Dwapara Yuga -- Early American Colonies

Tree-ring data from Virginia indicate that the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island disappeared during the most extreme drought in 800 years (1587-1589) and that the alarming mortality and the near abandonment of Jamestown Colony occurred during the driest 7-year episode in 770 years (1606-1612). These extraordinary droughts can now be implicated in the fate of the Lost Colony and in the appalling death rate during the early occupations at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America.

The timing of those expeditions could not have been more unlucky. At Jamestown, the Native Americans suggested that the English should pray for rain.

In coming through the Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevadas into California two centuries later, the early pioneers would be similarly tested by inopportune snows.

It seems that efforts at exploration, scientific or social breakthrough require not only the right consciousness being developed but also that specific tests be passed, much as the generations of Israelites had forty years of purification in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land. By extension, each world war, famine, plague, natural disaster suggests an opportunity for reform.

2008 and beyond represent something of a testing time with American Freedom and Democracy looking tarnished with 1 in 6 unemployed, financial crisis and two unpopular foreign wars while one party China is going from strength to strength, gaining influence around the world and leading many third world countries to question the value of Freedom and Democracy, most especially in the digital domain.

It is one thing to have a long term view but another to ignore present day suffering -- please consider a donation to the Red Cross, or other relief agency helping the suffering people of Haiti. Words are cheap, consider how much more you have than someone with no water, food, or shelter.

Update

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It's interesting that Hilary Clinton has brought up this week the openness of the Internet as a foreign policy goal. 20 years ago, it was largely the same experience wherever one logged in. Today, filtering of content is commonplace in France, North Korea, Iran and China, with more and more limiting 'localization' taking place, not conforming to local norms, rather enforcing them in the manner of Big Brother.

Even for mundane cultural items, one cannot watch from the US the online version of the show "Doctor Who" from the BBC or hard hitting documentaries on France's M6 since international access is blocked. Both counter that the US acts similarly with shows such as "Lost". This is an extension of the divisions enforced by region encoding of DVDs or the format wars of NTSC/PAL, which simply apply to folks not willing to dig for an answer.

The author clearly remembers the democratizing influence of American Satellite TV and Internet access in South America over the past generation and it certainly feels like modern hard line regimes have learned their lesson, building up their own barriers to keep news and information truly local (at least outside of folks with basic technical savvy).

All of this smacks of heavy-handed Kali Yuga style control with lists of "authorized" books, news outlets, sites and people, a first step in the direction of "in" and "out" that gave us the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Vichy Regime and the ovens of National-Socialist Germany.