Five drivers of colonialism that continue to dominate Western Culture.

**First a disclaimer: This is a dense piece. Think of it as a hearty stew. This piece will be totally insufficient to cover this topic and is meant to just be a small gateway for people wanting to start understanding these issues. My hope is that you can take this information and run with it to learn more out of your own curiosity. There are MANY experts out there whose main focus is teaching de-colonial work (which applies to all of us raised in Western Culture – depending on our specific ancestral background and unique family/community cultures). De-Colonial work is basically de-programming the ways we have internalized the cultural norms I’m speaking to in this piece.

These topics can be emotionally triggering for a variety of reasons. Depending on your personal background it may trigger anger, guilt, shame, sadness, fear. See if you can practice non-judgment as you read – this is not about attacking any person or group. It is about acknowledging a system that perpetuates harms.  Notice defensiveness rising, practice ‘Beginner’s Mind’ (open curiosity that enables us to learn new things vs. ‘Expert’s Mind’ which already ‘knows’) and take time to ground yourself as needed.

As you read through this, remember your Dialectical Thinking when tempted to say, ‘Yes but!’ or ‘What about!’ Multiple truths can co-exist. Naturally in all of life, experiences are unique and culture is not a monolith. There are always outliers or different individual experiences, AND we can also identify general cultural norms in the ‘bell curve’ of society. These topics are points of study for historians, anthropologists, sociologists, mental health workers, social workers and more – you can get entire degrees in each of the issues mentioned below. 

My limited (and yet maybe more than the general population’s) expertise comes from my own educational background in sociology, psychology and social work, as well as years of continuing education and personal study on the subject. Through my work I’ve attended trainings with local Native Tribal councils, community groups with diverse backgrounds and more, which has given me the opportunity to hear a wide variety of perspectives on this topic. De-colonial work is an ongoing thing, and there is always more to learn.  The important piece is to stay curious. Ok let’s go…

In all the political discourse online you’ve probably seen posts about colonialism and maybe asked yourself, ‘Why are they talking about colonialism? Didn’t that end in the 18th and 19th centuries? Why do people keep bringing past stuff up and not just leave it in the past?! Let it be done!’  While there is no hard end date for the technical period of colonialism, in a practical sense that timeline somewhat hits – although it was still unraveling even in the 20th century after World War II. 

The technical definition of colonialism from the Oxford dictionary is: ‘The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.’  Anyone who paid at least a little bit of attention in school knows that colonialism by European nations affected the majority of the world at some point in time and had devastating effects on local populations (although as we’ll unpack later in this article, many viewed colonizers as ‘advance saviors’ helping the ‘primitive and ignorant’ lands and people they took over). 

Either way, you might ask, ‘Isn’t colonialism already over?’

I won’t take time to unpack it in this post, but it does not take long to do some research and discover all the ways in which the United States continues to destabilize nations around the world and flex military power in order to be able to export their natural resources and take advantage economically. So while it may look a little different today, we can genuinely question whether or not it is actually over.

Aside from that tangent, why are people still talking about it if most nations that were exploited by colonialism have technically regained their sovereignty?  The answer is twofold:

1. Because when you understand interconnectivity and the law of cause and effect, you know that everything from history is what creates the present moment. The present moment is exactly as it is because of the infinite domino effects that have led up to it over centuries and millennia.  So there is no way to truly understand and solve the problems of the present moment (economic or social) without deeply understanding what has led up to it. And if we don’t want history to keep repeating itself, we need to change the ‘causes’ that keep triggering the ‘outcomes’. 
2. Because the harmful impacts of those ‘technically literal’ colonialist centuries were driven by specific cultural norms that continue to be alive and well today. These drivers of colonialism are what we have yet to fully address as a society, and that’s what this piece will focus on.

What drove colonialism? And where is it still alive today?

Money, a capitalist market of supply and demand-

European Empires needed grist for the mill. This is the basic stuff that we learned in school – European Colonizers went for ‘trade’ and resources like wood, spices, fabric, stone, slave labor etc.  Understanding how a capitalist economy works is important here because it is only propped up by ever expanding growth, which requires extraction of resources (time, labor and material goods) and ever expanding production and consumption (on a finite planet – although regenerative if we’re mindful).

>While the push for wealth and ownership of capital (money & goods) was a large driver of colonialism, we still operate on the same economic system and see it alive and well today. You see it in the constant industrial push for ‘productivity’ – in tying people’s value and worth to their productivity. If you’ve had the privilege of traveling outside the USA you immediately see what a speed and work obsessed culture we are. You see it in our lack of ability to slow down and live, in our obsession with ‘harder, bigger, faster, stronger’ or ‘no days off’ or ‘rest is lazy’. 

You hear it in all the conversations about income inequality, constantly rising inflation while wages stagnate and the shrinking middle class.  You hear it in the panic around any policy that is socialist in nature (redistributing resources vs. hoarding them). 

You also see the consequences of the neverending push for consumption and production in the destruction of the ecosystems and degradation of our planet’s resources, including habitat destruction, biodiversity loss and pollution (we have islands of garbage in the oceans). You don’t even have to ‘believe’ in climate change to acknowledge and see where we are over-fishing, over-mining, shrinking our forests, and causing unprecedented species collapse. All, for the push of consumerism and profit.

Thinking Dialectically – Now, before you freak out and scream, ‘Scarry commie!’ remember, here is where we can apply Dialectical Thinking to avoid slipping into ‘all or nothing’ thinking. We can BOTH acknowledge the benefits of capitalism AND the harms when polarizing into an extreme. Capitalism has many positive attributes like individual financial stability, financial freedom and ingenuity, however when it gets taken into an extreme version – with the main priorities being de-regulation, ever-growing shareholder value and individual wealth hoarding – it causes problems. You start to see monopolization and the shrinking middle class we have now, and quality of human and planet life have to be sacrificed for ever burgeoning profit. Oftentimes quality of life for society as a whole is not what’s profitable.

**This isn’t about over-throwing capitalism (which in extreme often turns to oligarchy), OR about polarizing into the other extreme of a government style like communism, but about exploring whether there are other versions, like wellbeing based and regenerative free market economies (hint, there are!), that may be more mindful and conscious – versions that value BOTH financial stability for the individual, AND the overall regenerative health of the society and planet. It’s about exploring the middle path between a free-market version of capitalism and an economy that includes protective boundaries for people and planet, with socialist safety nets.

Militarism and Power Based Control – 

European colonialists had a bit of the ‘world domination’ bug, which was also driven by a patriarchal world – ruled by men – who ascribe to the idea that ‘might makes right’.  ‘I’m entitled to take, conquer and exploit because I am more powerful.’ This is the outcome of an out-dated patriarchal version of Darwin’s ‘Survival of the Fittest’ which interpreted ‘fittest’ to mean ‘strongest and most dominating’.  

This patriarchal version taken into extreme leaves out the equally present and needed part of survival that includes reciprocity and collaboration.  The ‘fittest’ did not just mean most physically strong, it meant the most adaptable to change.  Lions don’t eat more gazelle than they need. There is interspecies collaboration everywhere. Trees share canopy space in the forest. This polarization into valuing competition and domination of others, valuing power above all, enabled the spread of colonialism around the world. 

>We continue to see this patriarchal, power structure to this very day. As we look at more conservative branches of political ideals, they highlight the need for forced control through use of increased punishment. This looks like increased militarism, authoritarian styles of leadership, over-reliance on law enforcement and incarceration, with an under-reliance on community programs and prevention (labeling those as ‘soft’, ‘weak’ and ‘letting people off easy’). It looks like fierce competition in any aspect of life from exercise, to image to business. It looks like approaching all of life as if it’s a battle of me vs. you, us vs. them. 

Thinking Dialectically: Naturally on this planet the need for rules, consequences, defense, protection, strength and order is true and valid. The problem lies when we polarize into an extreme version of what is traditionally held as ‘the masculine’, especially when it’s elevated as ‘best’. (Important side note that we know these concepts of ‘masculine’ vs. ‘feminine’ are highly subjective across cultures and time, so I’m speaking generally to how Western Culture applies it here. Check out the history of female warrior groups throughout history). 

Identifying the harms of a system polarized into power-based patriarchal control does not mean being against men. We need men, we love men, we need healed & balanced men who also carry emotional intelligence. We need men who can honor the perspective of the feminine, including collaboration, negotiation, care and connectivity. Again, with dialectical thinking we can acknowledge that our systems and institutions need BOTH the masculine AND feminine ways of leading and creating – and everything in between.

Individualism –

The idea that ‘my needs’ are the most important – above the ‘group needs’ – also enabled harms brought about by colonialism.  There is a lot of information you can find about how cultures throughout the world that were colonized by Europeans tended to be more collective cultures – whether indigenous cultures of the Americas, or African tribes and even Asian cultures. 

They centered (and still do) around community social structures, group decision making and group wellbeing. They also often had a system of communal land ownership, which did not fit well with the capitalist goals of individuals owning capital to hoard and ‘capitalize’ on for wealth. Colonialists came in and tore down existing communal cultural structures and replaced them with their hierarchical (patriarchal power based), individualistic and capitalist systems.

>We continue to see this individualistic prioritization in our political structures of Western Culture, where any attempt at communal cooperation or redistribution of resources is labeled ‘socialism’ and demonized. Collectivism is not as good for capitalist wealth (power) hoarding as individualism is. You’ll start to see how all of these factors are interconnected – intersectional – and feed off each other. 

Thinking Dialectically:  Individualism is INCREDIBLY valid and important. We are each unique individuals that have a right to our unique needs, freedoms, preferences, boundaries and identities. This is not something we have to let go of. Again, with Dialectical Thinking, we can maintain our individualism and balance it with collectivism at the exact same time. In our institutions, systems and policies, how can we BOTH honor the individual AND the health of the collective whole and planet at the same time? 

It requires learning how to embrace paradox. It requires learning negotiation, collaboration and reciprocity (again leaning back into some of the traditionally more ‘feminine’ qualities as mentioned above – qualities which obviously can be present in ANY human individual regardless of gender).

Christianity and Religious Superiority –

Protestantism and Catholicism were huge forces behind colonialism.  Not only were most people of European descent Christian (because you might be burned at the stake or worse in eternal hell if you weren’t), but of course every religion believes that it is the one TRUE religion superior to all others. 

As colonialists came across different cultures with different spiritual practices, they genuinely saw it all as satanic devilry and believed that their moral duty was to save the ‘poor lost souls’.  With this mentality you can justify going into every nation around the world to take it over and convert people, and label it as a ‘merciful’ and beneficial thing for their eternal souls.

In the United States and Canada (and certainly elsewhere), Native American children were separated from their families and sent to Christian boarding schools where their hair was cut, names were changed and they were punished for speaking their native language. Abuse was rampant. Their forced assimilation and erasure of culture was done in the name of God. And those were the ones that escaped the genocide by systematic massacres.

An aspect where Christian supremacy intersected with the capitalist mission for resource accumulation, is the teaching of man’s ’dominion over’ nature. It starts with the Garden of Eden story, where Adam was given rule over the plants and animals.  It’s the teaching that humans are ‘above and separate’ from the natural world. The earth’s resources (plants & animals) are seen as ‘ours’ to do what we will with. 

This is contrary to most indigenous teachings that understand interconnectivity, and the fact that we cannot be separated from nature and are intrinsically connected. No trees, no oxygen, no life. Plants and animals are family members to respect, not resources to use. Again, the lion doesn’t take more gazelle than it needs. It’s not just about domination of other species, but collaboration with.

Colonialist settlers genuinely saw God’s divine will in taking over places like the United States to use its natural resources for wealth accumulation.

While the settlers who came to the United States were primarily Christian, they did found this nation on the separation of church and state due to the religious persecution they faced in Europe. While those identifying as Christian in the USA has dropped significantly in recent decades (At one point at 80-90% and now down to 62%) this is still a major influence in this country.  Puritan norms (and ALL of these norms) seep into the individual and collective psyche in ways we can’t always see without doing some Shadow Work. It’s like a soup we’re swimming in, that we just take as ‘normal’ and ‘right’.

>We still see Christian and Religious superiority alive today in extremist groups that demonize any different lifestyle or spiritual practices. We see it in political conversations around the right to abortion (religious beliefs about the ‘soul’ and ‘God’s will’), LGBTQ equality, whether Bibles or prayer should be in schools, or taxpayer money should go to private religious schools, or the right to refuse services to people who go against your religious morals.  

We see it in the conversation that argues we need a ‘return to religious morality’ in order for the economic problems to be solved.  We still see it in the Protestant Work Ethic that measures the value of a human’s worth by their productivity (another intersection between religion and industrialist capitalism of course).

Thinking Dialectically: OF COURSE religious freedom and respect for diverse religious and spiritual practices is SO important. Religion has a lot to offer humans when it comes to community, ritual and coping with the pain of life (podcast series on this coming soon!). People’s right to individual religious freedoms must be preserved, AND there must also be tolerance for those who don’t subscribe. There must also be boundaries when a religious belief system starts to harm and impose on others, because they believe that their ‘belief’ is the only ‘right’ one.

White Supremacy –

As colonialism spread across the world with European culture prioritizing money (capital ownership), individualism, Christian religion and patriarchal power over others, European colonizers naturally started to come across varied and different ideas and ways of being. As we’ve already mentioned – cultures that valued community, cultures that normalized varying gender roles, cultures that were matriarchal, and cultures that shared ownership and operated on reciprocity and sharing rather than monetized ownership and wealth accumulation, cultures with a vast array of spiritual practices.

When you view your way as the ‘best and only’ way, you automatically begin demonizing any other. Colonized peoples were labeled savages, evil, backwards, primitive, unevolved and undeveloped.  Rather than seeing differences as simply differences – another way of living and being – judgments were made to compare. 

When you (predominantly caucasian European Colonizers) view your societies as the ‘richest’, ‘most powerful & armed’, ‘most holy’ etc. you start to develop a superiority complex. At one point they even tried to use science to measure head skulls and say that there were separate unequal races, which has been entirely debunked.  

Of course when you can create racism (dehumanization of others), you can justify things like slavery, side-lining and oppression because you start to see other people as ‘less than’ or even a different ‘animal’ altogether.

A term I learned more recently was ‘The Global Majority’ which refers to the fact that 85% of the world’s population is not caucasian.  In a white supremacist society, labeling people of other ethnicities ‘minorities’ is a power based mind-game. 

> White supremacy continues to be alive and well today, with many caucasian people genuinely believing their race and culture is superior to any other. Many people aren’t even aware of their own white supremacy because it’s living in their subconscious minds due to how Western Culture was constructed. And many people fear genuine erasure due to the fact that they are in fact the world minority.  Although ironically, if you didn’t believe your race was superior that fear would naturally ebb away and you could just embrace the ever changing nature of people, life and culture on this planet.

We see racism today with election gerrymandering in locations where there are more people of color – to decrease the value of their vote and representation. There are college degrees around all the ways that racism continues to shape our society both in overt and covert ways. From disproportionate rates of incarceration and harsher sentencing, to Redlining and mortgage discrimination. I have a blog post where I’ve shared a whole list of government policies that have institutionalized white supremacy in the United States. 

Thinking Dialectically:  You’ve seen the push back attempting to deny this still exists – ‘All lives matter,’ or the talk about ‘reverse racism’ against white people, or the statement ‘I don’t see colors’.  And on one hand we can validate each of these: Of course, all human lives have equal value, that we want to treat each other as fellow humans not as categories, and certainly there are people who have racism towards white people which causes harm (there’s even something called internalized racism where you have racism towards your own race). We can also acknowledge the desire to ‘preserve your culture’.

…AND those perspectives are missing a key missing piece which is how power has been wielded. When you acknowledge the vast systemic power discrepancy (military, incarceration, money, the blocking of upward financial movement over centuries etc.) that has existed since colonial times and still bleeds into today, you simply can’t compare the negative impacts of things like racism against white people to racism against people of color. You can’t compare the desire to ‘preserve’ a dominant culture that has enacted systemic oppression (that is, literal violence) of others for centuries, with the desire to ‘preserve’ a culture that faced near eradication.

The goal of course is to move away from these judgmental hierarchies that only lead to conflict and harm – which is something mindfulness practice can help us with.

I hope you can see now why colonialism is still a relevant topic. Because all of the drivers continue to dominate our cultural landscape and promote a power imbalance of exploitation – of people, labor and planet resources.

OK, take a minute for a deep breath.

That was all very heavy.  Shake your shoulders and your hands, move your body a bit. THERE IS HOPE! Sooooo many reasons for hope. One thing the internet HAS done (if you can outsmart the algorithms and be careful not to get too stuck in a single echo-chamber), is create room for conversation and shared information on these topics. People are waking up and people are taking action to create change.

Certainly A LOT of progress has been made already towards more equity and freedom for people who are outside the dominant power structure’s hierarchy (we can see the whiplash happening right now as the system groans in defiant pain from all the progressive changes over recent decades). A few steps back – another leap forward.

What these times call for is a re-assessment of our collective shared values, which will require Dialectical Thinking.

Dialectical Thinking helps us understand how to view reality in a more multi-faceted way and understand that our singular perspective is just one perspective. It helps us move away from the idea that ‘our way is the only right way’.  It helps us acknowledge different ideas and viewpoints. It helps us negotiate differences and find balance between extremes. 

We need to soothe people who are terrified of change and defended against it – that this doesn’t mean getting rid of something necessarily (a free-enough market, individualism, men in leadership, borders/defenses, religion, cultural groups…. whatever), but making room for a mindful counter-balance with more openness and flexibility.  This requires an ability to embrace paradox.

*Balancing a drive for individual wealth, WITH some socialist redistribution and regenerative types of economies and wellbeing economies.

*Balancing patriarchal, power/control based approaches, WITH feminine, communal and reciprocal problem solving.

*Balancing individualism and prioritization of self, WITH collectivism and care for a community and a healthy shared planet.

*Balancing respect for each individual’s religious beliefs, WITH the tolerance for diversity and acknowledging others have a right to their own beliefs and lifestyles.

*We must challenge our judging mind’s desire to find ‘superiority’ in one group, ethnicity or culture, and learn to view reality with more understanding and appreciation for the kaleidoscope of differences that exist (maybe we can learn something from others – when not done in a spirit of ‘taking’, ‘claiming’ and ‘hoarding’). 

And especially we must come to understand how power works, and how to use it responsibly on this shared planet. Because that’s really what this all comes down to – our human survival on a more peaceful, liveable and biodiverse planet. If we keep pushing the extremes of wealth hoarding, hyper-individualism, power based control, patriarchal rule, religious and racial supremacy, we’ll end up on a lonely, dusty planet and have lost our humanity and souls to exploitation.

I am convinced that the next stage of human progress will require not just scientific or technological advances, but conscious advancement – which includes developing our mindful awareness and dialectical thinking. An evolution of consciousness is required to take us past primal urges, and into a new way of relating.

When we develop the ability to self-reflect (and notice others) non-judgmentally, acknowledge where we’ve gone into extremes, where we need to find balance, and learn how to work together towards a regenerative future – everything changes. 

The cynics will call it naive, and continue to serve the current power structure – even if in passivity. AND… why not work towards something better? Mindfulness allows us to work towards goals without expectation or attachment. It helps us enjoy and live in the moment, while trying to create needed changes. 

Will we make these conscious changes in the long haul as a species? From all the work I’ve done individually with all kinds of people – my evidence points towards yes. We are a resilient species. And, as mindfulness teaches us – who knows, we shall see.

Want to follow some de-colonial work experts?  Check out these amazing humans on Instagram:

@dr.rosalesmeza (For personal de-colonial work, especially for helpers & healers)

@simone.grace.seol (For de-colonial business)

@decolonizingtherapy (For de-colonial therapy and mental health)

@mikaelaloach (For planet / environmental justice)

@wellbeingeconomyalliance (For economic justice)

@ashanimfukoofficial (For cultural competency)

@liberatorywellnessnetwork (for a list of de-colonial providers)