Economic Modern-day culture, colonialism and climate change

I read something yesterday on how Colonialism is to be blamed for climate change. In today’s economic modern-day culture, I wonder if that is completely true. I admit I didn’t finish reading the article as it seemed to be spouting off the same old typical blame of white people being responsible for all the world’s problems. But it did make me think a bit about this, so I am going to see where my train of thought will take me on this topic.

My colonialized experience

I grew up during the ’50s, ’60s & ’70s in Africa, the land where Western colonialism was ripe. While growing up I questioned certain things that confused me about the white people’s influence on African culture. But, while colonialism was alive, and as far as my country’s economy and state of affairs went, the country was functioning and people were working and surviving. Was it perfect? No, not everyone had a job. Was there trauma on the streets such as beggars’? Yes, but not many, and they were people who truly could not work. Was there exploitation of resources? Probably, I was not aware of that.

So what exactly is Colonialism?

National Geographic’s interpretation of colonialism is:  “Control by one power over a dependent area or people.” It occurs when one nation subjugates another, conquering its population and exploiting it, often while forcing its own language and cultural values upon its people. By 1914, a large majority of the world’s nations had been colonized by Europeans at some point”. (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/colonialism).

Western colonialism: A political-economic phenomenon whereby various European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Western-colonialism).

A little Colonial history

When one stands back and looks at our history and what we know so far of our historical journey, I would say the whole world has been colonized by humanity. History so far tells us that we supposedly all came out of Africa. It also tells us we have migrated and colonized as we inhabited the world. Atrocities have taken place throughout our historical migration and colonization since the beginning of our time.

Just a side note

While looking at the definition of colonialism, I see something here that I think is relevant in today’s world. “Colonialism is defined as “control by one power over a dependent area of people.” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colonialism).

I don’t know if anyone reading this can see what I am seeing. How about our political leaders controlling our freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of belief, and freedom to be who we truly are?

“It (colonialism) occurs when one nation (one power) suppresses another, conquering its population and exploiting it, often while forcing its own language and cultural values upon its people”. To a degree, I am sensing this is what is happening right now with our leaders forcing us, the citizens, to comply with what they want – feels like traits of colonialism to me – just food for thought. Let’s see where this all goes!

Back to my original train of thought…..

From where I sit, from my education and from what I have personally witnessed, humanity has left behind a terrible destructive track record. I believe that a lot of today’s world trauma could be a part of the accumulation of those historical actions.

I would say that our “collective historical colonization” has brought us to where we are today. In that sense, it could be somewhat responsible for climate change, let’s see……

Let’s look a little deeper…..

One of my arguments growing up was “why are the white men/women here in Africa trying to change the ways of the local people”? The answer I was given was “because we are bringing a better way of life to the people in health and education, we have to bring them into the modern world so they are not left behind”. That seemed like a fairly logical answer, but I do remember not feeling completely comfortable with that reality. I was too young and unaware at that point to understand what was really bothering me about it all.

In actuality, that reality is exactly what happened. Life generally did get better for people. People’s health improved, people became educated and the people of my country became more affluent and demanding in their standard of living. They generally adopted many of the European cultural ways; they joined the modern world; was that not the plan? Was it not to bring them out of the dark ages into the modern world?

How’s it looking in today’s world?

It seems that the original plan has worked worldwide, we basically now have a globe of 7+ billion people chasing today’s modern world dream. We all started from and have evolved from nomadic, agrarian agricultural, industrial revolution to our modern-day technological and space explorations, and an environment in distress.

Before Covid hit the world, most of society, in general, was more comfortable than previous generations. Most of us were living an easier life; we had machines to take care of the heavy back-breaking chores. We had a house to live in. We had cell phones that connected us instantly to friends, family and business matters. We didn’t have to walk for miles to get water or to go to school or work. Basically, we had pretty much what we needed. Again, there are degrees in all of this, but overall, there was a fairly strong middle class.

Since Covid, this landscape may have changed somewhat due to inflation and other financial hardships. It seems that the poverty line is growing larger and the middle class could be struggling.

One thing that I have noticed is with each passing generation the standard of living has been rising. Children are born into a certain standard which becomes their norm. As they grow they demand more from life raising that lifestyle. To add to this raising of our standard of living are the constant inventions and developments of new and better ideas and products.

Our economic modern world

Hence we arrive into our world today of consumerism where we have this giant economic hamster wheel that has been created and which we have to frantically keep spinning in order to keep our society moving forward and maintaining our current lifestyle.

One of my many questions is: With 7+ billion people chasing this modern world dream what kind of effect economically and environmentally does this have on Mother Earth and our environment?

• We bitch about China and India producing so much pollution. But we readily buy the products they make because they are cheaper.

• We bitch about our water becoming contaminated due to the chemicals flowing into them and not breaking down. But we readily buy the medicines and chemicals and play a part in flushing them out into our water systems. Every pill we swallow gets expelled from our bodies into the water system and does not break down, which then contaminates our water. (https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/drugged-waters-how-modern-medicine-turning-environmental-curse)

• We bitch about the plastics filling everything up, but we support the plastic industry. (https://www.retlawindustries.com/Info/7CommercialPlastics

We bitch about climate change and our environment, but we don’t want to change our ways. We don’t want to sacrifice our comfortable lifestyles.

Instead, we strive to reach a lifestyle that our Hollywood stars and the very rich are living. In doing that we continually spin that hamster wheel that in turn creates the environmental devastation which is now being blamed for climate change.

And the wildest thing of all……..

This hamster wheel chase for our materialistic happiness has a crazy result – it provides and supports the1% of the world’s very rich, a lifestyle that is absolutely obscene and totally out of touch with our, hamsters, reality.

Who is this 1%? Just to name a few, I would take a guess that they are – the creators, owners, CEOs, shareholders of multinational corporations and our political leaders. And don’t forget the powers behind the World Economic Forum and the famous George Sores, just to name a few. It seems these are some of the giants that have created our economic hamster wheel and their lives depend on us to keep this spinning hamster wheel spinning.

I have another question here……do you really think that the heads of these multinational corporations and our leaders are going to forgo their power and riches to save the planet in a manner that is fair, balanced and healthy for everyone? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y81jxTuC70U)

Modern-day Colonialism

From what I can see, a form of colonialism is still alive today, let’s just call it modern-day colonialism. Basically, there aren’t any new countries to colonize, but the methods used to control the population today are very similar. They are demanding more and more control over us, the hamsters; we are expected to follow where they are “nudging” us (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book). It seems some of our world’s politicians are becoming more and more controlling and undemocratic. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385) And we just blindly and trustingly follow along without questioning where we are going.

Control by one power……

It looks like there is one more step to complete the journey of colonialism and that is to colonize the world into one governance.

• We hear more and more about the globalist movement.(https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/pandemic-treaty-spreading-plague)

• One-world government and the Great Reset – (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2021/03/18/it-is-time-to-seriously-consider-the-advantages-of-a-world-federal-government/). (https://theawakener.ca/the-great-reset).

• State and corporate governance (https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2019/04/22/the-role-of-the-state-in-corporate-governance/).

Conspiracy theorist

I don’t know what the truth of it all is. There is all kinds of chatter about our future.

Totalitarianism,( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism),

Fascism, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism).

Communism. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism)

Who knows the truth because we are not part of the decision-making process; they just feed us the crumbs. But if we take the time and do our own research it then becomes apparent that something is amiss. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyAc4jMH-Xs).

China is going through a terrifying period right now that begs our leaders to question this inhumane treatment.

Australia too has experienced horrific treatment from their police. Why has there not been an outcry from other countries? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2krGe1j074)

If we are expected to believe in our politicians and the decisions that are being made concerning our 7+ billion population should we not make sure that they are decisions that work towards building a free, fair and balanced society for all of us as best as possible?

Exploitation…….

The worst exploitation though is our raping of Mother Earth in the name of our modern-day lifestyle. From what I see, in today’s world, we are by far the biggest culprits in exploiting her. We rape her over and over and over again. We blow her up, we dig her up, we mow her down, and we contaminate her. It seems to me this is all done in the name of our economic modern-day culture to quench the “consumer demand” for our conveniences and let’s not forget the1% and the over-the-top lifestyle we provide for them.

Today’s Exploitation

We have to be blind not to admit that exploitation on a very large scale is part of our modern-day reality: child labour, child soldiers, sex slavery, unsavoury working conditions, migrant workers, refugees, and poverty just to name the obvious.

I would go so far as to say the general population is also being exploited by the people in power. To start with, I have never given permission to anyone to control me. I have not signed anything agreeing to be “nudged” anywhere. I have not agreed on or voted for, any of the above powerhouses who seem to be today’s world decision-makers on the direction we are all being forced to make/take in society: my only contribution is voting for my country’s electoral politicians for my own country.

I’m going to conclude that I see there is some validity in my side note – “feels like there are traits of colonialism happening today”. But, when you look at Australia, China and it seems Canada too, one has to wonder if there is something more sinister than colonialism brewing here.

My conclusion on Colonialism

It seems our historical journey has never been about fairness and health for all people. I would say that we the hamsters have never really been free. It has always been about control, power, greed, corruption and exploitation. I would say that our modern world culture is still in the grips of a form of colonialism and is heading towards a darker and more sinister form of control.

We are the creators……..

From what I can see Colonialism is just part of the whole. We are the creators of it all, we are the ones supporting it, and we are the ones blindly playing the game.

I will take a guess here and say that it’s not colonialism per se that is responsible for climate change, it’s our economic modern-day creation that is to be blamed.

What can we do?

• We can move on and stop blaming colonialism.
• We can take responsibility for our actions.
• We can demand our freedom, all of it; freedom of speech, freedom to think and believe what we want, freedom to raise our own children, freedom to be who we are.
• We can become 100% responsible for ourselves, we can raise our children to be 100% responsible for themselves; I believe we are capable of taking care of ourselves. We do not need to be controlled at every turn we make, and every thought we have.
• We, the hamsters, can make dramatic changes; we can demand a restructuring of our democracy where we have more control over the decisions that are made.
• We can demand an end to corruption and demand complete transparency from our governments.
• We can stop supporting the major contaminators – the giants that have gobbled up the small businesses, the giants that control our governments and our media; the giants that cause the most devastation on Mother Earth.
• We can make sacrifices by purchasing what we need rather than what we want.
• We can support our local businesses and our local communities.
• We can get involved in changing the course we are on by connecting with our local government representatives and pressuring them for change.
• We can try to help take control and change the course of where our Mother-ship is heading.

Remember that we pay our politicians to be the responsible authorities in looking after our Country and its role in society. They work for us, we are not their hamsters, we are their bosses. We can stand up and tell them we are not happy.

Where are we going?

Corruption is a dead-end street, and power and corruption rule our world. I don’t say that lightly, I have personally witnessed government corruption, it’s a real thing and it comes in many disguises. I understand that it might be a hard pill for many to swallow. But all one needs to do if in doubt is just zoom out and look down at humanity’s state today. It’s pretty obvious that we are not winning on issues such as balance, fairness and freedom in our economic modern-day culture. Why is that?

Most societies in our modern world are not living in a fair, healthy, balanced and sustainable environment, and that should tell us something.

Is it really possible that 7+ billion people who are chasing the same economic-modern-day creation believe that this is a sustainable creation?

How do 7+ billion “unique” individuals willingly and happily fit into a one-world-order government? Look at the devastation that happened to the 1st Nations of the Americas where they were bullied, brutalized and killed in order to fit into the new modern-day culture. Look at Brexit, it failed due to too much control from one body government outside of its own country.

How do new creations and variety arise if we have to all live under a one-world government?

Freedom to be who we are is fundamental to living a healthy, balanced and happy life. Total freedom is not possible unless we are 100% responsible for ourselves. This requires one to be responsible for one’s thoughts, decisions and actions; this requires one to be completely truthful; this allows us to then be in complete control of our lives.

Is that not what our journey in life is all about; being responsible for ourselves so that we can truly experience and learn and grow into who we really are? Or is it all about giving up our freedom so that we fit into today’s creation: work ourselves to death so that we can afford to spin the hamster wheel and buy what we want; support the greedy and corrupt; all at the cost of destroying Mother Earth and ourselves?

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UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL