We seem to be obsessed with conquering. Even when we describe the exploration of outer space, we often say conquering space. I was watching a programme recently on climbers getting to the summits of peaks in the Himalayan Mountain Range and the word conquering was used so often that I lost count.
The follow-on from conquest is, of course, what we call colonisation, an activity that I have seen referred to as creative destruction by apologists for colonialism.
That is, great developments in science and technology were possible because of the vast resources available cheaply from conquered, colonised lands. And the natives benefited from the European knowledge and inventiveness too – almost as if it was worth the sacrifice, pain, terror, and annihilation of the native culture.
Once again, this is a bit Eurocentric, but I often think that if we Europeans, from an overpopulated, overcrowded disease-ridden continent, on beholding the vast thinly populated American continent, had treated its original inhabitants fairly we could still have benefited greatly but the difference would have been that a small number of us wouldn’t have got rich quickly!
To the rest (in particular to the soldiers and their families that were the frontline enforcers of exploitation) conquering brought a fair share of sacrifice, pain, suffering and hardship.
Retrospective, reliable sources [1] have identified falsehoods, rumours and lies that were used by the ruling classes within all the belligerent countries prior to World War One to propagate fear through their populations. The purpose of the lies was to keep the vast majority of the population afraid of the stranger and it conveniently diverted them away from being angry with injustices in their own countries [2].
The grooming of the vast majority of the population to accept the unacceptable, (the glorious sacrifice [3]) and/or not see through the lies and rhetoric of immoral, corrupt, and power-hungry kings, emperors and political leaders, and, indeed, big-business was effected principally through the disempowering education system that promoted the values of violence, fear, and non-questioning obedience to the prevailing order, generation after generation.
The Pillars of the time, public service, academia, journalism, political life, (and including the established Churches in those days) who had internalised all the values described in the previous post perpetuated disconnect, with minimal change over many decades.
After all, in promoting disingenuous room values, the last thing the military-industrial-business-banking complex would want is for people to be in relationship with each other.
The Treaty of Versailles drawn up after the First World War did little to promote harmony in Europe. The harsh provisions of the Treaty fanned the flames of discontent in Germany. And the widespread poverty during/after the Great Depression (which was the result of corporate closed-ness at that time) assisted the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s; setting up the Continent for the Second World War which began a short 21 years after the end of the First.
I believe that the high point of right to life true democracy, in my lifetime anyway, was the late 1960’s early 1970’s, when people-power in the USA stopped a devastating war in Vietnam which had brought terrible suffering to the people of Vietnam and the USA (as well as, of course, neighbouring countries of Vietnam) over the previous 15 or so years.
Looking back on it now, what is interesting is that when the war ended, the pretext upon which the USA – and its allies – fought the war (like almost all pretexts on which wars – including the First World War as I mentioned above – are fought) was proven to be a lie. Communism did not spread like some sort of virus through South-East Asia, taking over all the countries including Australia which was supposedly in danger of turning into a communist state at that time, and nowadays Vietnam is a lot more peaceful than when it was ruled by (firstly) the French and then the Americans in the mid-20th Century.
What happened in the late 70’s and 80’s to arrest this wonderful example of right to life democracy in the USA I do not know – I’ll leave that to more knowledgeable people – but I have a feeling that the Pillars in the USA may have had some influence on how quickly the ordinary citizens of their country were convinced to get back on the warpath after their brief flirtation with true democracy in the late-60’s to mid-70’s!
Perhaps they (the military-industrial complex Pillars) were taken off-guard by the openness of mass communication which really took off in the 1960’s and it took them a while to realise that if they, very subtly, could control mass communication they could control society beyond their wildest dreams and never again be taken by surprise by people power.
[1]. For the interested and/or curious reader, there are numerous sources (many of whom can be found on the Internet) that we rarely hear about in the mainstream media. A good start would be Gerry Docherty and Jim McGregor’s very interesting book entitled Hidden History. Many sources in that book point to a more scholarly work; Tragedy and Hope, by Professor Carroll Quigley. There are numerous other links – some more reliable than others – that offer a far different view to that which we learned in school and all those blockbuster films that I mentioned in my post on media bias.
[2]. This, of course, is still going on today!
[3]. Glorious sacrifice was a culture that was popular in European countries prior to and during the First World War. It promoted the belief that death in war can bring glory, and give purpose and meaning to our lives. It exploited young males and their needs for heroism, bravery, chivalry, and ritual. There’s still a lot of it around – in my opinion.