the Ukrainian Question

[Magoo]

I sometimes wonder how different our world might be, had our ancestors stuck to fair trading rather than colonising & exploiting.

alas our societies fall victim to our bountiful world, and the human animal.
those societies that have to focus on survival in the harshest environments have neither the time nor inclination for conquest. think inuits, aborignals tahitians? etc

those tribes that had to survive harsh winters learned to grow/hunt/plan enough to get through them.
and advanced in terms of planning, cropping and animal husbandry, leaving time to grow in other respects.
technology and war.
this gave them an advantage over their equatorial counterparts that they were quick to exploit
and so it begins...

up until the romans much of this knowledge was geographically exclusive, the romans were great empire builders and exporters
they melded the knowledge gleaned across their empire and took it to the rest of the then known world.
so catastrophic was the roman depopulation of england the english went into the 'dark ages' without them.
took them a thousand years to catch up.
as occupations go it wasnt so sinister.

if man were perfect we would have used that perfection to build a world that would ultimately destroy him.