Conquest is rationalized by theorizing geography as dividing civilized from uncivilized peoples

Evidence

The fact that most people (including many a social theorist) instinctively choose the first, rather than the second, approach, is a testimony to the remarkable success of the etiological myth which, in one variant or another, Western civilization has deployed over the years to legitimize its spatial hegemony by projecting it as temporal superiority. Western civilization has articulated its struggle for domination in terms of the holy battle of humanity against barbarism, reason against ignorance, objectivity against prejudice, progress against degeneration, truth against superstition, science against magic, rationality against passion. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 281 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Western civilization legitimizes dominance by narrating itself as temporal superiority — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 281; Maps can precede and shape territorial reality rather than merely reflect it. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 660; the MOC “The Great Derivative: How the Athens-to-Washington Story Fabricates the Inheritance It Pretends to Record”

Related

• Western civilization legitimizes dominance by narrating itself as temporal superiority (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Western civilization legitimizes dominance by narrating itself as temporal superiority #expands (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 281