According to multiple studies, there has been little empathy found in the West, which was “created”–more honestly, was coerced–by colonial rule. What did it take to make colonies from Greenland to Argentina? Lies, and presenting one face while hiding the other, throwing rocks and hiding hands. If people were honest about their intentions to take over, steal, and violate, nobody would have ever been kind to the first settlers, because they would have been revealed to be psychopaths. Now, when people have been screaming the truth for centuries and decades, the responses have been to pretend that being honest is the problem, rather than the problems themselves. We ban the authentic because truth is horrific.
Maybe this relates to suburbs, and maybe it relates to media curated to glorify institutions, but somewhere along the way, imperial residents decided to pretend that looks and tone matter more than reality. Anyone from the 1980s remembers the “Dress for Success” campaign that was largely centered around buying clothes? Turns out, it was easier to pretend that discrimination in the workplace was about what was worn, rather than the decisions made by people in hiring chairs. Ironically, activists had been wearing stellar clothing that needed to be dry cleaned, but people made constant comments about how “nice” people were being, demanding placation after siccing cops, dogs, and firehoses on people aiming for equality. Respectability politics arose in the antebellum, so neither looks nor tone made a difference to treatment, no matter the lies people tell.
Moreover, extraction and those who perfect it continue to be revered, and the people who make extraction possible are seen as the problem while the economic vampires write the history. “Elites” are doing their best to rewrite history so that the plantation owners, monopolists, and dictators are seen as deserving of their ill-gotten gains, but the tide is finally starting to turn. Despite buying the press and running propaganda throughout most of the entertainment, people are turning away from mainstream media that seems geared only at making miserable people less content with themselves. As it happens, it is actually impossible to force people to always internalize our deprivation at the people who promised they would help us avoid it. Rising costs and lowered wages that demand people “make a way out of no way” are more suited for the dying church than for everyday living. No one thinks that hoarders holding everyone hostage ever worked a day in their lives, and those who do are finding themselves increasingly isolated.
This does not mean that those who have been honest are getting what is deserved, because remember, the hoarders are holding everyone hostage. Even recently, truthtellers are being banished and deprived, and while people may say that they would help those on the right side of history, nothing has actually borne fruit. I have never seen more openly hostile people get money without already having it. Students have been kicked out of school, activists are facing increasing scrutiny, but it is as if only those living in delusion have any resources to offer. This is the result when people fail to honor those who are authentic, as opposed to those who hide behind fake rules that constantly change. Words and how they sound become more important than the actions backing them up, and we get to live in a society where nothing truly matters because everything is negotiable since people lack principles other than, “Get more!”.
“Explorers” came to the “New World,” met those living here, pretended to compromise and contract, and slaughtered people on a regular basis. “Business owners” decided to reduce their operating costs by forcing people to work for free, and enacting violence if refused. In the current era, people were in the streets, on social media, in schools and everywhere else proclaiming that something was wrong and needed to be fixed, and people made a big deal about how “nice” people were. Colonial mentality is difficult to break, and it is not apparent that those who value sweet lies over harsh truth will change their ways. At least those telling the truth are in better company, now that the “middle class” lie has died.
Chasing A Dying Empire 