Thinkpiece Thursday: A Defense Of Colonialism
Happy Thinkpiece Thursday, everyone. Today I’m going to cogitate on the subject of colonialism.
There’s a lot of debate regarding the impact of colonialism. To some – many, actually – the most abhorrent evil the world has ever witnessed is the act of colonization by white men. Literally every historical atrocity can be directly or indirectly blamed on colonialism. Every social injustice, every murder, every rape, every petty theft – all of them are entirely the fault of white colonialism.
But, ignoring the negatives for a second, is it possible that colonialism has some hidden benefits? For the answer, we need to thinkpiece hard, and we should start by running through a brief history of western (that is to say white) colonization.
At the height of the Roman Empire, legionnaire forces occupied foreign lands across the entire known world. The Roman army codified into law a practice that was already quite commonplace in their various territories. It was a practice called Dicta Sucti, in which the women of a conquered land were prohibited from sleeping with anyone but Roman soldiers, and the men, instead of being killed, were not allowed to eat anything other than the semen of the army. Facing starvation, the men of these occupied countries would eventually line up and fellate the Roman soldiers just so they could have something to eat.
It was theorized by the Roman philosophers that the Roman semen would be processed by the lesser men, and in turn, their progeny would have Roman characteristics. While this of course is scientifically untrue, the underlying sentiment set in stone the western concept of colonialism. It’s not just about taking property and mating with the native women, you have to make the oppressed populations dependent on you in such a way that you are not required to sacrifice anything.
From this, we understand why Christopher Columbus, after landing on Plymouth Rock, demanded that the Natives give him head. Convincing them that it was simply a gesture of congeniality, Columbus managed to receive gifts of food and land from the natives in exchange for oral sex. Abusing the gratuity of the indigenous peoples, Columbus built a fortune without having to fire a single shot, and without having to give up anything other than his semen.
It’s from this behavior that we may deduce the etymology of “blow job.” A job is a transaction of labor in exchange for wages, and the wages in this case are loads of semen. Now, we all know from reading Thought Catalog that a job is different than a career. A career is something that offers fulfillment, whereas a job is simply a means to an end. The truth of the matter is that careers do not exist. They are just jobs in which you are sucking your boss’s dick and enjoying the taste of his semen, as opposed to just getting mouth fucked and calling a spade a spade.
This process of making oppressed people suck your dick and expecting them to be grateful for cumming in their mouths is the cornerstone of capitalism. If the Roman soldiers had never convinced the world that a transaction that only benefits the oppressor is somehow a symbiotic relationship, the first man to employ another man without sharing half his profits would have been torn apart in the streets. If the Romans had never colonized other lands, and gone far beyond the systematic dismantling and effacing of native cultures – if the Romans had never enacted Dicta Sucti – we would have never developed capitalism.
So, capitalism is clearly a direct result of white colonialism, but is it a benefit? Some would say yes, as capitalism has led to technological innovation far beyond what we would have accomplished in an economic equilibrium. But people were happy before we had technology and industry. Without capitalism we would have been able to all live comfortably, sharing resources, and we would have pursued meaningful lives through artistic expression and family. The only thing that could possibly have oppressed us would have been the development of a totalitarian ecclesiastical body. Which of course would undoubtedly happen.
Religion, which cannot be attributed to colonialism, can be understood as a monopoly of fundamental knowledge. Religion gives people a framework with which they can reconcile a seemingly meaningless existence. This again can be interpreted as a good thing, for those that aren’t content with “I don’t know” as the answer to life’s difficult questions can look to the church, who will answer those questions with bullshit, and reinforce it with social structures that propagate and disseminate that same bullshit. Just like colonialism, religion puts its dick in your mouth (sometimes literally) and it promises semen as salvation – but not salvation from posthumous damnation, salvation from ontological ignorance. Religion will cum an explanation of the world into your mouth, and all you have to do is get on your knees.
The only way to live in a world without religion is to remove its necessity. You have to create a system in which people do not need God. You need a system in which people have enough faith in scientific observations of our reality, and enough faith in their economic situation that they do not need to worry about basic human needs. You need to create a reality in which the individual may extricate God from His throne in the human psyche, and replace Him with a concept of themselves. You need to create a consumer culture in which an individual’s reason for being is their uniqueness. The only way to do that is through the development of capitalism, therefore, in a capitalist system fully realized, we have removed God’s dick from our mouths, and replaced it with not only our employer’s dick, but our own dicks as well. We’re sucking two dicks at once.
Adolf Hitler, while addressing his fellow Mensheviks at 2nd Congress of the RDSLP, famously opined, “Knowledge is Power.” A succinct, prophetic quote, but one that I feel needs revision and clarification. Standing alone, the statement reads as if the acquisition of knowledge is by itself a source of power. This is simply not true. Power lies in the ability to manipulate knowledge – to guide the public opinion and dictate reality. Just as the Christopher Columbus convinced the natives that his semen was a gift, just as religion uses structured lies to spread origin-myths and control its clergy and congregation, Hitler convinced his fellow Englishman that the gypsies were manipulating cryptocurrencies with nothing more than clever rhetoric and finger puppets – and we all know how that ended. Power is not intelligence or understanding, power is the ability to lie effectively.
Now, because colonialism begets capitalism, and because capitalism brings about (through the development of technology, cultural narcissism, and its power to nullify religion) a system in which information is not controlled by arbiters of divinity, you have (as a direct result of capitalism) an ability to create your own power by redefining public knowledge as you see fit. That is to say, you can lie, and your lie becomes truth because you put it online and get people to read it. The more people you get to accept your reality, the more power you’ve created – you’ve empowered yourself. You’re not only sucking your own dick, but other people are now sucking your dick, and their sucking their own dicks at the same time.
The ability to address a wide audience, and spew your own brand of bullshit that is readily lapped up by thousands, and quite possibly millions, is a privilege that was once reserved for the only the church or the state. Thanks to the technological advances created by capitalism (i.e. the internet) and capitalism’s birth of the secular pulpit that is the thinkpiece, we are truly an empowered people. It is the age of the thinkpiece my friends, and without colonialism it would not be possible. We now not only have the power to be God, but we have the power to be everyone else’s God at the same time, simply by logging on and thinkpiecing while sucking our own dicks. This is undoubtedly a direct result of colonialism, and I can tell you right now that I would never EVER want to live in a world without thinkpieces.
Thanks guys. Happy Thinkpiece Thursday.