Much of the strife in Syria is caused by the damming of the Tigris and Euphrates in Turkey. The drought causing much of the farmers' fields to dry up, rural wells to dry up, and the resulting migration of peasants to cities (who can't handle the newcomers) caused much of anger underlying their civil war.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-01/water-sho...
https://financialtribune.com/articles/energy/66059/turkeys-m...
When, really.
> western style environmentalism is quite a stretch
Africa's natural resources have been raped and pillaged by the west for many decades. Even today, most people in the west simply don't realize how the effects of that era are still felt strongly. Millions living under extreme poverty do not have the luxury of thinking about the environment when the price of that thought is not putting food on the table. Same can be said for the massive population growth. Birth control requires education, which requires prosperity, which Africa lacks almost completely.
> If the Nile collapses Europe will see refugees streams of unimaginable magnitude.
As someone in Western Europe who definitely believes this day will come, soon, I can only say we reap what we sow. The crimes of past European powers (think Belgian Congo for a single example) are slowly but surely catching up with the current generation and I think it's way too late to avoid the consequences.
Also, give Africa a little credit, literacy rates are up, maybe the problems can be tackled right over there?
https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ourwor...
You reap as you sow style arguments only really work when you have a simple cause:effect. We could play that style of argument ad absurdam in lots of ways, for example: GB decides to levy a (pretty small) tax on tea on her colonies a few years back, cue Boston Tea Party and other acts of terrorism on a grand scale. Blah blah blah ... history happens ... USA etc. It really isn't that simple.
Facile, simplistic attempts to explain modern events based on single events from the long distant past - no matter how important at the time - are rarely helpful to understanding, let alone getting to a solution.
Attempting to fit a pithy epithet to this sort of process is a bit unpleasant and disingenuous at best when chatting on an internet forum and might become dangerously destructive when wielded by a politician, especially one with real power.
Covefe, anyone?
Nah. Here are some thoughts on it:
https://medium.com/thinking-action-for-ethical-being/critica...
I also have to think of how Jacob Appelbaum said his father told him that if there ever is another Holocaust, it'll be his fault because he didn't prevent it. It's easy to dismiss it as hyperbole or demanding the impossible from an individual, but I think it has an kernel that is near infinite food for thought at the least. It's not literally true. But it's also not completely false.
"We reap what we sow" is the opposite of divine punishment or penance - and really isn't rooted in anything spiritual, it's the most pragmatic advice ever given.
'You reap what you sow' means you're going to get the outcome you 'built for yourself' - not some kind of divine bit of intervention!
As for Africa - the Africans will 'reap what they sow' in Africa, and it has little to do with 'Europeans'.
They have abundant natural wealth and were they to organize themselves intelligently, they'd be fairing pretty well.
Geopolitics is complicated and neither of us can take very little credit/guilt for the actions of any political entity that I happen to be part of.
I agree that Geopolitics is complicated and don't really agree with applying "karma" to societies and nations, mostly because its not very constructive. But one has to admit that the facts do seem to paint that picture.
To be fair, you should feel guilty, and so do I, and I work to push back on my own country's historical indecencies.
By every objective metric (child mortality, lifespan, literacy, starvation, absolute poverty), the world is a better place today than ever before. By a huge margin. Entirely thanks to the West.
I only mention this because there seems to be this narrative that we in the West should feel bad for the past, yet the West has been a firm net positive in the world. Probably the greatest net positive there ever was... provided we survive global warming, that is.
So if we're going to guilt-trip people today for the actions of some historical Westerners, we should adulate people too for the actions of some historical Westerners. But somehow that never happens.
The West is objectively the best thing that ever happened to mankind.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_dynasty
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Caliphate
Imho, the West shouldn't feel bad for the actions of historical Westerns.
But it should absolutely feel bad for the (not insignificant) portion of its prosperity that was a result of that history.
To put it another way, say I run an illegal sweatshop in Africa, bury my profits, leave a note to my daughter telling her where to find the money, then die.
She doesn't get to ethically say "My dad was a terrible person and wrong" AND keep that money.
Even if she didn't know where the money came from, started a business with it, became successful through her hard work, and only finds out later, she still bears guilt.
You don't get to rig the game in your favor, then even things out after you've collected winnings from crooked hands and say "Okay, everything's fair now."
And it should feel great for the amazing things it has done for the world as well, as any graph of poverty and disease since the 1700s shows.
And therein lies the rub: when was the last time you heard someone thank the West? It is likely 4 out of 5 people alive today wouldn't be if it weren't for the West. Of the remainder, 94% would live in absolute poverty, instead of the current 10%. They'd live at most 40 years, instead of 70+. They'd be anywhere from 300-1200x more likely to be starving. Instead of almost everyone reaching old age, 1/3 - 1/2 of all children would die of various causes. And so on, and so on, and so on.
And so on. The list just doesn't end. The past was hellish to the modern eye. I wonder why!
Focussing only on the bad, and completely ignoring the good, is intellectually dishonest and betrays a complete lack of perspective.
> "Okay, everything's fair now."
Except the world would be objectively far worse off if it wasn't for those crooked hands. See above.
While there have been thesises that only Great Britain possessed the necessary ingredients for steam power and industrialization, that argument isn't universally held. And I refuse to believe that this applies to every invention, especially as world population increased.
I'll go Bayesian on this one. And so: thanks West!
And there’s billions who never got a chance to ever get medicine. Billions more never born or able to live with a fighting chance because the entire social structure was yanked out, root and branch.
If you believe in quantity over quality, then yes.
Otherwise, well I just say garbage dumps, that people used to call forest, desertification and climate change.
And how come so many people are on antidepressants, if we live in the best world so far?
I mean, we clearly live in the most technology advanced world, yes (and I like that), but ignoring, that all this new power from technology did caused many real problems, is soo medieval ...
While everything you point out is true, if I gave you a magic one-way doorway to 1700, you wouldn't take it. Nobody even remotely rational would.
Today's depression is very "firstworldproblems" compared to the problems people used to be depressed about. We definitely have challenges, and some are major, but compared to the past?
If you sincerely believe we don't have both quality and quantity nowadays, you've lost the plot. Unless you like diseases, starvation, high mortality, subsistence farming, a rickity home, poor climate control, and a short life. And that's long before we get to a lack of cool things like electricity, planes and computers.
Nasty, brutish and short: quality indeed!
I just don't like it, that we got this technology by unsustainable exploitation.
And about diseases, starvation, etc. as far as I know, we still have those and in absolute numbers, much more than ever, as there are much more people living on the world today.
And looking into modern (first world) hospitals or old people homes, were all those happy people slowly and forgotten rot away - I am not sure, that if you would sum up their suffering you would come up with better numbers than in the most barbaric times, where the old ones had to go to die in the snow, when they became useless.
So like I said, yes we have technology now and technology is awesome for solving problens. But now we face the problems caused by technology. And they are big. So no, I would not go back, I rather go forward with better technology. But to develop and use better technology, one needs to see first the problems of the existing one and its effect on society.
But is not scraping in the dirt dehumanizing too? Huddling in a smoky dark single-room shelter against the freezing winter nights? Living alone because the rest of the community is scared they'll catch what you caught? Or you or a loved one dying during childbirth? We have the luxury of romantisizing the past because we don't live it. It largely sucked.
For example, let's talk disease. Disease was one of the biggest scourges humanity had to suffer since time immemorial.
The Spanish Flu of 1918 killed more people than WW1 did. Indeed, a large portion of WW1 deaths were caused by infections too. The worst outbreak we've had recently was SARS, which killed less than 800 people globally, and this was a big deal.
The Black Death killed about half of Europe, but it originated along the Silk Road and hit China too. It also reached the Middle East. Everywhere it went it lead to mass depopulation. And that wasn't the first time either: the Justinian Plague was an earlier outbreak of the Bubonic Plague, you just rarely read about it in popular history books. Wiped out whole cities.
Historically, between 1-1.5% of women died in childbirth per birth, the biggest cause being disease. Now consider that your average family had 7-10 children...
When was the last time you saw someone with leprosy? They used to have leper colonies because there were so many infections. Or were scared of someone coughing because they might give you tuberculosis? There were all those STDs which we can cure now with antibiotics, but back then would make you sterile, disfigure you, or make you go literally insane as you aged. Have you ever seen an iron lung outside a museum? And don't forget smallpox (basically a mini black death) or polio, both which have been wiped out or nearly so.
People born nowadays simply cannot understand how horrific infectious diseases use to be. We're living in a golden age (for now). What we saw with Ebola pandemic in Africa recently is more the historical norm.
As for old people and old-age homes: that's a choice individuals have the luxury to make. Once upon a time old people sometimes wandered off to die during lean times to save their own families from the same. One is not like the other.
Well, yes, my argument goes a bit in that direction. (but I had to look up who Luddite was - and no, I am not in line with him, but I do like Kafka)
Anyway, you do not have to convince me, that technology is incredibly useful in making our lives much more easy. I know that. And I do not want to miss it.
And I certainly do not glorify medieval times. So I would agree, that for the average person, live back then and there was probably much worse, than it is today for the average person.
But I am not so sure about comparing to a primitive hunting-tribe. Live was (is) tough for them, for sure. But it was not all-the-time war with neighbours. Most of the time it was peace. Things were simple, although hard. The need to find and hold good hunting grounds. Care for the own tribe. Watch out for predators and potential enemies. Supply for the winter. And as far as I know, they did not had at all the disease problem, you described: mostly because there were just not so many people-connections for a big plague. And they did not live inside their own shit, like the people in the medieval cities without sewerage. They lived in clean homes, washed themself every day in the river and ate good food (mostly). People also got sick, sure. And when they were not strong enough(or too hungry), they died. And were not kept alive only to send more bills until the final fading out.
And humankind lived in that manner for most of its time. Civilisation and living in cities are quite new. So I would argue, that our genes are still more adopt to that primitive livestyle and therefore you would be more happy to live that way.
But again, I do not want to go back to that. It would also be impossible, without wiping out most of mankind.
And have you read 1984? One main topic was that the newspapers there reported and proved daily, how the lifestandard again has improved over the past. Only that it certainly didn't, but nobody could prove otherwise. And your stating, that we live now in the most happy world of all times, reminded me of that (also, that I learned that literally in school). But we have no way of knowing - so even the poor peasants from a feudal farm might have all in all been happier than the average low wage or unemployed looser from today.
Even though the guy from today is much richer and healthier from a materialistic point of view. But materialistic things are only a base and no guarantee for happiness.
And lastly - I simply feel much more alive and happy, if I am in wild nature. Not so much, if I am in loud, stinking and hectic city. I can only stand the latter if I block out parts of my senses, desensibilize - one could also say, if I kill parts of myself. And I think, this is exactly what many, if not most people do today. They still move around and do and buy things - but on the inside they are pretty dead. Even though the medical report would classify them as stable and healthy.
And there is less and less nature and more and more (polluted) cities.
So that's why I am sceptical of your original argument ...
But otherwise I pretty much agree with you, also why you made your arguments as there are indeed many people who romantice the past and have not yet lived even for one day without hot water from the tap.
Well, I did (for quite some more time) and I know it is fun, as long as the sun shines and you have enough supplies.
Otherwise, in more practical terms, I suppose we want pretty similar things for the future. Better, sustainable technology, which does not leave a wasteland behind nor pollute everything.
So for example, if all the cities would have only electric cars and the power comes mostly from solarplants located in the dessert (or a clean fusion plant) ... well, that would be a huge step forward, in my opinion.
That's underselling it. It's not a 'single example', it's 'the most extreme example'. When you're mistreating your African colonies so badly that even other colonial nations are asking you to back off with the horror, that's pretty bad.
Those people made their own choices in recent decades embracing uncontrolled population growth and wasteful, unlimited consumption without any attempt to mitigate the results.
That's where you are wrong. Their problems do not stem from wastefulness and greed, but necessity. It is not like farmers in impoverished countries cut down forests and use it as farmland so they can buy a better BMW, or that they sped so much on takeout that they can't afford to pay for a modern up-to-date irrigation system. They do what they do because it's the only way they can survive, to not starve.
A few trillion dollars in infrastructure investment could solve the environmental issues for good, but that's the few trillions they do not have, which they would have had it if colonialism did not happen. If you have enough budget for either importing wheat so that your population would not starve or a new water treatment facility, guess which one you would choose. That's where this whole idea comes from that the European countries, who have enriched themselves at the expense of Africa, must help them rebuild their countries they destroyed.
This has nothing to do with colonisation. Expotenial growth had impacted environment in spite of any sensible policies to either stop poluation growth or mitigate it’s impact on enviroment.
This is result of poor policing in a Egypt. The country had enough resources to pursue different policies and just didn’t.
From TFA:
> Egypt’s numbers have more than quadrupled since 1960; Ethiopia is adding roughly 2.5 million new people a year. The basin’s total population is on track to double to 500 million by 2050.
And it's not a political effort that's required to reign that in -- except insofar as within certain countries, politics and religion are so interwoven that it's either impossible, or perhaps merely pointless, to try to separate them.
Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om... ""The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a 1973 plotless, short, descriptive work of philosophical fiction, though popularly classified as a short story, by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. With deliberately both vague and vivid descriptions, the narrator depicts a summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, whose prosperity depends on the perpetual misery of a single child."
Also, as with the French selling warships into this conflict, there is a lot of money to be made by privatizing gains and socializing costs and risks -- since as Major General Smedley Butler wrote in his book, "War is a Racket".
And beyond the history of exploitative colonialism, there is climate change from fossil fuel burning -- and maybe also top soil loss of carbon from bad farming practices in Europe and the US -- which has contributed to this crisis: http://www.ibtimes.com/climate-change-africa-african-global-... "While Africa’s lack of modern energy and minimum carbon footprint have made it the slightest contributor to the growing global warming crisis, the massive continent bears the brunt of the world’s rising temperatures with damaging effects such as massive droughts, flooding, unreliable crop yield and waning ecosystems. And yet, analysts have indicated that Africans represent just a small fraction of the global voices partaking in the crucial conversation about climate change."
As with the recent HN question on finding meaningful work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15480233 or this suggestion by Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunnus: https://qz.com/1101430/a-nobel-prize-winner-says-tech-compan... sadly most the best and the brightest in the Western world are focused on "me too" efforts on how to us AI to enslave people's eyeballs via social media technology -- meanwhile these genuinely meaningful and interesting challenges like building underground farms run by robots and powered by renewable energy (a seeming prerequisite for space habitats) are not pursued. Addressing those Nile challenges could instead be a lot of "hard fun" for a lot of people: http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html
One computer-related thing that could help is to connect an idea like Bucky Fuller's "Design Science" or E.F. Schumacher's thoughtful "Appropriate Technology" -- or my suggested potentially self-replicating "OSCOMAK" variation on all that: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/ with funding like in the "Billions in Change" movie about the philanthropic work of Manoj Bhargava: https://billionsinchange.com/
And as that "Billions in Change" film shows, or the books "Design For The Other 90%" and "Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses To Humanitarian Crises", or elsewhere, change is happening, even if in a disorganized slow sort of way. But that change to bring prosperity and sustainability to everyone on the planet is mostly uniformed by what modern computing and social media could significantly help with -- like as with the approach outlined in the OSCOMAK propsoal from about twenty years ago (and which has even earlier roots than that).
I suggested another variation on that idea when Greece was running out of tear gas to use against its young people: "Getting Greece and Iceland to be 99% self-sufficient by mass; international consortium" https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openmanufacturing/Yz... "Now, does this make any sense if you understand the possibilities of open manufacturing or an open society? In Greece you have a warm climate, access to oceans, lots of sun and wind, an educated populace with a 2000+ year history of democracy (on and off :-), no obvious external enemies declaring war, and so on. And they are so worried about their future ability to make and use things (which is how I translate "fears for Greece's economic future") that they are running out of tear gas? This all makes no physical sense. The place should be a paradise. Instead it is in "self-destruct mode" according to one editor. It must be ideology. Or, more correctly, ideology embodied in a certain type of productive infrastructure."
Wrong.
If you mean 'Oil (or some other commodity) was extracted mostly by Africans and sold to Westerners or Asians' - then sure.
There is no 'raping' or 'pillaging' done by anyone, if there are negative consequences, it's almost invariably by the African 'leaders' themselves who are among the most corrupt and brutal in the world.
'The West' would be very happy if the leader/warlords invested in industry, and distributed their wealth more fairly.
We'd be very happy if they took their billion dollar IMF loans - which were designed for infrastructure projects - and actually built those infrastructure projects as opposed to squandering it in so many ways from top to bottom - leaving the various countries with an ugly balance sheet.
Where there has been more responsibility - such as in Botswana 's diamond extraction - we've seen more intelligent distribution of wealth, and as a result, higher standard of living etc..
I don't think so. In fact, it might be a great opportunity if we were able to create a system that would allow for accountable steps towards environmental protection. One reason why western societies work so well is that despite having more taxes and regulations, the tax revenue are generally used judiciously and the regulations followed in good faith by most participants. This just doesn't happen in many non-western countries, where corruption is more common. But just like the World Bank provides funding for specific infrastructure projects, perhaps this can be extended for environmental projects as well.