this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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tbf, manifest destiny was originally an american idea
Calling dibs on someone else's land is probably a much older idea than any country on the map today.
oh certainly, but justifying it with "because god said so" is very much american (tho not exclusively, and they probably weren’t the first)
Very much not disagreeing, but that's literally the Divine Right of Kings. The very basis of imperialism is rooted in religiosity. Look at the Crusades for instance.
People have been using religion to dehumanize natives and colonize forever.
Yep. Since before even Christianity or Judaism existed.
The holy roman empire, and the crusades happened, so the idea is as european as it is american. Or arguably, more european. Either way, it definitely pre-dates america. And don't get me wrong, fuck america all the way to hell and back. But humans have been attempting to commit genocide at least as long as written history has existed.
The Promised Land was originally God's idea.
Strangely, it was the idea of every God that every religion has ever conceived of.
God was originally the idea of bossy humans, though.
I think it's more likely that the idea of a god or gods originated with humans who consumed psychoactive plants, fungus, and/or ergot-infected grain. Hardly the bossy types.
Over time though, the idea caught on and got popular, until most people had heard of or generally believed in it. Then some tightwads came in and decided that people couldn't get high anymore, so those folks had to take their drugs to secret caves and such.
Meanwhile, the tightwads appropriated the proto-religious ideas and codified them into stricter religions in order to pacify the masses who over generations had come to believe in such things as gods, and thus religions were converted into instruments of social control.
The original nature religions and the like, sure.
Inherently authoritarian ones like Christianity and the other monotheistic ones, though? Definitely the invention of people who wanted to control other people.
There's presumably wasn't a lot of drugs that make you overly concerned with obedience and imposing your will on others available way back then.
That's what I meant by proto-religion.
Also, christianity wasn't authoritarian until it was subverted by Rome. For the first couple hundred years, they were rebels risking their lives
There's another factor here. Pre-agricultural, shamanic religions tend to feature spirits rather than gods. The main difference being that spirits are not anthropomorphic, which really changes how you expect them to behave and how you interact with them. So for example a wind spirit is not a magic man who makes the wind, but is rather the wind itself. A respect for nature is implicit. It's only after farming and settling, when we really began to shape and control our environment, that we imagined the controlling forces of the universe as being essentially human: a projection of human kings, complete with the vice, cruelty and will to subjugate and consume everything that entails.
I mean even then, some people were like "Hey so there's this god of wine and orgies. Anyway, we're gonna go worship him in a cave, wanna come?"
You're right. The Dutch, and the Spanish, and the English, and the Romans were all totally content with what they had.
Not to defend the horrifying Spanish Empire, but it didn't contain genocide of natives as a tenet. It enslaved people, spread diseases and wars, and murdered millions upon millions, but go to Peru and you'll see that at least it didn't reach the goal of extermination to the degree that happened in North America.