Who's The Ignorant One?

Map of Africa When I was reading this I couldn’t get the beginning encounters with the aunt out of my head. In one of these she straight up tells Marlow to help bring the “savages” out of their “horrid ways.” I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry not for the natives of Africa, but for her, for her inexcusable ignorance. Of course I know that back then people were much more inclined to think that way because they were never taught any better. The church basically controlled all of their ways of thinking and that meant that those who didn’t follow their ways were savages and the humane thing to do was to want to teach them right, rather than kill them. I’m glad, obviously, that there were people who did think that they didn’t deserve to die, but to think that the goodhearted people still couldn’t fathom people living in anyway other than theirs.
I myself never understood why people feel that they must take it upon themselves to convert other people to their way of thinking, whether it be in a religion, philosophy, or even scientific theory. I never thought that anybody who thought differently than me posed any specific threat to my wellbeing.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Marlow did not share the same views as his aunt and left for Africa not on some self-proclaimed mission to save the souls of the natives. And on top of that, as he traveled down the coast of Africa he saw what the natives were experiencing and truly felt for them.