When civilized cultures committed genocide in the name of progress, who was the real savage?

We may pride ourselves today in our progressive and civilized society, particularly as people of European ancestry. We have mastered the world, brought democracy to the far flung corners of the round planet and even converted the heathen of other continents with our Semitic religion. But at what cost? Take a look at any of the continents invaded and colonized by the European and you will see the same trail of bloodshed and slaughter of innocent and helpless indigenous people. We pride ourselves in our civilization, but we behaved like barbarian savages to obtain it.

Whether you look at the history of North America, South America, Australia or Africa, you will see the same pattern of wanton violence, brutality and inhumane murder perpetrated by all of the Europeans from their respective nations as they rode roughshod over the original inhabitants of those far flung continents. With little comprehension of their savagery, they all systematically arrived on the shores of a less industrially developed land of peoples and looted them outright.

Not only that but they called the original people savages, all the while savagely murdering them after robbing them of any possible valuable resource they possessed. In the name of their own personal financial gain for their kings and countries – and sometimes for their god – they brutishly butchered the local inhabitants, considering them to be on the level of animals. We came, we saw and we lusted after the land, the water, the silver, the gold and all the natural wealth upon which we laid our eyes.

And with our industrially advanced weaponry, we considered ourselves god’s chosen people. Yet we were so blind to the fact that all humans are god’s people. All life is sacred, what to speak of all human life. We sent in our missionaries to convert them to our more civilized and pure practices, yet we simultaneously behaved like brutes and barbarians from a past as pagan as that of the original inhabitants we encountered. Such hypocrisy and sheer spiritual blindness to our own evil ways in the name of our pious church, suggests to me that we were and still are so blind and stupid that we cannot even see how fallen we really are.

When you don’t know that you don’t know, or you are so blind that you don’t even know what blindness is – then you are like an animal who has no awareness of its nature and has such limited consciousness that it is in total ignorance. We hold no grudge against such animals. We foolishly consider them without spirit, when in reality it is spirit that animates matter, that causes life in what is otherwise inanimate matter. Furthermore, we see no sin or evil in the behavior of any animal and thus they commit no crime in our eyes. Yet when we behave like animals, we are in fact worse than animals because we are fully conscious of our actions. How much more sinful or criminal is a person who can literally behave like an animal with full knowledge of their evil ways. Murder is a crime. War may be considered justifiable in defense but wanton murder of entire races of people simply for pillage and sport is called genocide – a crime akin to cannibalism in my opinion.

Today we are less and less sensitized to brutality since we see it perpetrated by our most refined leadership, yet we still have our taboos which horrify us as civilized society. Cannibalism is one such taboo. Anyone found doing it is considered very sick. Yet our ancestors engaged in crimes just as sick when they legislated in their refined judiciary the “sport” of hunting and killing the indigenous peoples of those far flung continents like North and South America, Australia and Africa.

Such is the disease that besmirches our lily white souls, all dressed up in finery and holiness, sanctimoniously parading our Semitic doctrine as if it was the pure light of divinity, all while murdering dozens of people in a day. We came to the shores of those original people and colonized the land for our own commercial ends. I understand that. But when we thought we were doing god’s work by slaughtering his weaker children, then I only see a sick and twisted soul. Someone who can justify genocide as a service to a god is to me so sick that they themselves need to be dealt with in just a similar way.

In this way I fall into the same trap as my ancestor whom I so berate for his cursed spiritual blindness. And so the cycle perpetuates. It was, of course, not only the European but also the Arab who easily brutalized and enslaved the Africans and others during their heyday in past centuries. What a loathsome creature we appear to be, if I look back on my history. And this history is often not revealed to kids at school. You have to do your own research to find out how you came to enjoy the facility that you have today. Who died for us to have that estate upon which we Europeans now languish?

I speak as one of European descent so I am allowed this degree of self-reflection without appearing sanctimonious or critical of anyone other than myself, and perhaps my ancestors. But at the same time I am making a critique of human consciousness as a whole on this planet, based upon our collective past. The so-called most civilized, advanced and pious Europeans were the very same people who perpetrated the most barbaric and evil crimes of genocide and that, to me, is what makes the crime and the sin and the ignorance all the more evil.

Simple stone age or bronze age tribes may have also killed but it was more to survive and it was among people of similar technological strength with whom they presumably competed for resources. But we came with vastly superior education, sophistication and technology, where we could have used far more humane means of colonizing and monopolizing the resources. Yet we were overcome by lust, anger and greed. The fact that we could justify our evil in the name of our Semite god is to me the height of all this evil. And it concerns me.

It also forces me to be even more introspective regarding my behavior today, where the same patterns may be playing out right now, yet which I and my civilized society may be justifying in the name of some concocted and imagined sense of morality. By refusing to know our past, we are doomed to repeat it.

(image pixabay)