I want to be optimistic, but I just don’t see where the world is heading. I’m supposed to believe that the Western elites, whose ideology seeps into the populations, will become reasonable and choose to co-exist with the rest of the world in peace and prosperity. Yet that seems to be the plan.
For instance: If Europe wasn’t preparing for a larger war, why continue to demonize their neighbors? People say they’re losing, but nobody has any interest in standing up against them. They have successfully conditions millions of people who will happily fight, nobody is going to step in and they will be able to re-militarize.
I’m not naive enough to believe I’ll be able to do anything about it. I’m an irrelevant ant floating on a leaf, in an ocean. The fact that my cautions is misread as arrogance and humility is seen as boastfulness, because it is incomprehensible - the fact that someone might be acting in interests, other than their own, speaks for itself.
Yes it’s obviously not hopeless, but there is nothing I can personally do to change history. I just do whatever I’m able with my limited resources and that’s enough. If someone as insignificant and unimportant can get this far then there’s got to be much more clever people with real significance out there. The most obvious explanation is that my ignorance, even if not by my own fault, makes their actions incomprehensible to me.
Not even those that aren’t part of the
?Honestly if imperialism is thaught it’s along the lines of how cool it is or how way back in the day some people went to war for selfish reasons but that doesn’t happen anymore (sarcasm)
As a European, I sadly agree. I’ve been arguing in vain as basically all the countries on this pseudo-continent talk about how military spending must go up up up because Ruzzia Putler will invade us any day now. Never mind that that makes no sense, just trust that Putin wants to rule the whole world because he’s foreign and foreign is evil. Sadly this sentiment is common from a lot of people, moreso than just politicians. Feels like we’re actively and successfully building Red Scare 2.0.
The European nations are arming themselves at record rates, and taking many propaganda and legal routes to increase the acceptability of aggressive military action. I can only hope that other countries, like Iran, are finally reaching a point of successfully arming themselves and building defense capabilities to the point that they can defend themselves from our soon-incoming aggression.
Nations don’t spend hundreds of billions on dollars on military only for them to stand around defensively. Once we’re all investing stupid amounts of resource into it, we’ll find an excuse to use it.
In my country the national curriculum is pretty loose, so it really depends on your teachers. But most people that end up teaching history are at least progressive.
So yeah I learned about imperialism from like the 6th grade until the last year of high school.
From the early colonial period to modern times.
A very sad note: it didn’t matter. MANY people around my age in my country are fucking rightoid chuds who worship the US.
That’s my worry too, people talk about American decline but these are extremely advanced nations which are ready to burn the world for an extra dollar
Edit: Not saying it isn’t happening but there’s a lot of inertia behind this empire and we have barely seen a wobble, it might more generations like two or three more for it to fall but by then a lot of climate disaster might be irreversible in short term and many generations will suffer, my only hope is that our species survived last ice age via what Marx called primitive communism and now our species might survive another disaster with a similar system.
I was taught about imperialism within the 12 years of state-sponsored education I received, but it was in a history class I had to choose as an elective in my final year of high school. It started with 25-30 students, but most people peeled off before we got to imperialism.
Though I also remember going to an elementary school in a place where the people were wealthier. I don’t think we had a history class as such, but they taught us a little bit about mercantilism and how it responded to the discovery of the new world. I suppose one could have put together a basic understanding of imperialism from that, but by the time I was being taught about imperialism, that would have been a half-remembered factoid from 8 years earlier.
