Blood Diamond: Capitalism And Sierra Leone

Capitalism, Sierra Leone’s downfall and the reason for the extraordinarily terrible things we do to one another in the chase for the all-mighty dollar. This downfall was the outlined theme throughout the film Blood Diamond. In 1999 Sierra Leone was suffering from a civil war involving the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the government. The RUF were a group of African rebels who fought believing they were doing the right thing and setting the people free from the clutches of the corrupt government. However, in reality the RUF are forcing prisoners to work to for blood diamonds and the children are turned into solders. At the beginning of the film the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) invaded a village slaughtering many of the men, women,
This dollar figure lead to the corruption of Danny’s idol, the Cornel. The little concern for human life was all too common. For example the scene with the government mowing down innocent civilians with no concern under the assumption they may have been RUF (44 min). Like the government, the Cornel had little care about the lives of the innocent and once again the greed of the diamond had clouded judgement of good vs evil resulting in his death.
Near the beginning of the film Sullamin had found the largest diamond seen at the RUF camp he was located. All those who had come into contact with the large diamond faced a curse. They had lost morals and began to disregard human life. Sullamin was the only one interested in the diamond not for the dollar figure it possessed but the value it had to regaining his family. His intentions were pure, and if more people in our world could recognize and separate themselves from the greed and social status pressures of society, the world would be a much more peaceful
Under the supply and demand model, we line in today, the more you have of something the less valuable it is. As mentioned in the film, it is due to the way in which the blood diamonds are handled. Price control is a large issue with these diamonds. Jewelry stores fix the prices by withholding the majority of the diamonds owned in storage. By only releasing small increments of the diamonds out at a given time they appear as valuable and rare. Conflict free diamonds are available and it is up to the customer to ensure they are not supporting the struggle which still continues in Africa today. It starts with the consumer, we as a collective world have the power to dictate how it operates. The film ended with text fading onto the screen saying the most obvious freewill statement which I believe we as a collective society sometimes neglect. “It is up to the consumer to insist that a diamond is conflict-free.” There are many problems within Africa’s borders, giving them weapons to kill each other for the purpose of individual benefit is immoral. If we do not buy the product (blood diamonds), companies will change or go out of business as a result thus assisting in reliving some of the