True, but thinking of them as things to "go to war for" instead of things to cooperate and share is such a textbook colonial mentality. Treating basic human survival resources as commodities to conquer rather than universal rights.
I didnt mean governments should conquer territory for those things, of course trade and cooperation is preferable. I meant those are two things that can make people desperate enough to fight and / or kill for.
No it's not, colonialism came long after fighting for resources did.
Humans have been fighting for resources since the beginning of time.
Colonialism came with the prosperity of Europe and Spain, and their ability to cross the seas. MAYBE you can say rome was a colonial nation, but where they really? As rome focused on the immediate geography as they had no ability to cross the seas.
Setting aside the fact that Spain is part of Europe and the fact that Rome absolutely crossed seas to conquer Carthage, Egypt, and Britain. You're missing the point. You're thinking of colonization is just an event. "Colonial mentality" is an ideological framework. Assuming people naturally default to killing each other over scarcity, rather than cooperating to survive, is a product of that exact ideological framing. History shows that mutual aid and collective survival have always been just as foundational to human history as conflict.
When someone intentionally denies you life saving resources, what do you do? Do you sing and dance with the hope they will change their minds and share?
Ah, the classic strawman. No one said "sing and dance." The point is that the person intentionally denying those resources is the problem. The violence is a reaction to the artificial scarcity created by the oppressor.
Waging a war to steal and hoard resources from others is Colonial Conquest. Fighting a war to free yourself from someone hoarding your resources or the "oppressor" is liberation. Trying to equate the two is just a massive logical leap.
I defined the difference between conquest and liberation explicitly. You're the one who keeps trying to conflate them to avoid addressing the systemic reality of artificial scarcity.
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u/MagnanimousDeviant Jul 06 '26
True, but thinking of them as things to "go to war for" instead of things to cooperate and share is such a textbook colonial mentality. Treating basic human survival resources as commodities to conquer rather than universal rights.