How is the world divided economically

The world is unfair. It is imperfect, and will stay as such. Different areas of the world experience different things. Different humidity, different seasons, different temperatures, different wildlife, different species of plants, different land forms, different languages, different race, and so on. The world is so different that there could be no safe definition of fair, and yet we try to be fair. This reminds me of a Francis Magalona song, Kaleidoscope World. We all are truly different. The only similar thing about all of us is the fact that we are grouped together, and even in these groups, differences are still prevalent.

Since a lot of physical things around us, it is hard to find order. But how I see it, we humans developed something that can give order despite these physical stuffs in the physical dimension. We humans created something beyond the physical, invisible, that only we humans have: our thoughts. Through our thoughts, we created this invisible “laws” that gives order to the differences around us. This also explains the physical stuff that we deal with. Thoughts about similar things were grouped and eventually, there came theories, laws and such that could explain, predict and manipulate the physical dimension. One of which is economics. According to the article by Peterson, economics Is defined as the study of the production and distribution of goods and wealth. It is also stated in that article that economics is associated with a lot of other theories, laws and sciences that influences the trends and measurements in economics.

And so, if we were to look at the world economically, we can look at how the world is divided economically. As to my understanding, the world would be divided economically as influenced by the differences in each location. Because economics is influenced by a lot of things, it may be that the division of the world economically can be because of certain unique things about every part of the world. According to my understanding of the article, the division of wealth in the world favors the west more than the east part of the world. Even though civilizations started in the east, the west excelled in the wealth department. What I understood was that these differences were the compelling factor that pushed the west to excel and the east to lay passive, and in some areas, these differences was what made them desperate. The west were divided in small groups where competition was very strong, where as in the east, the groups were bigger, though there exists smaller groups, the larger groups prevailed and one can assume that competition would not be as suffocating as those in the west. I think, that this competition was what pushed the western people to give extra effort and the eastern people to become more lax. The pressure for excellence in the west pushed them to a more advanced competitive culture and the lack of pressure in the east caused them to develop a culture that would tackle something very different of that of the western culture. Like for an example, the western technologies were more advanced in wars, exploration, mobility and communication, where as the technologies of the east were more advanced medically and in trading. The weapons of the western people were designed to kill other people where as the technologies of weapons in the east were mostly for hunting. I think that this difference was what lead to the economic division we have now.

As time progressed, the division turned inward into each country where more detailed differences divided people economically. From the article, certain terms like capitalism can be read. In my opinion, certain ideas were inevitable and are a product of the evolution of our world. Since populations increased a lot, demand for food and other things increased, and so a need for a high supply in such pushed humans to develop and evolve which resulted to these ideas of capitalism and such. But the world kept its being unfair and there are still flaws on how things work. Sure these ideas give comfort and an easier way of living but the down side that was cited in the book was that people who does not have land or other capital for living are forced to work just for survival. But negative as these ideas may seem, there are also ideas that gives the world a fighting chance to grow. Ideas like having a democratic mind, as cited from the book, thinking critically, and discerning what to believe and not to believe so that we can have a control on our thoughts and not let the negative of what has evolved of us humans affect our thoughts.

Does colonialism and slavery belong to the past?

Wayne Dyer said “Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.” One can say that, well then, if this is what slavery is, then we all are slaves since all of us don’t have the choice to do what we want with our lives. I can say that I am a slave since I have not choice but to belong in this culture, and society where I must go to school and study, since there are no other secure way to have a good living in the future. I can also say that I am a slave of my race; I cannot choose to live in another race’s body. I can say that I am a slave of my choice course curriculum’s floating subjects since I cannot choose which one I like to take.
That is one way of looking at it, but would be unfair to those who are really slaves of our time. An example, was from the article of Kate Manzo in the Edkins, 2009, book. In this article, she mentioned the situation of child labourers in the cocoa industry. They are not paid and are forced to work. But you can say how are they different from me? I can’t choose, they can’t choose. But the difference is that they are not given the decision. But for me, their decision is made for them without even their consent. For me, they are not even given the luxury to know about this decision, nor were they given the information on what could have had happened to them if they were to live a different life.
I would often ask myself asking, is my country really free? Has our time of being colonized passed and we can still govern ourselves? All throughout my life, my mom would explain certain negative “Filipino” actions is because of our colonial mentality. Actions like preferring imported products over locally produced products. Or the fact that we Filipinos desire Caucasian physical qualities. I have had been branding these Filipino actions as such and would blame those countries who colonized us for everything negative that is happening in this country. To how I connected all of those, I do not know how, but everyone can and will say that corruption, katamaran (laziness), crab mentality, and other negative aspects about us Filipinos is because of those who colonized us. We say that we learned corruption from the Spaniards who corrupted our lands. We say that the Spaniards is the reason why we are lazier than how it should be. That the Spaniards would call us lazy because we would rest when it is noon, and use this explanation rather than saying that we rest because it is too hot to work when it is noon. So I would often say that we are still colonized in a certain way, and we can not rid of this just yet, or ever. Despite the fact that we now live in a modern world, I would think that being modern would not rid us of our colonial mentality and are still colonized. But are we?
A dictionary definition of colonialism is the control or governing influence of a nation over a dependent country, territory, or people. Two thoughts came to my mind when I read this about us Filipinos being colonized. First, it is that we Filipinos are those who are colonized and not the Philippines. And secondly, that we are not colonized because this country I governed by its people and not of other countries. It is in the definition that colonialism is not exclusively a nation’s influence to another, but it may also be a nation’s influence to a certain group of people. We, the Filipinos whom I identify as Filipinos in my mind and in the limitations of my subjectivity and perspective, are the people who are colonized, but there are other Philippine citizens who are not. May it be of the next generation or that of other parts of the Philippines I have not yet experienced. This first thought gave me the impression that we still, or they, can change for the better, if one would define not being colonized better. This made me think, that maybe, this colonial mentality, my subjective perspective conceive as Filipino have, the next definition of Filipino does not have. Maybe my lack of hope did influence my foresight in this matter and there is still hope yet for Filipinos to be branded my subjective, based on my perspective, as not colonized.
My second though, that our nation seemingly is not governed by another nation, and that makes us not colonized, made me think that maybe what me and my mom conceived as colonial mentality is what is Filipino. Maybe we are not colonized and this is really our own culture. Because of this, I remembered a joke that my dad told me. He told be about Batanes (I think) and that the stores there have not bantays (sales person/clerk). The norm there is that if you want to buy something from the store, you would just get what you want and pay, since it is assumed that everyone there knows the price. My dad said that this was because that area of the Philippines is so far away that “hindi nila alam na Pilipino sila, kaya sila ganun.” (they do not know that they are Filipino, that’s why they are like that). So maybe, what is Filipino is really that, with colonial mentality, imperfect.
We brand this time that we have now as modern. And we think that since we are the modern men of the world, we must have the ideal values, behaviors, cognitions. (Well at least I think this is what we think). But how can we really call ourselves modern if shades of the past, of slavery and colonialism, still haunt us?

Why is the world divided territorially?

In the beginning, God created man. And so on and so forth. But when Adam ate the forbidden fruit, they were thrown out of the Garden of Eden and were forced to live a hard life, where they had to work for food and they had to protect themselves. My point here is that even in the beginning, if you believe in the bible, there exist already the concept of territory. The Garden of Eden had its own territory and the place where Adam and eve was thrown to had its own territory.

Well of course at first, there were no specific and definite territories, only the concept remained. But as civilizations developed and populations grew, the world started to get crowded and it is inevitable for people to have some sort of means of order. So, as Elden mentioned some of the examples, there became territories. An example of having territories is losing them. Whenever certain states would conquer other states, the rights to the territories of the conquered state would naturally be given to the victor state. Through the idea of territories, order was maintained even during conflicts and wars. Another example was that after World War 1, as stated in the book. When the central powers lost the war, their territories were divided by the victors.

There are a lot of benefits in the concept of territories. They have strategic values for economics, politics and even science, as stated in the book. Benefits like having a territory with similar climates, landforms and bodies of water would mean that the government can apply certain adjustments for these differences to take advantage of these. For me, a benefit of having territories is that it would give people a sense of having a home where they would feel most comfortable. This is of course from my own perspective that is influenced by my course, psychology.

Good as territory may seem, there are also a downside for territory. One disadvantage is stated from the book where countries has less problems and are richer, that has less crimes and more jobs would be a hotter country for migration where as less fortunate countries that tries to go up would have their people migrating. This for me kind of makes things harder for the less fortunate people since people leaving these countries are bringing their skills and smarts with them that would mean that the less fortunate countries would have less means for development and the more fortunate countries would have more people to use for development that there would be other manpower that wont be used for development, waste of skills.

How do we find out what’s going on in the world?

How would you know if it is the end of the world? Would it be an asteroid hitting the earth? Would it be that we all kill ourselves through a nuclear war? Might it be alien invading the earth? Or maybe it is our loved ones breaking up with us?

In this modern world, the means by we get information about what is happening in the world is through the media. But there are certain factors that should be thought of in this source of information. The most controversial factor is bias and perspective of the news. Bias is the “siding” of a certain media to a side of the story that, more often than not, would distort the truth in the information. And also, the truth now may not be the truth tomorrow. Certain biases could be because of religious beliefs, political parties, gender, sexual preference, racism, sexists, and emotions. Religious beliefs have had been notorious in this aspect. The church, for the religions that are of the church, has great power over the media and can influence information to make it seem more beneficial to it. An example of which is what happened to Galileo. Galileo discovered that the world is indeed not flat but is round in nature. Though Galileo’s discovery is now debunked, he was more likely in the right track and obviously, the church’s belief that the world is flat was far of to the truth we hold now. Politics can also greatly affect the information we get from media. They can distort the stories behind wars that could make it seem right, even if the main purpose of the war was only for personal interest. Also politics can influence media to either exaggerate or to shrink certain news that could affect the current state of the government. Also politics can use the media to either hide or reveal disputes and controversies that if revealed, can cause great distress or confidence in the government side. Also, racism and sexism can influence the media. In certain countries, news of female abuse would be muffled because that country is male dominated, or certain news may be delivered as to seem that a certain race caused a dispute. Emotions also affect how the media deliver the information. Death of a hero, fear of natural calamities, love for country, hate for the “terrorists,” etc. again, the label, “terrorists,” was also from the media. They would not be terrorist to that where the bias is at their side.

Media can be of different forms, newspaper, movies, television shows, the internet, etc. but how do we know what’s real from the lies? One certain philosophy in handling information is best used in this. One must be curious about what is happening. One must not just rely on one source of information and analyse what really did this source make of the date they used? Did they make you seemed biased to a situation?

Well, maybe we all have our own brands of the end. But a question for the sake of it: how will you now if it is really the end and will you be sure?

Master Lecture: How do we begin to think about the world?

Thinking about the world. Sounds hard. Imagine, thinking about every corner of a round world.

We are like dust in the wind, so as the song goes, we are but minor specs in this world that we live in. Who we are, what do we do, our likes, our dislikes, out hopes, our dreams, all of these are like our own world, massive, big, infinite, but is confined in the minds of this spec of dust. Like dust in the wind, one might say that that dust hold little importance to the world, but then again, one spec like this can trigger a world war, can trigger the start of a new religion, can trigger the unity of nations, a paradox. This should be why we should think about the world. We may be specs of useless dust, but it is this way of thinking that would make this spec part of that sand clock that could be part of time.

In school, it is inevitable that there exists this group of “cool” people. They are an exclusive group and not everyone can be a member, well, mainly because if everyone was a member then no one is cool anymore. There must be those who are uncool for comparison. Similarly, for me, the world is similar to this structure of school society. There is always this group, in the world’s case, a group of nations where everyone wants to be part of, but only a few lucky population, race, and culture can be a part of. Of course everyone is supposedly allowed to go to these nations but why is it that this freedom seems to not exist? In this world that we live in, one cannot just go from one nation to another. You must have certain things to go to this place and even after that you cant be a part of that nation, you can only stay there for a certain amount of time. Imagine this during old time when this norm does not exist yet, imagine telling them that they cannot stay to other parts of the world. Imagine that they are nomads and are looking for more abundant areas and you tell them that they can not go to this certain area where there are fat animals and blooming trees, they might just as well kill you and go on with their lives. But now, it is o so very different. But of course there are reasons for the existence of this norm. Conflict is often caused by confusion, miscommunication, misinterpretation and personal interests that this kind of norm was developed. To prevent conflict among nations, they world developed this set of rules where everyone should abide in. the freedom of people to choose where to live was taken away from them. This is the price we pay to prevent killings, wars. But was it worth it? Giving up this freedom to prevent deaths? There might be other reasons though. Like who can be our allies? Knowing who might be our enemies? To whom to we ask help? Who can understand? Where to find certain specifics? We can compare our differences because of this. Also to find order in things, it is inevitable that in every part of the world that there are differences in almost everything: climate, animal species, land forms, culture, breed of tress, race, etc. that in all this differences, we can group together with those who are just like us and find a common understanding on how to deal with these differences differently from each other.

In everything that was mentioned, there is a common thing, which everything is invisible and is only in the human mind. The subjective human mind. There is really no one way of thinking about the world because of the subjectivity of the human mind. To deal with this subjectivity, we use a common pattern of this subjectivity and start from there to tell how people should think about the world. This is where ethics probably started. Ethics is a subjective way of deciding where certain factors are considered. People developed this to find order and to know how to deal with individuality. To punish what is different and to reward what is common.

So how do we really start to think about the world? Well this question did answer itself. We start to think about the world by asking questions about the world. One question in particular is who do we think we are? Are we mere specs of dust or are we moving bodies that can cause the end.