An Important Lesson

If there were one thing I could choose to teach my children, it would be geography.  There is nothing more important to a 21st century citizen then to have knowledge of the earth we live on and the culture's that inhabit it.  As globalization accelerates, interactions between historically distinct populations will increase.  Ignorance of the factors that play into these interactions will not only result in bad decisions, but also ignore the inherent beauty in the vast diversity of people and places our world has to offer.

The more we don't know about other cultures, the larger the tendency to "otherize" them.  We take what little we do know about them, reduce their entire culture down to those essences, a
nd strip them of their agency.  For example, very little was known about Afghan culture before our invasion. This led the US into a strategic blunder in terms of nation building.  We failed to recognize that there really wasn't a true "nation" to begin with as many people felt a stronger allegiance to a tribe rather than their country.  The mountainous and isolated terrain of Afghanistan as well as its long complicated ethnic history all played into this phenomena.  The lack of in-depth understanding of the issue led to tangible consequences, as establishing a democratic government in a country which doesn't feel a strong allegiance to the nation and has constant tribal infighting has turned out to be a massive failure.

The effects of being geographically literate also bleed into personal issues.  From knowing how the Silk Road played into the development of the Persian rice dish you are currently eating, to knowing why your Chinese friend is living with their grandparents, knowledge of different cultures enhances every day life.  There's too much out there to always be surrounded the familiar environment you grew up in.  In addition, while it might be hard to learn every major world language in order to communicate directly with foreigners, you can learn about their art, history, and philosophy.  That way you can understand their perspective and their actions seem less alien.

Thus, expand your educational inquiries to a global scale.  Think about things from a different culture's perspective.  Take out a globe and search for the most obscure place, then try to learn something about it.  Not only will you be doing your curiosity a favor, but the entire world.

Where Is Nature?

When someone says they are going to be in "nature", what do you usually think of? Is it a community park, a national park, or the middle of nowhere? A forest, prairie, mountain range, or ocean? Within 10 miles of human civilization, 100 miles of human civilization, or 1000 miles of human civilization?

I want to investigate this question of what constitutes nature through geography.  I am more interested in where I can find nature, whatever it might be.  Erase from your mind the image of your fantasy nature conjured up in the first paragraph.   Now imagine what places that already exist that would be called nature?

Through my own, personal thought experiments, I found that I tend to associate nature with the human frontier.  Places that were more "nature-ey" to me were places that human civilization was just starting to creep its way in to.  The "Wild West" of America is one of the first images that pops into my mind when I think of nature.  A lone log cabin dots the scenery as the only blotch of human interference within this snapshot of nature.  No coincidence that Westward Expansion was also the epitome of "the frontier".  From when I was a kid, stories like Little House on the Prairie have imprinted a certain vision of what constitutes nature into my mind.

This brings me to wonder what nature is like to societies that didn't have "frontier".  The Japanese have pretty much inhabited the same islands for the past few thousand years.  Could nature be the ocean to them?  What about Arabs?  Can something as lifeless as the desert be considered nature?  Comment on your own ideas about nature below.  

Not Quite Flat Yet

In 2005, Thomas Friedman's Book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century was published.  This painted a view of our rapidly globalizing world as one that is becoming "flat".  By this he meant that geography was increasingly becoming irrelevant.  For the average high school student, this viewpoint is easy to grasp as we spend a ridiculous amount of time on the internet accessing information that would otherwise be separated from us by thousands of miles of terrain.  In Glenview, I can watch a video of the war in Syria, experiencing the realities of the conflict.  Previously, I would have to traverse half the globe in order to find that experience.

However, the world isn't as flat as it seems.  Geography isn't dead quite yet.  The recent political flare up over the Senkaku Islands reveals that underlying globalization and technological innovation are natural resources and trade routes (which are shaped by and are subject to the interests of certain countries as a result of geography).  The island that are the subject of the dispute are basically glorified rocks.  They are uninhabited.

However, in the region supposedly lies a substantial reserve of hydrocarbons.  In addition, the Senkaku's lie on a major trading route. Control over the islands offers significant geopolitical advantages.  This issue doesn't only spark tensions between the big two, China and Japan, but have also brought Taiwan into the mix.  Taiwan isn't too fond of the Chinese or the Japanese, but have tended to work with Japan and the US (we are officially "neutral", but it is assumed we are on the Japanese side) in order to help contain Chinese expansion.  It is interesting to see how Taiwan is actually backlashing against Japan on this issue, further showing how vital to national interests geography is, even in the 21st century.  Thankfully, the conflict hasn't escalated militarily, yet.  Most anger has been expressed in passive aggressive moves that mirror how a moody teenager would fight with a sibling.  From Super Soaker fights to redrawing maps on passports, both sides are doing everything short of war to gain the strategic advantage in the East China Sea.

Escaping Our Collective Home

In 2007, China destroyed one of its own satellites by ramming it with a kinetic kill vehicle.  Security analysts speculated this was meant to send a signal of resistance to the United States in response to the President Bush’s calls for increased US militarization of space.   This was just one of many instances demonstrating that outer space is succumbing to the tragedy of the commons, as individual countries exploit a common resource to the detriment of the overall group.  Like the open oceans, nobody owns space, but everyone has a stake in it.  Space must be safeguarded as a resource for humanity.  To avoid the tragedy, space must be addressed through multilateral cooperation, not solely by individual state actors.  An internationally negotiated code of conduct for outer space would accomplish this by setting norms for the resolution of disputes and creating a framework for determining ownership of resources. 

Unfortunately, without this framework, the world is treading down the path towards the militarization of outer space.  China isn’t the only country resisting cooperation in space. The US already uses satellites for military intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, and recently sparked international backlash by testing a military space plane.  Because space warfare is such a new concept to policymakers and the technology is so complex, if space is further militarized, there is a high risk of miscalculations and unintended escalation.  It would be unwise to risk another Challenger-like accident, but this time with a weapon pointed at China. 

In addition to increasing the probability of conflict, the 2007 anti-satellite weapon test contributed to another barrier to peaceful space development.  By releasing thousands of broken satellite pieces into orbit, it augmented the cloud of space debris.  This expanding cloud is a catastrophe waiting to happen.  It is approaching a tipping point, where it could turn into a one massive chain reaction collision.  Debris resulting from one satellite collision could crash into a satellite, creating more debris and so on.  By the end of this cycle, we would have lost the satellites that provide critical climate data, communications, and early warnings for ICBM launches.

Between debris and militarization, outer space is at risk of becoming unusable.  This has massive implications for our future.  Coal, natural gas, oil, and even uranium and tritium for our nuclear reactors are all finite resources.  New technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and discoveries of deposits like those off the shore of the North Slope in Alaska, can provide short-term solutions.  But no matter how efficiently we extract resources, the Earth will remain a sphere with a mass of 5.97×10^24 kilograms.  Even if we find a way to use every last molecule on Earth, resources will eventually run out.  Some argue that alternative energy is the solution, but it too has limits.  There is only so much space available for wind farms, solar panels, and plants.   Any sustainable plan for future energy production must rely on space in some form or another.  With the ability to use resources beyond Earth, the opportunities for human expansion would increase exponentially.  Not only would safe access to space allow us to grow beyond the limits of Earth’s resources, it would create opportunities for the population itself to expand spatially beyond Earth’s atmosphere.  While currently this may just be science fiction, the colonization of space would help ensure the survival of humanity.  It would improve our resilience to ecological catastrophe, asteroid strikes, and interstate warfare by not putting all of our eggs in one planetary basket.   

While all these risks to humanity seem extremely long term, negotiating a code of conduct for space does not mean giving up on short-term solutions.  We can still search for new terrestrial ways to sustain life.  The code of conduct would reserve space as our future escape hatch if all else fails.   The human race might not be mature enough to expand to beyond Earth yet, but we should not let this immaturity ruin the possibility for future generations.  

Italy: Escaping the Traps

How much is a country's success or failure a result of their people's decisions?  Or, were countries fates determined from the start because of their location?  As emerging markets continue to grow, bringing prosperity to places it had been previously lacking, there is group of countries that can't seem to join this ascension from poverty.  Paul Collier refers to these as the "Bottom Billion".  In his book of the same name, he outlines four "traps" these countries fall into which hold them back from the pack.

Instead of picking the cliche failed states in Africa and talking about how screwed they are, I decided to focus on Italy, possessing the eighth largest economy in the world.  It isn't at the very top, nor is it without serious financial issues, but it certainly is not part of the bottom billion.  Why is this?  I'll go through the traps Collier outlines and explain Italy's success in their context.

The first trap is being landlocked.  Obviously, this one is directly tied to a country's location.  Access to the sea is one of Italy's least concerns.  Not only is it situated right in the middle of the Mediterranean, but it is a peninsula.  This means it has an unusually large amount of coastline for its size.  This allows it to thrive on sea trade, bringing economic prosperity.

The second trap is the natural resource curse, which is also directly related to location.  Italy does not have major deposits of natural resources so its economy never became dependent on any one commodity.  Its economy developed already diversified, allowing it to be isolated from price shocks.  This also helped it avoid the currency inflation associated with Dutch disease.

The third trap is conflict.  This refers to a cycle of civil war and instability in which each conflict provides fuel for the next.  After Italy's unification in the 19th century, the only war fought internally was World War II.  Italy escaped a recurrence of this violence mainly due to the Allies recognition of their failure in resolving the previous world war.  Policies like the Marshall Plan helped mitigate the economic effects of war.  Italy's location had very little to do with their ability to escape the conflict trap.  It was leader's ability to learn from past mistakes.

The final trap is bad governance.  In 2011, Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigned due to a combination of pressure from the Eurozone crisis and personal legal issues.  Mario Monti was his replacement.  He was not elected.  Although these events seem to indicate that Italy's government is not particularly stable, compared to the bottom billion, this is nothing.  The amount of corruption, lack of legitimacy, and outside intervention that occurs in bottom billion countries is on a whole other level.  While Italians are not happy with their current economic and political situation, they still rank at the top in quality of life, GDP, and other measures of success.  Could their political stability be a result of this strong economic underpinning, and not a cause of it?  Obviously, the relationship between politics and economics works both ways, but to which side is the scale tipped in Italy?  It may be hard to tell until we see how they resolve their current economic hardships.  If there are strong links between economics and politics, then once again, geography plays into this trap.  As shown in the first two traps, location has a huge impact on economic growth, which in turn plays a role in politics.

Thus, using Italy as an example, it is apparent that geography sets up some initial conditions, but does not solely determine a country's future.  By learning from past mistakes, country's can escape traps that result from human error.  Unfortunately, Italy is not an example that provides much hope for countries not blessed with a great location.  Italy has not had to overcome any major obstacles that were out of their control.  This does not suggest that we can't overcome geographic barriers.  Italy is just one instance. Unfortunately, studying their history won't teach those in the bottom billion how to overcome the their respective traps. Instead, what is an example the bottom billion model?  Tell me below.

Candidates: Where They're From?

A lot of the focus during elections are on candidate's proposed policies and view points, but not on where these come from.  If you couldn't figure it out from my other post, I like to take things and examine their origins.  Thus, while what a candidate says today may be relevant to who you vote for, I find it just as intriguing to see what has inclined them to say those particular things.

It is no surprise that Obama and Romney have very different policies on certain issues.  It is also no secret that Obama and Romney come from very different places.  Remember, itt is hard to verify the effects one's environment has on one's personality and world view, however it is still interesting to make inferences.  These are not truths, but simply guesses. 

First, lets take a look at Obama.  The world he came from was one filled with uncertainty and change (notice the connection to the 2008 slogan?).  He was born in Hawaii, then relocated to Seattle, then Jakarta, back to Hawaii, then Los Angeles... etc.  His parents divorced.  He lived with his grandparents.  From these factors, a few connections can be made to his current policies.  Obama fosters a more liberal and open foreign policy, maybe resulting from his upbringing in more "foreign" locations.  His immersion in Indonesian society as a child could have implanted positive view of foreign nations that would cause him to be biased towards cooperation over competition.  Due to the lack of a stable family of his own while a child, he could have recognized that the idea of a "conventional" family is outdated and reductionist.  This may have influenced his policies on gay marriage, abortion, and other social issues. 

Romney is up next.  In terms of foreign policy, Romney's place of upbringing sticks out like a sore thumb.  Detroit is a city that isn't too fond of foreigners.  Being the hub of the auto industry, the risk foreign companies posed to his own prosperity could influence his foreign policy.  With his promises to label China as a currency manipulator and his offensive posture towards Russia, it is obvious he views them more as threats rather than friends.  Raised in the family of a CEO of an auto corporation, his experiences as a child could have painted a negative image of the government as his father grappled with taxes and regulations. 

These environmental factors outlined above are not the sole determinants of politicans' policies.  There are politicians that hold view similar to Romney who have upbringings similar to Obama, and vice-versa.  Is one correlation more frequent than the other?  How have these changed over the past century?  How have our own upbringings effected our political views?  All of these are intriguing questions. 

Preventative Care

                Recently, the group Invisible Children came to speak at our school.  Despite the controversy surrounding the group, there is still a real conflict that needs resolution.  My thoughts during Invisible Children’s presentation didn’t center on the group’s legitimacy (and the naked dude in San Diego…), but rather the nature of the problem in central Africa.  Even after an hour of being sold their cause, I still felt wholly uninformed about what was happening and why. I had to look into it further.

                The conflicts Invisible Children are focusing on are the atrocities committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).  I learned that this is a group of fundamentalist Christian’s who have abducted children, destroyed villages, and mutilated women in northern Uganda, southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic.  Unfortunately, we’ve all heard this general story before. With the acceleration of media, we are constantly bombarded with images of suffering.  It’s reached a point of diminishing returns. We’ve been desensitized to suffering.  Kids will see a moving story about poverty, only to tab back over to Facebook and complain about how much homework they have.
 

                There are two ways to solve a problem.  Using the medical field as a metaphor, there is “diagnostic care” and “preventative care”.  One focuses on mitigating the effects of a disease already in the body, the other focuses on stopping a disease or catching it early before it requires the diagnostic care.  Both are critical parts of staying healthy.  The problem with my generation’s desensitization due to disaster porn is that we never understand the roots of any of these problems.  The most we’ll do is donate some time or money… as if that was a sustainable way to deal with every problem that comes up.  Don’t get me wrong, these are noble acts.  It is necessary, just not sufficient.  It's like eating junk food and exposing yourself to harmful radiation because you know you have a good doctor to deal with the consequences later.  

                 We need “preventative care” for atrocities like those created at the hands of the LRA.  This requires first understanding where these atrocities come from.  After reading through some articles on the LRA, the points relating to geography naturally stuck with me.  It turns out, the conflict is a result of the same “hunter gatherer vs. agriculturalist” struggle that has been recurring for thousands of years.  The LRA represents the ethnically Northern Ugandans (historically hunter-gatherers) and their opposition to the Southern Ugandans (descendants of Bantu farmers).  Was this conflict destined to happen just do to the fact that one region was more fertile than the other?  This is obviously a gross simplification of the issue: there’s colonialism, religion, poverty, and a whole lot more contributing to the crisis.  My point is that using this counterfactual analysis, we can find common themes.  For me, geography is the most compelling.  The “hunter gatherer vs. agriculturalist” conflict is present in lots of manifestations of violence, whether it is the oppression of natives in the United States or our current destruction of the environment.  Using these overarching phenomena, we can develop new ways for dealing with them in order to prevent future instances of suffering.  For example, promoting the use of cultural knowledge from indigenous populations can both help us be more environmentally friendly while breaking down social divisions. 

                What do you think? What sort of new ways of engaging with the world can we adapt to prevent future atrocities?