The American Frank

 

Islands of The Lost

Published by American Chronicle 15 August 2006. Copyright 2006 by Frank A Hilario. Image by Tommy Oshima, ‘Lost Horizon V’ at flickr.com

IN MY WILD ROAMINGS AROUND THE WORLD, I HAVE ACCIDENTALLY DISCOVERED SOMEWHERE IN ASIA THE LOST KINGDOM OF MAIA. NOT SURPRISING – DISCOVERIES ARE ALWAYS ACCIDENTAL: PENICILLIN, THEORY OF GRAVITATION, HYBRID RICE, DNA, THE PHILIPPINES, PETER PRINCIPLE, CONTINENTAL DRIFT, AMERICA.

Maia is actually many islands; I am intensely studying the Maians now, living with them. The land is triangle in shape; the people are square in their outlook of life. The Maians believe in a Trinitarian God and the country belongs in the Third World and can’t get out of there.

The good old lost kingdoms have always fascinated me since high school, stretching back almost half a century, beginning with Atlantis. Agile and brave, Tarzan himself lived in a lost kingdom of good apes and bad men; if that sounds familiar, that’s art imitating life. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan’s creator, wrote another story, that of The Lost Continent, but that too was entirely fiction and I’m not in the mood for fiction right now. Hopefully to multiply the raw pleasure and discover the true treasure, in this essay I shall compare the real lost continent of Maia with six other lost historical kingdoms, one after the other:

(1) Rheged. (2) Shangri-La. (3) Atlantis. (4) Guge. (5) Tibet. (6) Tambora.

(1) Rheged, The Lost Kingdom

‘Rheged: The Lost Kingdom’ has two distinctions. One: It is the first all-British large-format film, 65 mm. Two: It is now ensconced in the Rheged Centre, the largest indoor visitor attraction in Northern England. The film was done 7 years ago and lasts 40 minutes. This is a docudrama about Northern England’s greatest leader, the warrior King Urien, believed to be the original King Arthur (BQ, northernmedia.org/).

Rheged is the name of the ancient Celtic Kingdom of the Dark Ages. The film is a story of lost ancestry, told from the point of view of a young American seeking his British roots in the mountains of the North. There are Celtic battles, there are ghosts, and there are those mysterious stone circles. It is directed by Brendan Quayle, who himself says of his film (my emphasis & minor editing): ‘There is a classic emotional climax as the Kingdom, (along with) the traveler’s place in it, is discovered’ (Brendan Quayle, March 2000, in70mm.com/newsletter/).

In this my Maian story, it is the privilege of the reader to discover his place in it.

(2) Shangri-La, The Lost Horizon

In 1928, Austrian-American botanist Joseph Rock discovered and became the first Westerner to explore The Lost Kingdom of Muli, but bandits drove him out and Muli was lost to the modern world except in his articles on the pages of the National Geographic in the 1920s and 1930s. Surprise! Research of 20 years by American lawyers Ted Vaill and Peter Klika indicates that Muli is the true Shangri-La, the real-life inspiration of James Hilton’s The Lost Horizon, a book that immortalized an eternal paradise that has the secret of eternal youth (the people may be more than 100 years old), a utopian kingdom (Timothy Carroll, 29 July 2002, tew.org/).

Whatever. Muli, located in China’s province of Szechwan, is such ‘a stunning region of cultural and biological diversity’ so much so that it was designated recently as a national conservation area by The Nature Conservancy. The natives of Muli live in history; they still practice methods of farming and fishing that are thousands of years old (Snow Lion, 2006, snowlion.com/).

In contrast to Muli, in The Lost Kingdom of Maia that I discovered, in their farming and fishing, the people are trying their best to lose the productivity of their natural resources by abusing them. Like the Mayans who over-exploited their tropical forests (Glenn Walker, 1998, indians.org/), the Maians are not conservation-conscious. I don’t understand them. They are intriguing people who lead complicated lives.

(3) Atlantis, The Lost Continent

The philosopher Plato is now the most famous teacher in the classical world (my interpretation of Richard Hooker’s essay ‘Greek Philosophy: Plato,’ 6 June 1999, wsu.edu:8001/). Plato wrote of Atlantis, now the most famous Lost Kingdom of all, that of a highly advanced civilization (Lee Krystek, 2006, unmuseum.org/), a land of wealth and natural beauty, including exotic fruits (XH, 10 August 2005, blog.360.yahoo.com/). The capital city, also called Atlantis, was a marvel of architecture and engineering, being a series of concentric walls and canals. In contrast to Atlantis, The Lost Kingdom of Maia is a continent of pearls, a land of lush tropical forests, a group of islands of beautiful women, an archipelago of Eastern scholars who nurture advanced knowledge they can summon as by magic.

Plato wrote that the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, and the gods decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake ripped the island apart; tsunamis rolled over everything and everyone; and Atlantis sank forever into the sea (Lee Krystek). I am told that the people of The Lost Kingdom of Maia are corrupt and greedy; if true, will their civilization be destroyed by the gods like Atlantis was? Only Time will tell.

Now, am I not mixing fact and fiction here? Plato’s student, Aristotle himself, said that Atlantis was simply a fable, a figment of the imagination of Plato, a figure of speech to make a point (Lee Krystek). Plato wrote on history and the nature of man, among other subjects, and writers of course invent stories to further elucidate meaning. But writer on writer, I don’t think it happened this time. In Plato’s book, the dialogues of Timaeus, the story of Atlantis is referred to as ‘genuine history’ and within ‘the realm of fact’ – and there are too many details about Atlantis for it to be simply a literary device (Lee Krystek). The Lost Kingdom of Maia is of course fact, not fiction – you may be able to find it now in the Internet if you just type the non-mysterious name MAIA (all caps, cap & lowercase, or lowercase), and search by Google or Yahoo. In any case, as you will see, I give you too many details about Maia for it to be simply a literary device.

But where is Atlantis? One of the most interesting theories comes from KT Frost, Professor of History at Queen’s University in Belfast; and his educated guess has been supported by archeologist Spyridon Marinatos (sounds Greek to me), and seismologist AG Galanopoulos (another Greek): Atlantis is Crete (Lee Krystek).

Crete is now part of modern Greece. Ancient Crete was Minoan, the civilization that saw the development of pictographic script, ceramics, ivory carving and metalworking reaching their peak; ancient Crete built luxurious palaces, and her maritime power covered the Mediterranean (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2005). With a powerful navy like that, I would not be surprised if the Minoans exacted tribute from other surrounding nations. Luxury and power go together; luxury enfeebles the mind, power corrupts.

Minoan Crete was one of the most sophisticated cultures at that time, with its grand architecture and art, highly developed agriculture with an extensive irrigation system, and a code of laws giving women equal rights with the men (Lee Krystek). Given that, The Lost Kingdom of Maia cannot compare with Minoan Crete. Its architecture is not so great; its arts are not so ennobling; its agriculture is not so well-developed; its irrigation system not so extensive – the theory is advanced, the practice is primitive. But its culture has its own high level of sophistication, and even before laws were ever written, women were already treated the equal of men. In other kingdoms, where polygamy is permissible, abortion is acceptable and divorce is legal, women are simply treated as objects of desire – and either the women don’t know it or they like it like that. That’s a shame. Not in The Lost Kingdom of Maia.

(4) Guge, Tibet’s Lost Kingdom

The great 17^th century kingdom of Guge in Western Tibet once controlled the trade in gold, silk and spices between India and China (IANS, 17 July 2006, tibet.ca/). Guge grew up by religion (Buddhism) and grew down by religion (Roman Catholicism). This time, reason and religion didn’t mix well. After all was said and done, the king’s brother headed the uppercrust monks, became powerful himself – and ambitious (NoName, 28 July 2006, tibet.cn/). Power corrupts the mind. Sensing that, the Guge king had the bright idea that to curtail the ambition of his brother, all he had to do was disgrace his followers, the monks. He saw his chance when a Portuguese missionary, Fr Antonio de Andrade, visited Guge in 1624; with that, the king tried to set up Catholicism as the state religion. He built a church and he himself became a Catholic; he forced many monks to be secularized or, if not, had them exiled. Violence begets violence. The monks rose in revolt and, supported by the neighboring state of Ladakh, overthrew the king in a long and bloody war. The rebels succeeded only in destroying what they fought for: Guge. In no time at all, Guge vanished. No one knows why, according to the IANS. I know; borrowing from Georg Buchner, German dramatist & revolutionary, I say: Revolution devours its own cause. In The Lost Kingdom of Maia, seculars and monks want to overthrow the Queen. They have not learned from history either.

(5) Tibet, The Lost Kingdom Itself

Tibet itself is a Lost Kingdom, without independence, without an accepted or popular ruler (the Dalai Lama is in exile in India, and so is his successor), without hope that its cultural identity will survive (today, Chinese outnumber Tibetans in Lhasa, the capital). China has brought to Tibet basic schooling, medical care, electricity, roads, and phones; it has built the world’s highest railway, running 4,000 km from Beijing to Lhasa; it has eradicated feudalism and instituted totalitarian rule (Eric Margolis, 10 July 2006, ericmargolis.com/). In The Lost Kingdom of Maia, the people have all those, except the world’s highest railroad, and except the world’s highest conceit, totalitarianism – that’s what the outsiders to the throne want to institute; that’s what they have been dreaming of. They will not succeed; the people will always disperse the barbarians at the gate.

(6) Tambora, The Lost Kingdom

Early this year, another Lost Kingdom was found, this time in Indonesia. On 28 February 2006, Haraldur Sigurdsson, Professor of Volcanology at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography, announced that he and his team had discovered The Lost Kingdom of Tambora in the remote island of Sumbawa (Rosella Lorenzi, Discovery News, dsc.discovery.com/). Sumbawa is one of the more than 13,000 islands of Indonesia and lies southwest of Sulawesi (Celebes). Sigurdsson is of the opinion that the Tamborans were wealthy traders and known for their horse breeding, honey and sappan wood (for making red dyes). They knew more. But for all that, the Tamborans had no knowledge what would happen to their people: 117,000 of them were almost instantly buried under 10 feet of ash and pumice in 1815 when Mount Tambora came alive in the largest volcanic eruption in human history. This dwarfs the more-famous story of Pompeii in Italy, where 20,000 lie frozen in history by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD.

In the tropical islands of Maia that I am reporting for the first time, the people are buried under 20 years of deception, dis-information and unholy alliances led by the same group of renegade warriors who call themselves revolutionaries of the people. It’s a good thing the social volcano has not erupted. The people of The Lost Kingdom of Maia are not war-like; their history is more of keeping peace than making war. Their history repeats itself.

(7) Maia, The Lost Kingdom

So I don’t lose you, I will now tell you The Lost Kingdom of Maia can be found Northwest of China and Southwest of Borneo. The Maian civilization was already advanced centuries before the Europeans thought of searching for an alternate route to the Spice Islands (Moluccas), as evidenced by the fact that the Chinese already had trade and tribute relations with the island kingdom, which they called Ma-i. Unfortunately, the Maians were the ones paying tribute, lost in their subservience. They were highly civilized already by the 13^th century, but let me count the ways they have remained lost as a kingdom and a people.

The Maians have learning academies that rivaled the best – long, long ago and far, far away. Lost learning is what they now have, knowledge deteriorated to the point of being used to filibuster in the Maian Senate and derail any plans of Queen G to move the kingdom forward to the 21^st century. It is the pretenders to the throne, the male of the species, patriots all, who have tried their best to sabotage royal efforts to utilize the genius of the land for the good of the kingdom.

The intellectuals themselves are in the forefront of the battle – for their own interests. Proof: Today, the more vociferous scholarly Maians have lost connection with reality in the countryside. Farming in Maia has for the last 100 years been essentially unperceptive of the laws of Mother Earth. The white invaders taught them to add minerals to the soil instead of recycle vegetation to return to the earth what the crops had taken away from it: fertility. The White Fathers taught them that the laws of science were better than the laws of Mother Nature. Some people never learn – and that’s what they teach.

The Maians are lost in the mist of time. They live in the past; they have not shrugged off the burden of their Spanish slavery of 333 years. Some peoples never learn – they sleep in the dark night of their history. They have also retained the religion and much of the culture of their conquerors. Religion is the opium of the people – a shield for millions against the barbaric world created by people of their own kind.

Many of the warrior Maians are lost in their own conceit. I refer to those who have been attempting a coup for the last 20 years, the warlike minds, the ones who have the answers to the questions they themselves ask. Of course, they don’t ask too many questions. In fact, they think of the answers first before they think of the questions.

Many of Maian leaders are lost in the clouds of their own political ambitions. Quite a few of them are each The Man Who Would Be King. They can’t wait to be the sovereign of the kingdom. In their lust for power, they do not think twice about collaborating with anyone, including the enemies of the kingdom, those who have been plotting to destroy the very institutions of the islands and turn the whole kingdom into their own castle. Such men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Many of the youths of the Maians are The Lost Generation. They too do not love their country; they too do not love any country; they too do not love humanity. What then do they love? Themselves.

The Maia moguls of media are lost in the maze of their own making. The Maian purveyors of news and views, proclaiming themselves to be objective, fair and balanced, are patently negative in their reporting and editorializing. They are well-paid to do just what they are doing.

The noisy Maians who oppose the shift from the royal form to the deliberative form of government are either the lost sheep or more accurately the prodigal sons and daughters. Why can’t they appreciate the fact that the Queen herself is in fact abdicating her throne? That’s because they are members of the extended families of kingmakers who would perpetrate their local fiefdoms. They are joined by radicals who are not interested in a representative government but in a one-party rule. Bedfellows estranged from a sense of history.

The highbrow Maians who see nothing right about the kingdom are those who have lost their innocence to the wiles of William James’ pragmatism, the American philosophy that claims that ‘truth itself … is not that which contributes the most good to the community, but that which contributes the most good to the individual’ (Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/). To each his own, to teach his own.

And in science? Soon it will be a lost battle between the scientists who watch insects and the insects who watch the scientists and what they are eating. In the US and in Maia, the pests have learned to be discriminating in their food – and thereby escape the insecticide: they simply stop feeding when they come across a sprayed leaf, for instance (IRAC, US Insecticide Resistance Action Committee, ca 1996, irac-online.org/). The insects are learning where the scientists are not.

The Maians have lost the habit of higher-quality thinking and learned the easier habit of critical thinking, which requires only knee-jerk reaction. For instance, last year the high and haughty accused the Queen of immorality; right after that, several groups of hangers-on each initiated a movement to have her dethroned without an independent body investigating whether the accusation had any basis in fact. Shoot first, ask questions later.

To the Maians with their 100 diverse tongues, it is a lost cause to ever have one common, national idiom to unite them in heart, mind and tongue. Around the 19^th of August every year, the Maians celebrate their National Lingua Franca Week and proclaim the wisdom of the Maian king who decreed that a single Maian countrywide language be developed based on only one tongue, that of his own tribe, the Ts. This king is venerated who refused to acknowledge the genius of the other 99 tribes of his own race, declaring them, in effect, lost tribes of Maia.

The lost cluster of Maians are those tribes who did not support the revolution against the Spanish dominion of the kingdom: the Is of the North. That is because the Is did not believe that the revolution was wise and opportune. When finally the Is believed and joined forces with the Ts, the revolution succeeded – but the White Fathers stole the glory of a successful revolution away from them. How did that happen? Manifest Destiny.

Renowned and unknown members of Maian civil society today have largely become town criers of lost horizons. Just because the past Maian kings and queens had neither shown splendor in art or science, they deny that today’s Queen G has the wisdom to make a difference in the lives of millions of Maians wallowing in the mire of poverty. They cannot accept that civil society has no monopoly of intelligence.

Many of the current Maian media warriors are lost souls. Their wishes, or prayers, are for destruction. Some of them do not believe in a Supreme Being at all; others believe in a Superbeing who is vengeful, who brings his wrath on the people with just one wisp of a prayer of a preacher man, or a press man, or a priest.

Many Maians who make a living diving into coral reefs have lost sight of the virtue of thrift with resources. They go on, goaded by their own little greeds. So they blast those precious reefs with explosives or some such devices for them to pick up the pieces just like that. Landward, those coastal fishermen who wish to get rich quick use the exact same explosive devices, never mind tomorrow.

The voice of the people is the voice of God. The Maians had dethroned their kings twice in their history. The first one for not being a benevolent monarch, the second for being a benevolent monarch but corrupt and incompetent. The first is dead, the second remains a lost leader with a following. If the lost leads the blind, they both will fall into the ditch.

Meanwhile, the liberal-minded Maians have lost sight of family: they now want to be free of the institution of marriage. They want divorce. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

The Maian kingdom counts of many lost opportunities to advance its own civilization. For 69 years, the Maians have failed to develop a truly national language that further enriches their diverse culture. For 20 years, the Maians have drifted from reaction to reaction to coup attempts. For 20 years, political and social renegades have virtually incapacitated the 2 Queens and 2 Kings to carry on their duties as sovereign and to plan for the welfare of their people.

Not only some leaders but also some scientists of the Maian kingdom are guilty of losing touch with the people. Up to this day, the scientists of the land assume that they know what the people want as opposed to what they need: They bring to the people essentially material resources – which they like to call modern technology. In the arrogance of knowledge, they continue to ignore the fact that the principle ‘Customer is always right’ translates exactly into ‘Farmer knows best.’

As a whole, civilized Maian society has lost the skill of consulting the elders on matters of consequence. This goes against the grain of folklore where age means wisdom. The opinion givers have become the elders, dispensing wisdom at the click of a mouse.

By all accounts, Maia is a lost world. Yet, I know that while the Maians are lost in it, they do not lose hope of the future.