Coulda been Flintstones

There were a few things that became apparent to me in this case study.

• Humans suck: … let me elaborate. When solely looking at King Leopold's exploits of the native peoples in the Congo, you can draw this surprising idea that humans suck. But, I guess you want a little more than that. So, King Leopold’s intentions in the region of the Congo wouldn't be shown untell people like Edward Moral and the people who slowly became aware of the situation and the environment that King Leopold was garnishing as humanitarian work. While behind his curtain of thousands of miles of oceans he would ultimately kill approximately half of the population of the congo or ~10 Million people before he was kicked out of his own colony (which he never visited). While this might not have been technically a genocide. (from my small amount of research that’s a heated debate) King Leopold used the Congo to suck as much rubber out of the region as humanly possible. Untell Belgium came in to save the day…kinda. They didn't exactly swoop in and save the Congolese people. Belgium came in and just started exploiting other resources in a different manner.
• I’ve used this quote a lot and it is somehow also coming back to be relevant. “In History, the backgrounds change, the costumes change, but the human beings in the stories are remarkably similar.”- Dan Carlin
• The modern world WOULD NOT BE THE SAME without these massive exploits that are caused by imperialization or modernization (I've always seen the two as the same) Tires might not have been the saving grace for bikes and early cars. The world wars might have ended because of a lack of resources. You WOULD NOT have this sprawled out car-centric America we have today had Leopold not killed 10 Million people for rubber trees and other resources. Phones, computers, and the upcoming savers of the climate, electric cars would be so expensive the average person WOULD NOT be able to afford them without the lithium mines in Africa and across the world. and Last I checked these mines in Zimbabwe aren’t OSHA compliant. So was this a “necessary evil”?

• So where do we as people in the modern world today need to draw the line of seeing the imperialization during the 18th and 19th centuries as a positive? Because it almost seems counter-intuitive to say “Thank you for a hundred plus years of exploration so I can complain about it on Twitter on a phone with a lithium battery mined in Zimbabwe sitting on a couch made in a Chinese sweatshop with a shirt on made in the same sweatshop… Oh yeah here's a picture of my dog”

I’ve been sitting here trying to think about what would be the best way to repay the people of the exploited parts of the world. and the best way I think it could happen is if more people saw these atrocities that occur to this day. Teach these events in schools, show the generations that are growing up in the world built off the shoulders of the hundreds of millions of people who had no choice. Who still have no choice. That these people helped us and the least we could do is acknowledge these things that happened. Because if history does really repeat itself. Until people actually start learning about these things it won't change.