Blagojevich: The Psychological Lust for Swag, A Lost Story

There is story told by the old people about the wages of lusting for gold…

Regarding the Conquest of Mexico: The conquistadores, were not as many think, Spanish only, but rather a group of mercenaries from Greece, Spain and Italy with quite a few mongrel types thrown in… all sailing under the flags of the Spanish king and queen with one mission only: get gold, get slaves, loot property, murder whoever resists, and what you do otherwise to please yourself with women, men and children, is your business.

This could be translated into “Kill any culture you find”…. in order to get gold, get slaves, loot property, murder whoever resists…

The story goes on…

about a particular group of conquistadores who burst into the temple after first having murdered the priests and vestal nuns. The conquistadores, seeing all the gold filigree work and ornaments in the sacristies, tore the gold off the walls, smashed the bas relief icons apart and pushed as much of the gold into their pockets and bags as they could carry, including entire hands and feet of statues.

But the village surrounding rose up and pursued the men who’d bagged the gold, chasing them across the narrow causeways and aqueducts that were built to bridge the deep lakes that surrounded what is now known as Mexico City.

The conquistadores spurred and kicked their horses past full gallop, past endurance. The horses’ iron-shod hooves slipped and slid on the stones, and screaming, both men and horses, plunged into the deep lakes and the men drowned… while the horses swam to the shores of the lakes and there, gentled by the Nahua tribes, who revered animals, lived.

The conquistadores drowned, not because they did not know how to swim.

And not only because they were so laden with plunder, the weight of it all made them fall to the bottom of the lake like heavy stones…

Why the thugs went down and never came back up
The old people from whom I was given this story, said that there in that instant, at the bottom of the lake with all the dirt and weeds waving and fanning, the conquistadores could not do what was needed to free themselves, that is, divest not just of their loot that weighed them down, but to divest of their love of loot….

and it was this, the holding onto the malignant love of swag, that sealed their deadly fate. Even when faced with destruction of their own lives, they could not stop, but continued to hold dear the very lusts that would do them in.

To us, it is fantastic that a person, when faced with destruction, would continue to enact what is sure to destroy themselves.

Why/ how does a soul on earth come to this? Some say one way and some say another, but at bottom, you can be pretty sure; there is a psychological disconnect from conscience… some would say the better angel…

and instead a dementia is seated at the helm, some would say demon… who has not only taken the person, but who whispers in their ears in the way a warm, straight-hearted and balanced mother never did, never would:

You are wondrous. No matter how others critique or what others say or do to block you… rid yourself of those naysayers, for… without limit, you deserve it all.