of mine and thine, yes, such distinctions between men would dissolve. A leveling equality would take place among you, as it now does among the Wyandotte and yes, for the first thirty years after the banishing of self-interest no doubt you would indeed see a certain desolation as those who are only qualified to eat, drink, sleep, and take pleasure would languish and die, but their progeny would be fit for our way of living. Over and over I have set forth the qualities that we Wyandotte believe ought to define humanity: wisdom, reason, equity, etc. and demonstrated that the existence of separate material interest knocks all these on the head. A man motivated by interest cannot be a man of reason.”

-Kondiaronk, Chief of the Wyandot (Huron), “Dialogue Between Lahontan and Adari”, New Voyages to North America, Vol. Il (1703), by Louis Armand, Baron de Lahontan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk

https://old.reddit.com/r/TrueAnon/comments/1vev2t1/chief_kondiaronk_on_european_society/