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.
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