Ep.62 More Colonization?

A great topic to discuss as you celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends: Colonization. Programming Lions provides examples, thoughts, benefits and drawbacks of colonizing in past, present, and even future opportunities. Happy Thanksgiving from GSD Nation! 

TIMELINE

00:00 Intro

01:01 Thankful for…

02:30 What is colonization 

04:25 Benefits & drawbacks

16:12 Examples

18:15 America 

20:15 Largest colonizers

21:40 Reparations

23:48 Present day

27:45 Final thoughts

Transcript

Tgiving-Matt-webcam-00h_00m_00s_295ms-StreamYard: 0:00

Welcome back to another episode on the Programming Lions podcast. Today, we are gonna be talking about colonization considering that it's well, very close to Thanksgiving. Actually today is Thanksgiving. So we're gonna be talking about the benefits, drawbacks, examples, and more questions on it. So stay tuned and enjoy the podcast.

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Yeah.

Tgiving-Matt-webcam-00h_00m_00s_295ms-StreamYard: 0:25

I am looking forward to this boys. We're gonna talk about colonization and To start I think it would be important we define it and then we can talk about some benefits drawbacks Examples and maybe some Q& A around colonization. You've learned a lot about this in school in history And so it's a complicated topic and there's a lot of history to unpack but it'll be fun to get into this particularly with thanksgiving coming up but wait before we Start on colonization. It is thanksgiving. So why don't we? Share what we are thankful for I am thankful for food and money food and money and family. Sorry. I did not mean to say money I meant family family third. Yes. Okay You No, not money. Money is very useful, but family's better. That's good. Max, what about you? Me? It's family and water. Family and water. Yes. How about football? Football, food, family, friends sports humans. Yeah, basically my whole life. Everything. Big list there. Okay. Albert Einstein. Well, I'm thankful for a lot of things. We've got a lot to be thankful for. I think family is number one. We've got a great, healthy, loving family, so that is awesome. We also have freedom. We live in a free nation, so I'm very thankful to be living in America where we are free. And given the outcome of the recent election, I'm also thankful that we live in a nation where people's voices can be heard. I think often you hear that, oh, our vote doesn't matter or this doesn't matter. Well, I think the last election was proof that When people rally, this is still the people's country, and hence why we are still a free nation, and so I am thankful for that. But, without further ado, let's get into colonization, because in some ways we may also be thankful for colonization, but we'll get to that later. So let's talk first about What is colonization? Now, Max, you did some research. We both did some research, but Max, tell us, how do you define colonization? So, colonization is a process of establishing, establishing control over foreign territories or people, peoples for the purpose of cultivation. Trade, What does that mean to you? That means basically When you're establishing, when you're establishing control over a foreign country, That means you're trying to get land for your mother country. Yeah. And, or you're trying to get away from them, just like what the pilgrims did. Yeah. Because they weren't religious for you. Right. Okay. Yeah, it's kind of like where they, it's where you leave a country, You start basically your own area, where you basically create a new country that gets new things like, like maybe new food or new opportunities. Yeah, and what would be some examples of colonization? Because I imagine you can go somewhere and take it over through, Force. Or you could go somewhere that just hasn't been explored yet and there's nobody else there. Are those both forms of colonization? Okay, any others that I'm missing or are those the primary ones? The moon. The moon, yeah. Jupiter. Yeah. Well, you know, Elon's Mars. Yeah, colonizing places that nobody else lives for. Yeah, there's nobody there and it's very difficult to get to. And you could argue that some colonization over history has been done that way. Other colonization has been done via force. And I suppose in some cases in history, colonization via force has been done against differing sizes of population. Very, very small versus sizable, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well let's Let me hear from you about benefits and drawbacks. Who wants to start with some benefits of colonization? So, the benefits is, one is like economic development. Okay. And number one is education and institutional development. Does that come from your research there? Is that? Yes. Okay. I'm reading off of Google. Okay. So, and then also another one is health and sanitation improvements, and then another one is technological and scientific advancements. Yeah, okay. Any others that he missed, William? I don't really know what half those things meant. Okay. Well, should we go through them? Maybe let's go through them one at a time quickly. Let's start with typically if an area or a population is colonized, Who's colonizing it? A more advanced civilization or a less advanced? Most likely a more advanced. Most cases it's more advanced and so some of the points that Max mentioned was health. Technology, and so the, the people that are coming in and colonizing are bringing maybe better health standards, better medicine. Yeah, and also it's because like, let's say they have dirty water, right? Yeah. They can then, if they explore that land, let's say they find very rich water, they can send that as supplies back to their homeland. They could also help the indigenous people make more sanitary water. Maybe they have technology that helps filter water or they know how to make wells that can bring water up from the ground or the water tables that the people in those areas don't even know that exists. You said economic benefits. So that would be, maybe you want to expand because you need more land to develop goods, services, build, you know, build, cultivate, or whatever, I suppose, right? Yeah. It could help you where, if your land doesn't have necessary materials for something, or if they're growing too large, their agriculture or economy isn't growing as fast as they are, then you can just, Go and do this stuff, right? You know, and then you can have much better. Yeah, maybe their land has Yeah, certain resources. I guess examples might be like oil, gold, diamonds, precious materials. Yeah, so that would be Economic. Education and institutional development. When there are people there, you could bring education to the area, and up level the education, perhaps? Yep. Okay. You also mentioned technology and so a more advanced nation may bring in additional technology Yeah, ships more like yeah, I mean Blake the Aztecs, right and they came when they were here floating islands They also did not Everything every place in America North and South America didn't have any gunpowder or anything. Yeah, so they came over That was also a massive shift. Wow, they were sent right there doing Spears and it's like heavy artillery Right. Yeah, so it changed pretty quickly. Yes. Yes. They also didn't know about ships. So Wow Yeah, so then there's like whoa, what is this floating islands? Yeah, they basically fought they fought it was actually like Floating houses coming at them. Like it was so weird. Yeah, that is wild Okay, and what was the last one or two? Political stability. Okay, so that might be like why The pilgrims came over here to remove themselves from religious persecution. Yep Yeah, just for like a new a new start. Yeah a new start to restart from their old life to their new life Yeah, okay All right, so you guys understand all those Reasons and benefits and what would be some drawbacks then of colonization? So, for some drawbacks, we already listed the two types of how people can colonize places. One, like, you know, Mars. No one's there. The other is when people are there. We mentioned all the things of how that can sometimes be good for those people. But sometimes also in some cases like some groups in America, right? They were either forced out of their homes because the pilgrims or the colonizers did not like them. Yep. Or they just killed them straight out. Yeah. And that, that's not very good, right? We don't, we don't really want to just kill the natives. I suppose if you're gonna, if you're gonna take over a new land by force, you can impose your dominance and people can assimilate to the new culture. To some extent, right? Or, you can kill them. Yeah. That's what you're getting at? Yeah. I think it's a lot better for when you just for when you just use them maybe to help you, right? And then maybe then you can, Or somehow if you can blend the cultures maybe a little bit. Yeah, that's what I was about to say. Yeah, but, so your point is that in history, would you say a lot of colonization has been done by force and there's been a lot of, let's say, death? A lot, especially in England. Yeah. So, what are some examples of that? The Netherlands settled in south of Africa. Okay. And they conquered that place and settled there. And They killed every American, Native American there. Really? Yeah, because they wanted that land for themselves and they wanted to build their own town. There's the other examples or maybe, well I already mentioned the Aztecs, right? The Incas were an example. They were good and then suddenly The, Francisco Bizarro? No? Yeah, the Spanish, the Americans, everybody just came in and started killing them because they wanted the land. They didn't even like, negotiate. Yeah. Actually I think in, I think actually in the Aztecs it was where they asked, They killed most of them by disease. Yeah. But in the remaining ones, they took the king, and then they asked the people to give them all the gold that they had. And once they took all the gold, then they just killed the king and all the people there. That's brutal. That's brutal. Well, the thing is, normally when the Spanish came to most places, like in New America, their diseases, they actually tried to, like, make friends with some of the Native Americans. Yeah. But then and the Native Americans thought that they actually, the Spanish, were killing their people, but it was actually just the diseases that they brought along with them that they were immune to, but they're not. So they had good intentions, but they brought across diseases because you know when you're isolated from a whole other group of people They haven't maybe built up immunity to the same types of diseases that we have those things can be devastating for a population when you get something just as simple as a flu that you've never had to build up immunity to before. That has impacted a few civilizations. I think the Incas. Inca, Aztec, and the Indians, right? Indians, yeah. Moving on to probably, like, the next bad thing. Okay. There is, well I guess slaves could probably be an example of what we were just talking about, right? Yeah, so if you don't kill them you make them slaves? Yeah, you either kill them, you help them, or you turn them into slaves. There's like basically the three options yeah, that's how they really did it with the spice trade. Went down to Africa, got all of those slaves and brought them to America to work on these plantations. The other one I was gonna say it does cost a lot of money to do a 66 I think that's actually how long the Mayflower traveled, but it was like a few months to travel from one side of the globe to the other. Right. And that costs a lot of money. Yeah. And there's also in a high chance that you die. Right. And that's not good. And then when you get there, there's still like, you know nothing about the place. So there's also a small chance that you will even live. It's like a 50 50 chance that you'll actually live and your town will be prosperous. Yeah. Right. That's a really good point. So you're saying a drawback is the colonizers take on a lot of risk financially and perhaps even with their lives because they might get into conflict. They might die that way. They might die on the way there. Travels less cumbersome now than it used to be. But back in the day, it was certainly a big deal to travel across the ocean. You're going to lose a certain amount of the people on your ship just to disease. Famine all that kind of stuff, right? There's also storms storms. Yeah, oh man, you do not want to be a storm in the middle of the pacific ocean right Yeah, and they didn't have as good of Meteorological prediction back then as we do now like we can see global weather patterns right through our satellites and all of that that Can help us predict when to travel and when not to they didn't have that back in the day So that's a good point real risky You Yeah, to do that. Yeah, you don't feel like not even know where you're going. You literally just be sailing across the Pacific You do not know. Yeah where you're going, right? I think the first people that got there they thought they were in the Spice Islands when they were actually Or like, you know, that was like, below China or something, somewhere near. It's Indus Indonesia? Yeah. When in reality, they were in The Americas, right? The pla the place right below Florida. What's the name of that? Oh Caribbean? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, anything else in terms of drawbacks? I mean, like, those are mainly, those are, yeah, those are main ones. I mean, those are, like, the prime ones. Another drawback I was thinking about that we didn't mention is just that you're upsetting and potentially wiping out a culture, its history. Yeah, loss of cultural identity. Yes. Yes, and whether that culture is less advanced or not still doesn't make it right to wipe out a culture. There might be history and Traditions and things there that are valuable to those people that they want to carry forward and and so sometimes those things get wiped out As part of that. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes we lose really important information because even a highly advanced civilization Can come in and there's technology that the locals use that You The new more advanced civilization might not know, right? Yeah, actually, yeah that the thing is Just like when the Spanish conquered the Aztec they burned all their historical facts. Yeah, so then that's why we don't that's why most of it's a mystery Yeah, and so we may have by keeping some of that we may have better understanding of the ancient world how things worked We may have had a better understanding of how they built some of these massive structures. It's still a mystery today, even when you think about the Inca and Aztecs and how they were able to do all of their advanced calendar work and astronomical work and alignments, right? And very advanced. People still can't figure out how they built the pyramids today and a lot of these Megalith sites all over the world, but anyway, so there's probably technology that we missed out on capturing when we did some of these Yeah colonization efforts and then you wipe out these cultures and obviously, that's Sad and wrong in a lot of ways. Mostly you lose a lot of potential, right? Now you're just gonna be constantly wondering about them. So it leaves a lot of mystery behind in terms of history. And for those that enjoy history and understanding how things work or how they got to be, that. Erases some of that and makes it really hard to Connect the dots. Yeah, okay so let's talk through some examples of colonization and maybe what could have been done differently or better. So let's start with Incas aztecs we talked a bit about this already And so they came in and basically wiped out these communities, right? Well francisco pizarro. Yeah, they came in And he actually, he didn't even want to make friendship. He just came in, wanted that gold, and then just left. Yeah, so he came specifically for gold. Yeah, he just came for riches and to spread his his religion. God, glory, and gold. Yeah, God, glory, and gold. So then you get like, you spread your religion, you get what you, like, you get your land, you get all the glory, and you get your gold, your riches. So then that's basically what he came for. Okay. And how about when people came to America? When they came here, they started a colonization and they didn't want glory or anything. They didn't want gold. They just wanted to have a good settlement. Right. They wanted to make friends with these Native Americans. Right. Because they could really help them. So they did come over with good intentions. They wanted to expand, be free, and generally, they wanted to make friends with the Native Americans. Yeah, they also really wanted freedom from religion. Yeah, because they're holding back so when they left, right? Yeah, in England during that time I think they split off from the Catholic Church and made their own. You know what ultimately happens is people are very fallible, and so sometimes you get people with good intentions, and then you get some people with bad intentions. And so, I'm sure there are also people that came over with aspirations of gold, glory, and all of that, and maybe they did some bad things to people, likewise, we know not all of the Native American populations were peaceful. Some of them were very, ruthless, warmongering, and brutal, and they had their own slaves, and all those kinds of things, right? It's a tricky one, like, would the world be better or worse if America had never been founded? So, America is better off being founded because we were the first people to separate from a place and make a democratic nation that people know of. Everything else was basically just kings. And that changed the world now there's a new thing in town, which is The democracy. Yeah, or constitutional republic with democracy at its core. That was a spark for many other nations and it also gave hope to other colonies and other countries Yeah, one could say that the founding of america and the freedom around it Sparked a lot of innovation and we've now grown into the most powerful prolific Generous country and That's a good thing for the world even though it say was founded on some bad stuff what would have happened in World War two do you think I think we probably all know what would probably happen if America hadn't really joined in. Germany would have probably taken over the world. Yeah, almost, it's almost a certainty that they would have, without America. I don't think there's any country in the world that gives more to other countries in the world than we do, right? Yeah. So we do a lot of charity given the wealth of our country. So one could say that a lot of benefits for the world have come out of the United States being founded, the global poverty level, global health, global trade. It's all risen since the onset of America, so a lot of good things that have come out of it But still there's people out that Rag against the colonization of America and say we should give it back to the Native Americans. What do you think? They were maybe treated a little bit badly. Mm hmm, right, but We also helped them and they helped us with making this great nation. What country has colonized more settlements than any other? Great Britain. Great Britain. Yeah, probably then maybe behind them was Spain. Spain also had a lot. They really focused on the Americas and Africa. Right. And then Portugal france also had a good amount. Yeah, all in like the Europe part had a lot of settlements. Right. And when they went to these places, do you think they generally uplifted those nations? Or was it harmful Sometimes they uplifted, sometimes they, like, didn't really do that good. Well, maybe I can say it another way too, which is when you think about the most prosperous nations in the world are they the result of colonization What are your thoughts? Member like for America is definitely because of colonization colonization helped them out a lot. Do you think we should do anything? There's no doubt that we When I say we, not necessarily us. The people that came over and founded America had come here and taken this place over by force, in some ways trying to collaborate, but ultimately they took the land. And there were people here, Native Americans do you think we should do anything to Remedy, the fact that we did this hundreds of years ago. This one's hard. I think then maybe then what people should do, is just live the life you've been living. Yeah. If you think that you are not prosperous enough or you say that you think that you're trying a lot and you're, and you're not prosperous, either one, try harder or two, just leave and go to a different place and try. Wow. Brutal. Yes. Brutal honesty. No mercy. No mercy by me. Yeah. Well, I think that's actually a really good message. Bad things happen. So do you linger on that and expect somebody to come and pay you retribution, right? Or do you just say, look, I gotta focus on what's next? What can I do that's next? We can still learn from the past. If America went to colonize some country in Africa, I'm fairly certain we would try to do it in a very constructive, collaborative, and a non genocidal way. Meaning we wouldn't go ahead and murder everybody. I'm sure that we've learned from that and learned from things like the atrocities of slavery that we wouldn't do that again. But nonetheless, there's things in the past and you can't really fix that. What you can fix is what you do next, right? And that's the point that you make, Will, which I think is a really astute and wise point, that focusing on what you can do next is what matters. What you did in the past doesn't matter. And people expecting something from something that happened in the past, not even to them, but to their ancestors, is. Kind of ridiculous, and the math around to whom, from whom, how much, for how long is an impossible thing to figure out. The fact that people even continue to talk about it is a waste of time. But it doesn't erase the fact that some bad things happened. Yeah, we all know it, okay? You don't need to flex it out on us. Mm hmm. Just let's just live peacefully. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, exactly. All right. Well, another question I have for you guys is Africa is a huge nation. And so I want to put this out there, which is should the US, England, maybe other wealthy nations, Russia, China be doing more to colonize parts of Africa that are suffering economically, their people are in difficult situations perhaps too, and there's a lot of land and potential and by going there and colonizing in a responsible way, we could uplift the societies and be able to spread, our global population into new areas and expand. What do you think about that? I don't really know if it's necessarily, if we still need to do colonization. I say we can help them out maybe, right? We can help them out, we can, maybe make deals with them, right? Maybe, most likely some people in here know what Shark Tank is, or how to do it. Just, we're the sharks, or we're the investors, and they're the people. Yeah. And then we'll help them, right? But, we want, we'll get something back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah, we could, we could invest with some return. Yeah, maybe like we can help with money, we can help with, people that come over and then they can technology. Yeah, they can help them work. We could give them some technology, but then they'd have to give us a little bit. That's a great idea. So we could look at it like a shark tank. Do that as a business proposition and not just charity. How it's going right now in, Ukraine, not that we'll make this clear. I do not want that. We're literally just giving this money and not getting anything in return. And then laying them now, use our missiles. Like I, I never mind. We're getting off track. We need something in return. We shouldn't just give people stuff. We got to make sure we get stuff back for it. I get that. Yeah, you mentioned Ukraine. There's also this war in Israel. And in some ways you could say these are relevant to colonization because Russia wants to take some territory in the Ukraine, right? That's why this whole thing started. And there's been this conflict over land in Israel Gaza for decades. centuries. So in a lot of ways, those wars are based on conflict over colonization. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so it is present today. It's not like it was back in the global expansion days from Europe out going all over the globe. It's prevalent today in pockets and these conflicts obviously are unfortunate and you wish people could get. without having to fight over it, but that's where the force comes in. The more advanced nations will win. Certainly Russia would have won if NATO and the U S weren't funding the war with Ukraine. And so to your point, we're not, we're giving them weaponry, money, all of this but there's an argument to be said that It's in our mutual best interest to keep Russia from expanding because if they continue to expand that could be bad for the world And that could be debated in another podcast And similar with Israel, these kinds of conflicts though, they can get super expensive. But I like your idea in terms of going into other regions that actually we want to uplift, not just to expand our territory, but we want to uplift their economic opportunities, development people, and look at that like a business opportunity, invest and help them. But also get benefits out of it. That could be good. Well, maybe just maybe we'll see more of that in the future okay. Let's do some final thoughts on colonization, one at a time. What are your thoughts and takeaways on this complex topic? Colonization is a good thing. It's just how you do it. Don't be mean, but make sure you kind of make friends with them, right? You help them, they help you, everyone is happy in the end. I, yes, agree with Will. Colonization is a good thing if you use it right. Make friends with the people in that area. Okay, I will wrap it with saying, on Thanksgiving, I am thankful for colonization. Yeah! Yes! Otherwise, I would not be here. I don't know where I'd be, or if I'd even exist. But I am thankful for colonization, because I believe it's uplifted the world in many, many ways. And That is good for society. It's good for the planet and it's good for people. And in a lot of ways we could use more colonization and to your point, we could do that responsibly and that's what I think we should do. The sins and atrocities of the past we can't fix, but we can move forward and we can make good and wise choices as we move forward. So, that is a wrap on colonization. Great discussion, boys. I learned a lot today talking to you guys about it, so thank you. Yes, make sure you like and subscribe and comment what you think. Go to gsd Nation. com and buy some shirts. We have some new merch. We do have new merch. Yes, yes, this is Programming Lions podcast. So if you want to support us, wear it and then tell all of your friends about it. Yeah, shameless plug. Until next time. Goodbye.