The Empire Never Ended: Modern Slavery and Colonial Denial
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If you’re here, you’re probably someone who wants to feel better.
Maybe you’re tired of anxiety ruling your days. Maybe you’re craving meaning, softness, hope. Maybe you’re in the middle of unlearning patterns that no longer serve you.
So why—on a blog about fear, healing, and spiritual growth—am I talking about colonialism, prisons, child removals, and empire?
Because your fear didn’t start with you.
Anxiety isn’t just an internal glitch. It’s a response to living in a world built on control, scarcity, and disconnection. A world that was designed to keep people small, afraid, obedient, and divided—often without even realising it.
We inherit this.
We carry it in our nervous systems, our family histories, our learned silence. And when healing journeys ignore that, they can become just another form of spiritual bypassing—teaching you to feel better without understanding why you felt so unsafe in the first place.
This post isn’t a detour. It’s the map underneath the map.
Yes, it’s heavy. But it’s also empowering. Because once you see the architecture of fear, you can start to dismantle it—inside and out. You can stop blaming yourself for what was designed to break you. You can use your sacred fire to rewrite the story.
So, take my hand 🤝
What follows is not an attack on hope.
It’s an invitation to rebuild it—on truth.
🕰️ A World Reforged: 1871 and the Blueprint for Control
1871.
A year that set the stage for the world we currently live in still today.
In Chicago, a single spark engulfed an entire city.
In Paris, revolutionaries held the dream of radical democracy for just 72 days before the state drowned it in blood.
In Germany, kings and generals gathered in Versailles to declare a new empire.
In The Southern Hemisphere and the Americas, colonisation marched forward with railroads, rifles, and treaties written in bad faith.
In Europe, newspapers glorified the tale of David Livingstone — a lost missionary in Africa “found,” fuelling the fantasy of a dark continent waiting to be saved.
The people living through these events could not yet see what was unfolding. But from our vantage point—150 years later—the pattern is clear:
1871 was not just a turning point. It was the prototype.
A world forged by fire, violence, and the illusion of progress.
A world where cities became machines. Borders became weapons. Nations became brands. And fear— became the operating system.
🧱 This Is Where the Empire Upgraded
What emerged from that year was not a world of peace, but one of industrial control.
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was more than a catastrophe—it became a blueprint for modern urban planning, ushering in new building codes, fire-safe materials, and bold civic design. But beneath the gleam of architectural revival lay the shadow of displacement: entire working-class and immigrant neighbourhoods were swiftly cleared, only to make way for redevelopment projects that rarely included the communities they erased. The fire didn’t just reshape buildings. It reshaped who was allowed to return.
The Unification of Germany marked the beginning of modern nationalism—a model of power built on militarism, mythology, and control of the narrative.
In Paris, ordinary citizens declared a new vision of democracy.
For 72 days, the Paris Commune experimented with radical reforms: the separation of church and state, rent remission for the poor, the abolition of child labour, and a vision of self-governance rooted in equality.It was messy. Flawed. Fiercely idealistic. It terrified those in power.
The uprising was crushed by its own government during what became known as the “Bloody Week.”
Over 20,000 people were killed.
Their vision didn’t survive—but the questions they raised still burn:
What does true democracy look like?
Who decides what is ‘order’?
What happens when people start governing themselves?
British Columbia joined Canada, not by consensus, but through negotiation among colonial powers—extending dominion without ever asking Indigenous people what was being taken.
Livingstone’s writings and lectures depicted Africa as a vast, “unknown” wilderness—“dark,” “untamed,” and spiritually void. This wasn’t just exoticism—it was narrative engineering. By erasing African civilisations, cultures, and political systems from the European imagination, colonisers could claim the land guilt-free.
Just beyond the horizon, the so-called Scramble for Africa was already underway: a land-grab wrapped in the language of “civilisation,” soon to be codified at the Berlin Conference a decade later.
The blueprint was simple:
Control the story.
Divide the land.
Exploit the labour.
Call it progress.
🌍 The Scramble for Africa: How Empire Was Organised
By the late 19th century, European powers had perfected the art of conquest.
They’d tested it on the Americas, India, Australia.
Now they turned their gaze to the continent they’d long circled but never fully claimed.
Africa.
Not a country. Not a blank canvas. But a rich, intricate web of cultures, nations, languages, spiritual systems, and sovereign peoples.
To the colonisers, that didn’t matter. In 1884, thirteen years after the blueprint year of 1871, European leaders gathered in Berlin—not to declare war, but to hold a meeting. No Africans were included.
This was the Berlin Conference—where empires negotiated land that was not theirs, drawing borders with rulers and red ink across entire cultures. In less than 30 years, over 90% of the continent would be under European control.
This wasn’t chaos. It was cold, bureaucratic theft.
📜 The Logic of the Machine
The Scramble for Africa was sold as a noble mission. The language was familiar:
“We’ll bring civilisation.”
“We’ll build roads and schools.”
“We’ll spread Christianity.”
But beneath the surface, the true motives were clear:
Rubber. Gold. Diamonds. Oil. Cocoa. Coffee. Bodies.
Land to mine. People to exploit. Resistance to erase.
This wasn’t conquest in the traditional sense. This was industrial colonialism:
Propaganda written by poets and priests.
Maps drawn by men in boardrooms.
Justifications printed in textbooks.
Profits sent back to London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin.
When the people resisted—as they always did—they were met with bullets, punishments, and cultural erasure so deep it still echoes through generations today.
“This was not exploration. It was extraction. Not discovery, but deletion. Not destiny— but theft.”
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If this feels like new information—or if you’re realising how little of this was ever taught in school—I want to share a resource that helped me rewire my understanding.
📺 Crash Course: The Scramble for Africa - Click Here
Hank Green and the Crash Course team explain history in a way that’s fast, fun, and shockingly informative. When I first came across this I watched it just for fun as it was so short and easy to understand. I watched the entire Crash Course History series over the course of a few weeks instead of whatever was on the streaming apps.
“Education isn’t about feeling guilt over the past—it’s about seeing clearly. Seeing clearly is the first act of healing, as individuals but also as a collective global society”
If you’re wondering what positive masculinity looks like in 2025, let me just say—Hank Green is one of the best examples I’ve seen. Curious, compassionate, smart, accountable. We need more of that energy in the world.
🏴☠️ Colonialism Never Ended—It Just Got A Better Publicist
Empires don’t end.
They evolve.
They change their uniforms.
Swap out kings for CEOs.
Trade gunboats for supply chains.
Instead of missionaries and muskets, they use algorithms, aid programs, and infinitely scrolling feeds to enslave.
“Colonialism didn’t die—it rebranded.”
“The empire just updated its user interface.”
Today’s systems look different. But under the surface, the logic is the same:
Extract.
Exploit.
Control the narrative.
Call it freedom.
Let’s walk through the mirrors—old spells, new names.
⛓️ Slavery Rebranded: Supply Chains and Forced Labour
Then: Slavery was legal, profitable, and socially justified.
Now: It’s outsourced, obscured, and labelled as “development.”
Cobalt mines in the Congo, where children dig for the raw materials in your phone.
Uyghur forced labour camps in Xinjiang, producing fast fashion and consumer electronics.
Private prisons in the U.S., where inmates (disproportionately Black and Brown) work for less than $2/hour, if they get paid at all—making uniforms, hand sanitiser, or even fighting wildfires.
Fisheries in Southeast Asia, where men are kept on ships for years without pay or recourse.
“If your comfort is built on someone else’s cage, it’s not freedom—it’s convenience.”
This isn’t abolition. It’s obfuscation. Slavery 2.0 with better optics.
🤖 From Phrenology to Facial Recognition
Then: Pseudoscience (phrenology, eugenics, “race science”) was used to justify who deserved power.
Now: The bias is baked into the algorithms that run our world.
Facial recognition tech misidentifies people of colour at much higher rates—and it’s being used at borders, protests, and airports.
Predictive policing sends more cops to already over-policed neighbourhoods—because the data is trained on racist history.
Sentencing algorithms like the secretive COMPAS give higher “risk” scores to Black defendants—regardless of actual record.
“The empire doesn’t need guards anymore. The system polices itself—coded in ‘neutral’ tech.”
Even your online experience is curated by the same logic:
What’s shown to you. What’s hidden. What’s flagged as violent or misleading.
Control the story, and you control the soul.
🏦 The Empire of Economics: Debt, Aid, and Corporate Colonialism
Then: Colonisers plundered land and labour, pretending it was for the natives’ good.
Now: Economic institutions do the same through “aid,” loans, and trade agreements.
IMF and World Bank loans that trap countries in cycles of debt, forcing them to cut health, education, and environmental protections.
G7, WEF, or climate talks routinely marginalise Indigenous voices, while corporate interests dominate decisions affecting these communities most.
Land grabs dressed up as investment and infrastructure.
Seed patents and agricultural “innovation” that destroy Indigenous farming methods in the name of “feeding the world”. Genetically modified crops are forcing farmers to continually purchase seeds as they cannot regrow crops from any self-harvested seeds.
“Where once they brought crosses, now they bring WiFi and microloans. But the power dynamic hasn’t changed.”
The old coloniser said: “This is ours now.”
The modern one says: “We’re just here to help.”
🔮 Interlude: Why This Matters on Fires of Alchemy
You might ask: what does this have to do with fear, healing, or spiritual growth?
Everything.
Because these systems are not just geopolitical—they are somatic.
We carry them in our nervous systems, passed down as intergeneration trauma and reinforced by societal structures.
We carry them in our scarcity loops, in our chronic fear of rest, softness, and being seen.
Our personal trauma is often entangled with structural trauma we were never meant to notice.
“You are not broken—you are reacting appropriately to a system designed to keep you afraid, divided, and distracted.”
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If nonfiction history feels heavy, but you’re still curious about these themes, I highly recommend reading:
👉 “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin
It’s a short story—maybe 10 minutes to read—but it will stay with you for a lifetime.
Omelas is a utopia: joyful, clean, abundant. Everyone is happy.
But their happiness depends entirely on the silent suffering of a single imprisoned child.
Most people accept it. Some walk away.
Le Guin doesn’t name any specific society. She doesn’t have to.
The allegory is universal—and painfully familiar.
“What is the price of your comfort? And what would it take for you to walk away—or better yet, to unlock the door?”
🇺🇸 The United States: The Empire Within
We often think of empire as something that spreads outward—across oceans, onto stolen land, into foreign wars.
But the United States is also a coloniser turned inward. The empire lives not just in embassies or bases abroad—it lives in prisons, borders, and surveillance systems at home.
“It’s not that the U.S. still has colonies—it’s that it is one. Built on stolen land, enforced through systemic violence, and maintained through fear masquerading as order.”
⛓️ Prisons Are the New Plantations
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery—except as punishment for a crime. That loophole was not a mistake. It was the beginning of the prison-industrial complex.
Today, over 2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S.—the highest rate in the world.
Black Americans make up just 13% of the population, but nearly 40% of the prison population.
Inmates are often forced to work for cents per hour—making military uniforms, fighting wildfires, or packaging goods for major corporations.
This is not “correction.” It’s capitalism with cages.
“Slavery didn’t end. It evolved into a business model.”
🚧 Immigration, Family Separation, and For-Profit Borders
Behind the headlines, entire communities are being dismantled.
Parents are deported while their children are placed in state care or disappear into untraceable bureaucratic systems.
Asylum seekers are sent back into danger.
ICE detention centres are overcrowded, unregulated, and frequently subcontracted to for-profit prison companies.
There’s even been evidence of forced hysterectomies performed on detained women.
The deeper truth? These institutions don’t just happen. They exist because someone is profiting from them.
“Borders are not about safety. They’re about sovereignty—and the ability to decide who deserves to live freely.”
💻 Algorithmic Oppression and Fear-Based Consent
Modern empire doesn’t need whips.
It has data—and dread.
Not just to track you. But to train you.
Predictive policing targets the same neighbourhoods it always has—because the “neutral” data it relies on was shaped by centuries of racist surveillance.
Sentencing algorithms (like COMPAS) label Black defendants as “high risk” even with clean records—because the code inherits the prejudice of its creators.
But the deeper danger isn’t just in the targeting.
It’s in the story that gets told about why.
Social media fear loops nudge millions toward panic, conspiracy, and false binaries. Violent headlines rise faster in the algorithm than peaceful truth. Law-and-order rhetoric becomes addictive, even comforting.
A protest becomes a riot.
A victim becomes the threat.
An atrocity becomes “necessary force.”
“You don’t need martial law when your citizens willingly beg for it—because you’ve fed them the fear they needed to justify it.”
This is how empire preserves itself in the public mind.
Not by suppressing dissent—by making people afraid to speak it.
🎥 The Protest Parallel: LA in Two Realities
We’ve seen it in real time.
At a peaceful protest in Los Angeles this month, people handed out water bottles, played music, and chanted for immigrant rights.
But this distortion is part of a well-worn tactic: escalate, then blame.
Law enforcement presence is often deployed not to keep the peace, but to provoke unrest. The visibility of armoured vehicles, riot shields, and aggressive crowd control doesn’t just “respond” to danger—it manufactures it. Tear gas a singing crowd, and when panic breaks out, the news cycle gets its spectacle. Footage is edited to omit the peaceful beginnings, and the next morning’s headline justifies increased force.
This is the algorithm of empire: create fear, respond to it with force, then replay the fear you caused as proof you were right to respond. It’s spiritual gaslighting at scale.
One post shows joy and solidarity.
One news clip shows flames and sirens.
In the gap between these two versions, the empire gains power.
Because fear justifies militarisation. Fear sells intervention. Fear keeps us silent.
“The modern empire doesn’t need to shoot you. It just needs your neighbour to fear you.” - sound familiar?
🇦🇺 The Southern Mirror: Settler States and Shared Denial
Colonialism didn’t end. It settled.
Australia. New Zealand. Canada. The United States.
Each of these nations frames itself as progressive, peaceful, even multicultural.
But beneath the branding lies the same foundational trauma:
Stolen land. Stolen children. Stolen stories.
In each case, those stories are still unfolding.
🇦🇺 Australia: Stolen Generations 2.0
We’re taught to treat the Stolen Generations as a “closed chapter”—a historic wrong to acknowledge, apologise for, and move on.
But the system that created those removals never ended.
Aboriginal children are still being removed from their families at alarming rates—11x more likely than non-Indigenous kids.
Aboriginal youth make up less than 5% of the population but over 50% of youth in detention.
Some states have lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years old—knowing full well who will be most affected.
This is not justice. It’s state-sanctioned trauma recycling.
“We call it protection. But it’s still removal.”
Then there’s Juukan Gorge:
A 46,000-year-old sacred site destroyed in 2020 by Rio Tinto for iron ore expansion.
The company apologised… after the dynamite went off.
“Australia didn’t end colonisation. It just got better at issuing press releases.”
Australia’s system isn’t broken.
It’s working exactly as it was designed to—to dispossess, contain, and erase.
From the Northern Territory Intervention to paperless arrests, from over-policing of communities to the ongoing tragedy of deaths in custody, the message is the same:
“Trust the state. We’re here to help. Stay in your place.
Everybody’s equal, some are just more equal than others”
🇳🇿 New Zealand: Two Versions of the Same Treaty
In New Zealand, colonisation wears a gentler mask—but the core wounds remain.
In 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between Māori chiefs and the British Crown.
But there were two versions: one in English, one in Māori—with critical differences in meaning.
The Māori version promised protection and partnership.
The English version implied full sovereignty had been handed over.
That contradiction echoes to this day:
Disputes over land ownership and governance.
Ongoing cultural appropriation.
Disparities in health, incarceration, and education.
Like Australia, New Zealand also enacted child removals, missionisation, and language erasure.
“It was never just a translation issue. It was a strategy.”
🇨🇦 Canada: The Graveyards Beneath the Schools
Canada’s branding is polite. Progressive. Apologetic.
But in recent years, the facade cracked.
Hundreds of unmarked graves have been found beneath former residential schools—many run by churches and funded by the state.
These schools forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families, banned their languages, and subjected them to abuse and cultural erasure.
Many never came home.
Like in Australia, the prison system in Canada disproportionately targets Indigenous people—especially women.
“Truth and reconciliation only works if we stop the machine that’s still turning.”
❤️🩹 How Does This Affect Me On A Personal Level?
You might be asking: what does this have to do with fear, or spiritual growth, or your own healing?
These systems don’t just live in history books. They live in laws, institutions, algorithms—and nervous systems.
They live in the way fear is passed from parent to child. In the way whole communities flinch at sirens.
In the way certain names never make the news.
They live in your body, too.
If you were taught to:
Be “grateful” for what you have
Avoid conflict
Obey authority
Hide your rage
Numb your grief
Then you’re already carrying the trauma logic of empire—and this post is not just about reckoning.
It’s about remembering.
😠 The Sacred Fire of Anger
We’ve been told to keep calm and carry on.
To not overreact.
To protest only when and where it’s deemed acceptable by threat of arrest and overly-punitive bail conditions.
To sit with our discomfort quietly and alone—preferably in a mindfulness app with a soothing British voice and a $14.99/month subscription.
But what if your anger is holy?
What if that burning in your chest is not a pathology to fix, but a signal flare from your soul—a reminder that something sacred has been violated?
🧨 Anger Is Not the Enemy. Apathy Is.
Most of us were taught to fear our anger.
Especially if we’re soft-hearted, spiritual, trauma-informed, or trying to be “good people.”
But suppressed anger doesn’t dissolve—it ferments. It leaks out in depression, resentment, anxiety, or autoimmune collapse.
“Anger is the immune system of the soul. It tells us where the boundary was crossed.”
The Fires of Alchemy aren’t just metaphorical.
They are the heat of your righteous rage transmuted into action.
This chapter isn’t a departure from healing—it’s the part where we finally stop bypassing and start composting the truth.
✊ Rage and Revolution: From Posting to Participating
You’re allowed to be overwhelmed.
You’re allowed to feel small.
But you are not allowed to believe that nothing can change.
If something hurts you, angers you, disgusts you—do something:
Donate money or time to frontline organisations.
Attend a local meeting or rally (even quietly).
Volunteer your skills. (They don’t have to be perfect.)
Refuse to just repost and scroll past—engage, even in tiny ways.
Build relationships offline. Talk to your neighbours. Ask better questions. Unblock your throat chakra.
“The feeling of helplessness isn’t always yours. Sometimes it’s the spell of capitalism whispering: ‘You’re too tired to fight.’”
📣 Why Did Greta Thunberg Do That?
“The world needs more angry young women right now.” —Greta Thunberg
Greta boarded a boat to break a siege, literally putting her life at risk. But why does it matter so much when she does it?
She was deported home safely. But what mattered most wasn’t the news cycle—it was the way her action rippled across worlds.
It wasn’t just about Greta. It never is.
In the words of @busayotwins:
“It had to be Greta because white bodies cause moral dilemma to regimes built on white supremacy…
It had to be Greta because white resistance makes headlines whilst Black and Brown bodies are disposable…
It had to be Greta because white privilege has a responsibility to dismantle empire.”
Greta chose to spend her privilege like a currency—to speak in spaces where others would be silenced or disappeared. That doesn’t make her a saviour. It makes her accountable.
“Even with that privilege, she chose to stand on business.”
We can honour her not by idolising her—but by reflecting on our own positions.
Where are you protected?
Where are you loud?
Where are you silent?
👨🔬 Rage as Alchemy, Not Burnout
This isn’t about staying furious all the time.
That will burn you out. That’s the nasty trick played on us by the algorithms. You get so mad you fry your circuits and then give up.
This is about rhythmic anger. Directed, ritualised, cycled anger.
Anger as sacred compost heat. Let it cook. Let it fuel your art, your parenting, your gardening, your spiritual practice.
You don’t need to rage-post every day.
But when something shakes you up? Don’t waste it.
Write a blog post. Start a donation chain. Speak at a community meeting. Host a dinner where people talk about hard things.
Take the feeling and do something that ripples.
🧬 Why This Matters for Your Healing Journey
If you want to heal your anxiety, you must understand its source.
Sometimes, the source is not your brain chemistry.
Sometimes, it’s the state of the world.
The housing crisis. Climate collapse. Child removals. Corporate propaganda. Forced prison labour. AI-powered surveillance.
Your nervous system is right to be on edge.
“What if your anxiety isn’t all yours? What if it’s the world’s trauma, echoing through your body, asking to be seen?”
You are not broken for feeling this. You are awake.
If we ever want to move from fear into freedom—
We’ll need your sacred fire.
❤️🔥 So What Do We Do With It?
You’ve made it here. Through empire. Through erasure. Through the mirror maze of modern fear.
So now what?
What are we supposed to do with this anger, grief, overwhelm, and inconvenient truth?
Let’s be clear:
You are not expected to fix the world yourself.
But you are responsible for which threads you weave into the fabric of the world.
🔥 1. Transmute, Don’t Bypass
Anger is not something to escape. It’s something to use.
Feel it. Write it. Walk it out. Cook it. Pray it. Paint it. Sing it.
“If it moves through you, it doesn’t rot inside you.”
Suppressed rage becomes illness.
Ritualised rage becomes fuel.
So stop fearing your fire. Channel it.
🧭 2. Find Your Leverage Point
You don’t have to be Greta. Or a protestor. Or a full-time activist.
But you do hold leverage, somewhere. Where you can wield it matters.
Ask yourself:
What power do I already hold?
Where do I have influence, even quietly?
What conversations am I invited into where others aren’t?
“Privilege isn’t a shameful thing. It’s a resource. Spend it well.”
🪢 3. Localise. Ground. Begin.
The empire is massive. But so is your garden.
Think global, act local.
Volunteer at a community centre.
Cook a meal for someone grieving.
Start a reading group.
Create safer spaces where anger and softness can both exist.
Build a ritual around your monthly donation or political action. Let it mean something.
Call your MP. Or your grandparent. Or your inner child.
Build a village everywhere you go, meet your neighbours—ask if you can borrow some sugar.
“The antidote to global despair is grounded, local action.”
If the system feels too big, zoom back in.
That’s not avoidance. It’s strategy.
Do what you can, when you can— then log off. Take a breather.
It’s okay to unplug when your nervous system says no more.
I barely watch the news anymore. I stay informed, but I don’t let it poison my spirit.
That’s not ignorance. That’s discernment.
📿 4. Make It Spiritual
You are not just a body paying bills.
You are a soul navigating a reality shaped by spells—media, law, myth, memory.
This is the great fight between good and evil — it is within us all individually but becomes externalised by the systems we uphold.
So fight spell with spell.
Light a candle vigil for those still in cages.
Pull tarot to ask for advice or confirmation of your plans or actions.
Pray to whoever you intuitively feel is listening, ask for divine guidance to navigate these issues.
Recite Ho’oponopono to the earth, the past, the present.
“We don’t just need more education. We need more rituals of responsibility.”
📍 5. Let Your Discomfort Lead You
This isn’t about staying in the pain all the time.
It’s about noticing what pierces through the numbness.
What stirs your chest.
What makes you clench your jaw or look away.
That feeling? That’s your soul’s compass.
A holy fire that says: This matters. This must be witnessed. This is not right.
You don’t have to chase every crisis. But when something ignites that deep, uncomfortable knowing—pay attention.
What made me the most uncomfortable in this post? Why?
Where in my body do I feel anger right now? What does it want to say?
How have I been taught to silence or suppress my rage?
Where do I have privilege, and how can I spend it with purpose?
What small but tangible action can I take this week to honour what matters?
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Light a candle. Read the Ho’oponopono phrases aloud, slowly. Then write a letter from the part of you that’s angry—let them speak their piece. Burn after reading.
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
