The Heart of Darkness...
Created | Updated Apr 22, 2004
"We, we are accustomed to looking upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but here, here we can see something that is monstrous and free." (Conrad)
I'm sure this short but provacative sentence has a number of connatations, but I will put my own interpretation onto it:
The society I live in seems to have the ability to hide a captured and enslaved people behind a smokescreen labelled democracy, reducing a once free, pure race, to the mere status of automated slaves. By doing so, the freedom which would be available to us through Utopia, now only exists in our subconscious dreams. Our free state of mind is destroyed, or at the very least, it is suppressed, by 'democracy.'
What happens to a people when it becomes a self proclaimed 'civilised society', is that we tend to ignore the true possibilities that lie open to us, and we become content with living as slaves. Instead we should be breaking free from the shackles of morality, shaking off the doctrine that has been implanted into our characters from the very outset of our lives, and we should strive to become a race of individuals, we should become free.
The 'savages' that Conrad describes had no need for money, knew nothing of greed, were safe from becoming captives to technology, they led simple lives, and for those reasons they were free. But then the West decided to close in with their iron hand. We made the natives of the Congo work as our slaves on the rivers banks, trying to impose our ideals.
These hunter-gatherer societies, contained beautiful, untainted people, yet we could not restrain ourselves from taking our greatest link to Utopia prisoner, destroying all hopes of creating a world of Individuals. To me it seems like we want to Westernise the world, to cultivate a manafactured, shallow and desperate way of life, our only escape being rebellion. But we choose to conform, thus never being able to escape the mundane existence that we unkowingly created for ourselves.
I'm sure this short but provacative sentence has a number of connatations, but I will put my own interpretation onto it:
The society I live in seems to have the ability to hide a captured and enslaved people behind a smokescreen labelled democracy, reducing a once free, pure race, to the mere status of automated slaves. By doing so, the freedom which would be available to us through Utopia, now only exists in our subconscious dreams. Our free state of mind is destroyed, or at the very least, it is suppressed, by 'democracy.'
What happens to a people when it becomes a self proclaimed 'civilised society', is that we tend to ignore the true possibilities that lie open to us, and we become content with living as slaves. Instead we should be breaking free from the shackles of morality, shaking off the doctrine that has been implanted into our characters from the very outset of our lives, and we should strive to become a race of individuals, we should become free.
The 'savages' that Conrad describes had no need for money, knew nothing of greed, were safe from becoming captives to technology, they led simple lives, and for those reasons they were free. But then the West decided to close in with their iron hand. We made the natives of the Congo work as our slaves on the rivers banks, trying to impose our ideals.
These hunter-gatherer societies, contained beautiful, untainted people, yet we could not restrain ourselves from taking our greatest link to Utopia prisoner, destroying all hopes of creating a world of Individuals. To me it seems like we want to Westernise the world, to cultivate a manafactured, shallow and desperate way of life, our only escape being rebellion. But we choose to conform, thus never being able to escape the mundane existence that we unkowingly created for ourselves.
