I used to think like you for almost all my life, but then I slowly realized we think this way because we are so far removed from death and violence in the West that we simply can’t see it happening to us. War happens to others, bombings happen to others. We tend to think of war as something less civilized people do, that we’ve evolved past violence*.
But in reality, all we’ve evolved to do is hide our machinations better.
What made me start thinking was that we still go to war in the West or carry out “military operations”, we just don’t publicize them as much and they don’t happen anywhere near our soil. France is still in Africa. The US has been at war for most of its history and still is fighting somewhere today. I mean, Afghanistan had troops from 7 different Western countries fighting against the local population.
And the second thing was putting it all together. We’re not there as a necessary evil or for freedom and democracy or whatever. These countries are more than capable of solving their own problems. Our meddling is what’s keeping them down and it’s done on purpose so that we can keep extracting their low-value-added industries to add the value ourselves. For example no Western country produces cocoa or coffee, yet we have almost all of the world’s coffee and chocolate companies.
The third thing was slowly seeing from there on that other non-Western countries that are at war with each other are almost always at war because of Western meddling (and specifically US, but it benefits us as well in Europe). For example, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in the 70s armed with US weapons, the idea being that they would let him keep oil fields and strike at Iran’s newly-formed Islamic Republic. When the war didn’t go in his favour, he instead turned to Kuwait, which was a strategic ally of the US in the Middle East. That’s when the US invaded Iraq (in the first Gulf war) and eventually executed Hussein.
Truthfully, we’re not any better than anyone else regarding death, violence, war, pain, etc. We are just the same as the rest of the world. We’re all human. It’s just that we’re so far removed from it that we simply can’t process the results of it.
I used to think like you for almost all my life, but then I slowly realized we think this way because we are so far removed from death and violence in the West that we simply can’t see it happening to us. War happens to others, bombings happen to others. We tend to think of war as something less civilized people do, that we’ve evolved past violence*.
But in reality, all we’ve evolved to do is hide our machinations better.
What made me start thinking was that we still go to war in the West or carry out “military operations”, we just don’t publicize them as much and they don’t happen anywhere near our soil. France is still in Africa. The US has been at war for most of its history and still is fighting somewhere today. I mean, Afghanistan had troops from 7 different Western countries fighting against the local population.
And the second thing was putting it all together. We’re not there as a necessary evil or for freedom and democracy or whatever. These countries are more than capable of solving their own problems. Our meddling is what’s keeping them down and it’s done on purpose so that we can keep extracting their low-value-added industries to add the value ourselves. For example no Western country produces cocoa or coffee, yet we have almost all of the world’s coffee and chocolate companies.
The third thing was slowly seeing from there on that other non-Western countries that are at war with each other are almost always at war because of Western meddling (and specifically US, but it benefits us as well in Europe). For example, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in the 70s armed with US weapons, the idea being that they would let him keep oil fields and strike at Iran’s newly-formed Islamic Republic. When the war didn’t go in his favour, he instead turned to Kuwait, which was a strategic ally of the US in the Middle East. That’s when the US invaded Iraq (in the first Gulf war) and eventually executed Hussein.
Truthfully, we’re not any better than anyone else regarding death, violence, war, pain, etc. We are just the same as the rest of the world. We’re all human. It’s just that we’re so far removed from it that we simply can’t process the results of it.