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necropolist 1689 posts |
Sep 11, 2003, 01:55
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morfe & the article linked to make many of the points i would do, but just a couple more. notions of what human nature is have altered throughout history - the modern nuclear family, which we are sold as so natural now would have been incomprehensible to someone a couple of hundred years ago. if you restrict human natue to being 'human beings are somewhat competitive', then, that makes it pretty meaningless in fact, especially when you then say, there are plenty of examples of enlightened self-interest. given those two, it is perfectly possible to have a communist/anarchist society based upon equality and production for need. wanting to be better than someone else (or maybe better than you have ben yourself previously - personal bests are always something that athletes treasure, tho they would also obviouosly prefer the olympic gold) doesn't mean you want to shit on them. aslo, one can realise that by working together two or three people can achieve far more than they could alone. a society where cooperation is taken for granted (and individual isolation totally accepted, if thats what you really want) could, i think, achieve far more than a system where everyone must fight just for themselves. call that enlightened self-interest if you will, makes no odds, still works. as to wars, i think throughout most of history they have been caused by the fact that there simply WASN'T enough to go round - which is largely not true today, its just the method of organisation. now they are about the need to control the worlds resoources/people by and large - a control that is taken by a tiny number of people, who try to control the world and its resources solely in their own interests. bollocks, its far too late now...bed time....
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Dog 3000 4611 posts |
Sep 11, 2003, 06:18
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Well "life expectancy" and "the economy" going up and down are two separate issues (in fact I don't believe the life expectancy over the last 20 years has gone down anywhere -- except maybe Afghanistan which has had anarchy and civil war thru the entire time period, and N.Korea where there is known to be a lot of starvation but no reliable way to get datta on the numbers). (I really must watch it with the run-on sentences.) Anyway, the economies in a lot of the world have been struggling since the mid/late 90's -- even for the richest there was a few trillion that vanished in a stock market bubble. PS - might add Sudan to the list above, they've had a long bloody civil war and starvation as well.
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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Sep 11, 2003, 07:19
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I am not sure about the culture changing more slowly than technology. It depends if you can afford the technology doesn't it. The uptake of TVs, computers, telephones has massively changed culture in the west and at a unprecidented rate. The industrial revolution of the 17/1800s changed the culture of Britain beyond recognition practically over night.
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necropolist 1689 posts |
Sep 11, 2003, 09:40
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"Well "life expectancy" and "the economy" going up and down are two separate issues (in fact I don't believe the life expectancy over the last 20 years has gone down anywhere" well he non-patenthesised part of the ppost is true, but as to the rest... all the countries i meantioned in the previous post experienced exactly such a fall in LIFE EXPECTANCY, according to the same world bank site as you got your bangladesh figures from. And, as i said, things will have got worse for most of them since then (collapse of the ussr has devastated the economies of many countries, and i'm sure you're aware of the disaster of aids across africa, and beyond)
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morfe lux 301 posts |
Sep 11, 2003, 14:54
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Our belief intechnology can easily become like a new religion. It's odd to see how education standards are falling at a time when they should be improving. Literacy in the US, the self-titled most sophisticated and developed country in the world (yeah right) is WAY down, what good is a superfly self-driving amphibisphere with blue-chip technology if the occupant can't: A: relate to other people or be aware of differing cultures/languages and B: care a shit about life outside the sphere. Extreme sci fi example I know.
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morfe lux 301 posts |
Sep 11, 2003, 15:08
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I meant bluetooth, not blue-chip. I'm a dolt, and barely techno-literate, but I know where carrots be coming from oooharrrgh!
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Dog 3000 4611 posts |
Sep 11, 2003, 18:56
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I looked over the list of all 131 countries that have life expectency data at that site. Four African countries have indeed shown falling LE over the past 20 yrs: Botswana, Zambia, Uganda, Rawanda. I presume AIDS and genocide are the main culprits there. Also, most of the former Soviet republics show a decrease! But I wonder if that's not partially due to inflated statistics from the Soviet era -- it's not hard to believe they would have exaggerated their successes back in the central super-state propaganda days. Also, the declines in the former-USSR are pretty small and LE is still generally high (like LE went down from 70 to 68 years.)
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necropolist 1689 posts |
Sep 11, 2003, 21:16
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well, must be a tad out of date then: "The life expectancy of Africans has dropped by 15 years within the past two decades because of the spread of Aids, together with the effect of continuing wars and poverty. A conference on African population has been told that by 2005 a majority of Africans can expect to die before they reach the age of 48." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1814609.stm (2002) Life expectancy is likely to virtually halve in Zimbabwe because of Aids, according to a US report. The US Census Bureau report, to be published next month, shows that average life expectancy in Zimbabwe is expected to fall from 61 to 39 by the year 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/193181.stm (1998) The overall life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa has dropped precipitously over the past 10 years, mostly because of the AIDS epidemic, the WHO says. Life expectancy dropped for female babies from 51.1 years to 46.3 years. For males, the level dropped from 47.3 years to 44.8 years. http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2000/en/pr2000-life.html (2000) all fairly reliable sources. & tbh, i would doubt that th ussr made up life expectancy stats o that extent - it makes for really fucked up plannig, and could be fairly easilly sussed out. and i certainly dont believe the world bank would be conned by it!
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necropolist 1689 posts |
Sep 11, 2003, 21:21
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btw, dod you check ALL the countries? if so im not sure whether to be impressed or slightly scared!
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Dog 3000 4611 posts |
Sep 11, 2003, 22:23
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It's not that complicated -- they have a link to a list of countries ranked by live expectancy. It's all of 4 pages long. On the USSR: well, obviously they DID have a lot of planning problems based on faulty data -- the communist economy might not have collapsed otherwise. The older figures being compared are actually 1960, not 1980. I doubt there is anyway to double-check those historical figures. Anyway, that was just a speculation. I am going to have to declare a moratorium on this thread -- getting too long, complicated and slow -- so feel free to start new threads on whatever subtopics you fancy. And thanks to all of ya for being so polite in our discussions.
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