X-Message-Number: 7391
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: For Thomas and Robin
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 02:09:38 +70700 (EST)

Hmm. Last thread I tried to move off cryonet was the one rubbishing
memetics, and that one didn't take the move either. Oh well, I tried.

Thomas Donaldson writes,

>Yes, IN A DEVELOPED COUNTRY, there will be a correlation between illiteracy
>and intelligence. But we're not speaking of such countries, are we? For
>that matter, in developed countries only a small fraction of the population
>is illiterate and I doubt that they would cause a problem.     

Ah, perhaps I've not made myself very clear. Then again, I've had a lot of
champagne this evening and probably won't make myself very much clearer now.
Oh well ... by wisdom I don't mean intelligence. I mean that stuff which
brings perspective, clarity, impartiality, compassion and harmony - the sort
of thing you get by being raised in an atmosphere of love, care and lots and
lots of conflicting information. 

Intelligence, by which I guess I mean facility in the construction and 
reconstruction of ideas, is something that many people in developing
countries possess. Indeed, some of the twentieth century's true genii 
came from developing countries - Chandasekhar comes to mind. 

I'm not saying that there are no wise people in these countries, nor
that it is impossible for wisdom to be gained there, but that - when the
average joe and jill's primary activity is living hand-to-mouth and
working long hours at manual labour - study, reason and reflection are
not easily obtained.

Nevertheless, you're right, it's not for me to judge what is and what is
not wisdom, so I'll modify my epigram: rational population control cannot
proceed without both means and a cultural perspective that encourages such
control.

--

Robin Helweg-Larsen writes,

>84% of the world's population will be living in countries that used to be
>classified as non-industrialised at some particular point in the 20th
>century.  If China now has more dollar-milliionaires than the US, at what
>point will you reclassify it as industrialised?

<sound of ruffling web-pages>

Obviously, certain parts of China, like Hong Kong and Taiwan, are already
highly industrialised. "Red" China, however, is a very different kettle
of fish.  China's 1.2 billion people are becoming more urbanised, but
still two thirds of them live outside of cities. And Chinese cities
themselves are severely lacking in infrastructure; as the great influx
of rural Chinese continues it is unlikely that this will change soon.

But I don't know how WRI came up with their stat - whether they took
such factors into account or whether they simply lumped countries by
some statistical aggregation - I should say that all of the figures I'm
quoting are considerably more abstract than the day to day details of
the very large and very complex systems they try to model.  Trouble is,
it's not easy to find any other way to describe such systems.

>I note that most of Europe has been deforested in the past 2000 years; but
>that it supports a larger population now than it used to in those days...  

Presuming you mean Western Europe, yes it has been deforested, chiefly
in the last 500 years, and over 20% of the arable land there has
undergone some degradation. Western Europe, however, does not contain
much by way of drylands and deserts, and the tendency of arable land to
degrade varies greatly according to this. As you can read in considerable 
detail at

http://www.scruz.net/~gepi/stats_soil.htm

of the world's 5,200 million hectares of agriculturally used dryland,
69% is degraded or subject to desertification. In Africa, 73 percent
of all agriculturally used drylands are degraded; the figure for Asia
is 70 percent. 

>I note that China, with only slightly more land than Australia, holds 50
>to 100 times as many people.
>
>I look forward to the reforestation of Australia, massive immigration with
>the opening up of borders, and its population increasing to a billion.

Regrettably, very little of Australia is not desert. Really it's only
livable on the Eastern and Western fringes, and the top end. Last
estimate I read said that the continent won't be capable of supporting
more than 35 million people in the next century. Ignoring nanotech, of
course.

>Actually, the downfall of Mayan civilization was due to token warfare
>evolving into unbelievable bloodbaths, 

See http://www.ciesin.org/docs/002-225/002-225.html for evidence to the
contrary. But, no, I wasn't there ...

>Australia is a very exciting place because of its enormous potential for
>new creation.  I'm not surprised that the euthanasia debate is so alive
>there.  (After all, Australia is one of the youngest societies in that
>part of the world - say "Youth-in-Asia" ;)  So we should expect arguments
>for and against radical social change, and open and heated debate.

Regrettably, a national media monopoly has for decades stifled open
debate about social change in Australia. The euthanasia debate is alive
here because of one determined man, Marshall Peron, the ex-leader of the
NT parliament, who sacrificed his career in order to get the issue on
the agenda after his mother died a slow and undignified death.

But Australians are not, in general, the most broad minded people you're
ever likely to meet. It's true that their cultural assumptions are quite
different to other parts of the world, but they also have the concepts
of "ratbags", "wankers" and "tall poppies" - unusual views are not
directly attacked here, but they're not taken seriously either.

>Peter, I look forward to meeting you when I get back to Oz in the next few
>years!  

I won't be here mate. As mentioned a few months back, my American wife
is treating me to a green card - we're going to go live in San Diego as
of May.

Happy New Year!

Peter Merel.


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