Roots

[SuburbanFarmer]

You fellas are going to give yourselves high blood pressure problems.

I actually think it's the reverse. Since we're not allowed to beat our wives anymore, we come here to batter each other instead.

Keeps us balanced and saves a lot of money in attorney fees. Guess it's not too good for the lawyers, though.

True fact. This place serves as a valuable relief valve.

[Okeefenokee]

It's just because he cares so much. I shouldn't have made him angry anyway.

[SuburbanFarmer]

[katarn]

What evidence would serve you?

Proof that fewer percent of the population live in absolute poverty than ever before? Maybe astonishingly decreasing infant and child mortality rates? Maybe the average hours/worked per item of food bought? What would do it?

There have likely been times when 40-50% of people were fucking slaves, man.

Notice there will be no response to these facts.

The overwhelming trend has been better health, less starvation, less dying infants, less poverty, less slavery.

System ain't perfect by no means, we can talk about destruction of culture/purpose/meaning, alienation of labor, etc, but the quotes above ^ are what we are talking about, and there will be no adequate rebuttal coming.

I gave one. Read it again.

Yes, things are unarguably better in many areas, across the globe. However, this is like looking at Detroit and saying "they're fine, they have cellphones and stuff". The rest of the world has left huge chunks of it - almost half - far behind. This has not happened before in history.

Well, unless you count Rome and China and Sasanids leaving out most everyone else (yes, there were small powers coexisting with equivalent tech, I presume). You could argue that wasn't too large of a gap though, between the Celtic/Spanicsh/African/American/etc villagers in towns at the most, even less if they were pastorals like the everyone in central Asia.

[Hwen Hoshino]

Quit strawmanning. As I said before, there was slavery in every civilization and area, at some point, except possibly the Inuit or something. I'm not talking about individual sovreignty, so much as societal. Previous to the 20th, any nation that fell to the level of "third-world" would simply have been absorbed/conquered by the nearest empire. If not, they'd simply migrate into one.

Look at the third world, as we know it from this century. When has there ever been a massive chunk of humanity (currently 40-50%) living in destitution and squalor? This is a new creation.

Okay, how does that fact relate to you disputing the clam that Western civ is the best?

I'm not sure that I can dispute that, in relation to others currently available, but I think that the margin is far, far smaller than people here seem to think. I'm just throwing shade on the blinding devotion to "our way", and trying to balance it out.

Along the way, I came up with an idea that the 'third-world' is entirely a new concept, and decided to toss it out there. So far, the reaction has been vehement, but I imagine a few lurkers are taking the time to think it over.

I am unaware that i have a blinding devotion.Third world is a new concept because Africa was mostly unexplored for the most of history.

[TheReal_ND]

If we are still going to go down this path of which civilization was best there was a time around 7-800 AD where China was without a doubt on top of the world. Iirc that was the Tang Dynasty. I've been listening to a lot of "The China History Podcast," (one of my top five favs.)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the ... 69498?mt=2

Now there were times when Western Europe was the shithole of the world as well. These things aren't permanent though.

[jbird4049]

All of these nations that you are talking about were far more poor a hundred years ago than they are today.

Ethiopia,


Nigeria,


Zambia,


South Africa,


Brasilia,


Argentina,


Vietnam,


These people have internet now. The advances of the west dragged the rest of the world into the modern age. None of them invented automobiles, airplanes, the electric grid, microchips, television, satellite communication. Everything that makes the modern world what it is came from the west, and almost the entire rest of the world enjoys these things despite having created none of it.

And guess what? They aren't clamoring to go back to the nineteenth century either.

Yes, this is true.

There are reasons why they are catching up now, and in many places are still in terrible messes. The West first got rich by stealing their stuff, and killing anyone who tried to stop them. Our current wealth is from more peaceful means, but the colonial period only really ended in the 1960s.

If you want to have nightmares read up on the Western powers conquest, and colonization of almost the entire planet, with the exceptions of Ethiopia, and Siam. Such conquest often involve not only the destruction of local institutions, but also of local bossiness, including factories, and farms, with the occasional bonus genocide. If you want to add nightmare fuel, look the combined 500+ year African slave trade by the Muslim powers, as well as 300+ trade of the Western nations. For extra credit, read the book The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. It's a description of the Belgian Congo under the cover of being fiction.

[Okeefenokee]

GCF says it was all sunshine and unicorns back then. There was no third world. They was all independent kings and shit. Then the western world invented the third world in the past century. He'll tell you all about it.

[jbird4049]

I wish DB was here to clean this thread up.

I miss the old days.

Even on the DCF, things got bad at times. But then it got better too with a little patience.



Hopefully that will happen here.

[jbird4049]

GCF says it was all sunshine and unicorns back then. There was no third world. They was all independent kings and shit. Then the western world invented the third world in the past century. He'll tell you all about it.

If GCF says that, he's misinformed. There have always been the big elephants, with the little mice running beneath them.

The current term 3rd world though, comes from the Cold War, where it was the 1st world Western nations, mainly NATO members, the 2nd world Soviet Bloc, and everybody else was the 3rd world.