The Horror of What Was, and The Nightmare of What Is

Though this picture seems to be forged together from the scattered horrors in the back one's already altered and disturbed mind, it is the very reality of this image that brought it to life. I know many of you as the readers will most likely think this picture may be too graphic and over the edge as far as getting the point across goes, but this (to me) is a physical description of what was given in Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost."

This is what was done for the greed of wealth and power. THIS was done for the gain of something such as rubber, a once valuable resource that today is rarely even used. THIS was done ignorantly and involuntarily (loose choice of word) by those who committed it's work. THIS was done purposely and mercilessly by those who commanded those working hands (Allen Webb uses a prime example in his latest blog). THIS, which was genocide in its purest form (or what Hochschild calls a 50% decrease as though death was a pay cut) was the result of what horror really is.

Sure heroic names such as George Washington Williams and Roger Casement should have honorable mention for what they had done to inform and reform from such a harsh reality, but such atrocities (though seemingly not as severe) continue throughout the world to this very day. Sure they took a chance at saving the face of Africa's history, but how well did they really do!? Then what comes to mind is "Why has this monstrosity gone unwritten from the history books!?" If that's the case, who's to say that other places that have endured these hardships have had their mention or concern? It hurt that even I myself knew nothing of these events until now.

The horror of this is that it happened, but the nightmare of it all is that it has gone unheard and that it could happen again (in multiple ways on multiple levels) if continued to stay as such. The horror of the atrocities that struck the Congo and Africa as a whole is that man has a disturbed enough mind to imagine and create such an environment willingly. The nightmare is that that same man who exist only in today's time has the ability to imagine farther with new resources at his disposal to create a much more vivid reality of it willingly or not (an example might be what this war in the Middle East has done, yet not on the level of what was written in the novel). I once heard that we are taught history in order to keep mankind from making the same mistakes. With countless information such as this going untold, what can keep nightmares like this from becoming reality once more!?