Human beings are interesting.
We’ve spent the better portion of our existence on this planet invading other people’s space and then coming up with all matter of justifications for it.
An example, take the Romans – they managed to expand their empire to unbelievable proportions by invading areas outside of their realm, attacking the indigenous people who lived there and either killing or enslaving anyone that refused to join them or tried to defend themselves. The end result, other than the expansion of the Roman Empire, was quite brutal; a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence, and the occasional retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind.
Jump ahead a few centuries – and we will find the Christians. They decided, through their own mysterious and meaningless studies of the aboriginal people living throughout the far reaches of the European continent, that they were superior in all ways, and it was their responsibility to enlighten everyone – everyone – to their way of worship. The way they brought this about was to label anyone that didn’t subscribe to their point of view a heretic, who would then be systematically tortured in unspeakable ways until they either relented or died. This jihad (although they called it “The Inquisition”) resulted in a very similar situation as the Roman excursions — a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence, and the occasional retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind.
Then some ambitious explorer discovered this huge new body of land on the other side of that ocean to the West. He, excited to share this new discovery, went back to Europe and told everyone how beautiful it was and how seemingly endless its resources. This set off a whole new slew of invasions and disputes… far more elaborate because the little European countries couldn’t agree who would be in charge of this new land and fought viciously amongst themselves in an effort to gain control. Meanwhile, in the new land, large groups of settlers and explorers shoved the natives out of their homelands, brought new germs with them that decimated entire populations, and attacked villages. The end result was a fairly significant body count…
Yeah.
In the end, the new world was conquered, bloodily, and the native people were relegated to small encampments in largely inhospitable areas such as North Dakota and the deserts of Nevada, where many of them still live to this day in veritable poverty.
Then some ambitious inventor came up with something called the internal combustion engine. It relied on this gooey black stuff that bubbled under the surface of the earth’s crust to burn as fuel. As this new invention caught on and became de rigueur, the leaders of the first and second-world countries remembered that a whole lot of this black stuff was available for the taking over there in those third-world countries. An invasion was organized and deployed.
The invaders brought drills and guns and war machines, because one thing history has taught us is that the people living in countries being invaded have this annoying habit of being very put out by the people coming to invade them. But there was this black stuff, see, and the industrial nations wanted it at any cost and intended to fetch it, like it or not, never mind that the incumbent citizens had deemed the land to be holy and something to be revered.
The invaders also brought the narrow-minded belief that anyone that didn’t agree with their way of life and idea of democracy was inferior, so while they drilled for oil in the sand, they staged their own version of the Inquisition – hiring the subdued native people who would be hired to work at unliveable wages; and raping, pillaging or killing the ones that raised a ruckus at having an army of people drilling in their consecrated land.
They left behind a ravaged hole of sand and ruined ancient mosques and temples — as well as a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence…
The people left behind were seriously pissed off, and also suffered a lack of important funding for education or rebuilding, resulting in an entire generation of angry, ignorant, desperate people with a really big chip on their shoulder.
Unbeknownst to all, under the guise of political cooperation, the leaders of both the invading countries and the invaded countries all struck deals for huge sums of money so that the black stuff in the ground would still flow freely across international boundaries.
Then somebody got greedy. The deals were broken on one side or the other, and the leaders of the invaded countries decided they didn’t want the invaders to continue plundering what was left of their country and told them to get out. The invaders refused. So the leaders then appealed to the generation of seriously pissed off and undereducated people that were trying to eke out some kind of pathetic existence in the middle of drilled out sand and got them all riled up. Told them how evil and treacherous these invaders were, and that their home country was full of people who were even more evil and greedy and godless. The leaders got them so agitated that they organized a little group of very angry people and sent them over to invade.
The end result was a widely publicised, fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next years due to famine (the economy tanked), pestilence (the very dust in the air was toxic), and the ongoing retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind…
We’ve spent the better portion of our existence on this planet invading other people’s space and then coming up with all matter of justifications for it.
An example, take the Romans – they managed to expand their empire to unbelievable proportions by invading areas outside of their realm, attacking the indigenous people who lived there and either killing or enslaving anyone that refused to join them or tried to defend themselves. The end result, other than the expansion of the Roman Empire, was quite brutal; a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence, and the occasional retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind.
Jump ahead a few centuries – and we will find the Christians. They decided, through their own mysterious and meaningless studies of the aboriginal people living throughout the far reaches of the European continent, that they were superior in all ways, and it was their responsibility to enlighten everyone – everyone – to their way of worship. The way they brought this about was to label anyone that didn’t subscribe to their point of view a heretic, who would then be systematically tortured in unspeakable ways until they either relented or died. This jihad (although they called it “The Inquisition”) resulted in a very similar situation as the Roman excursions — a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence, and the occasional retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind.
Then some ambitious explorer discovered this huge new body of land on the other side of that ocean to the West. He, excited to share this new discovery, went back to Europe and told everyone how beautiful it was and how seemingly endless its resources. This set off a whole new slew of invasions and disputes… far more elaborate because the little European countries couldn’t agree who would be in charge of this new land and fought viciously amongst themselves in an effort to gain control. Meanwhile, in the new land, large groups of settlers and explorers shoved the natives out of their homelands, brought new germs with them that decimated entire populations, and attacked villages. The end result was a fairly significant body count…
Yeah.
In the end, the new world was conquered, bloodily, and the native people were relegated to small encampments in largely inhospitable areas such as North Dakota and the deserts of Nevada, where many of them still live to this day in veritable poverty.
Then some ambitious inventor came up with something called the internal combustion engine. It relied on this gooey black stuff that bubbled under the surface of the earth’s crust to burn as fuel. As this new invention caught on and became de rigueur, the leaders of the first and second-world countries remembered that a whole lot of this black stuff was available for the taking over there in those third-world countries. An invasion was organized and deployed.
The invaders brought drills and guns and war machines, because one thing history has taught us is that the people living in countries being invaded have this annoying habit of being very put out by the people coming to invade them. But there was this black stuff, see, and the industrial nations wanted it at any cost and intended to fetch it, like it or not, never mind that the incumbent citizens had deemed the land to be holy and something to be revered.
The invaders also brought the narrow-minded belief that anyone that didn’t agree with their way of life and idea of democracy was inferior, so while they drilled for oil in the sand, they staged their own version of the Inquisition – hiring the subdued native people who would be hired to work at unliveable wages; and raping, pillaging or killing the ones that raised a ruckus at having an army of people drilling in their consecrated land.
They left behind a ravaged hole of sand and ruined ancient mosques and temples — as well as a fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next months or even years due to famine, pestilence…
The people left behind were seriously pissed off, and also suffered a lack of important funding for education or rebuilding, resulting in an entire generation of angry, ignorant, desperate people with a really big chip on their shoulder.
Unbeknownst to all, under the guise of political cooperation, the leaders of both the invading countries and the invaded countries all struck deals for huge sums of money so that the black stuff in the ground would still flow freely across international boundaries.
Then somebody got greedy. The deals were broken on one side or the other, and the leaders of the invaded countries decided they didn’t want the invaders to continue plundering what was left of their country and told them to get out. The invaders refused. So the leaders then appealed to the generation of seriously pissed off and undereducated people that were trying to eke out some kind of pathetic existence in the middle of drilled out sand and got them all riled up. Told them how evil and treacherous these invaders were, and that their home country was full of people who were even more evil and greedy and godless. The leaders got them so agitated that they organized a little group of very angry people and sent them over to invade.
The end result was a widely publicised, fairly significant body count, which grew exponentially over the course of the next years due to famine (the economy tanked), pestilence (the very dust in the air was toxic), and the ongoing retaliatory attack by the seriously pissed off people left behind…
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