Ch 24 part 2

I have never really been a person who was heavily concerned with the environment. I always understood that one day we will find out that we severely damaged our planet and by then it will probably be too late. However, I do understand that it is a very important issue and I found some of the facts in this chapter to be really intriguing and some frightening. The fact that in the past century we have quadrupled the amount of human beings is really a huge number and has really had an impact on the earth. I always wondered why the massive change in the environment has occurred rather recently instead of before. One of the answers is the sheer number of people and the advanced technology that allows us to alter the things around us. Strayer brought up an interesting point when he said that the future generations may not remember the wars, revolutions, and empires of this century, they may remember this time period by the environment that has been left to them. From looking at two of the charts one thing that really stood out was the fact that although the United States only account for a few hundred million of the 7 billion people on the earth, we produce almost a third of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s a huge gap to account for and one can only imagine how other developed countries would think of that. It really does not make sense for so much pollution to be caused by relatively few people. It seems like the United States does not put much effort in trying to save the environment, we just try to help defend forests just so we do not feel too bad whereas other developing countries around the world fight to save the environment because it is their livelihood. They need the land for farming and herding so their struggle is often one for survival while ours is to not feel so guilty. One concept that would be ideal to take up is to move away from materialism and instead of appreciating the things we make, appreciate the fragile web of life in nature that keeps us alive. I think the idea talked about in the Philippines also makes a lot of sense. Sure it makes sense to start a movement for the environment, however if you mix environmental protest with other movements having them overlap, you can create a much larger turn out and eventually change the established structures of power. Instead of just having one group go out and protest you get numerous different groups for different issues all showing up which could create a different end result to the one that may occur if just one group showed up for one specific thing. I guess in the end the environment will become what we let it become, in the same way that our history is what people decided to let it be, the only question is what will we decide to do with it.

Chapter 24 pt 1

I found the beginning of the chapter to be the most interesting part of the reading. Talking about how toys in different countries are foreign both in look and also in nature and how it may not really make sense to have Barbie and Ken in a Muslim society. The ideals they portray are not necessarily common with the ideals in Muslim society. The irony is that the thing they do share in common is that they were made in China. This story was just about children’s toys but one could really expand upon that to extend it to things beyond toys. It is weird today to think about the time where foreign countries were exactly that, foreign. They were faraway places that if they did not exist then you might not be impacted today. However, with the technology today and because of globalization, it became really difficult not to become dependent on everyone else, especially when so many different places have so much to offer. I also found it interesting that they traced the roots of globalization all the way back to trade routes like the Silk Road. It makes more sense to talk about technology today being a source of all the globalization, but even without the technology we were interacting and becoming reliant upon others even hundreds of years ago. The thing that surprised me a bit was the comparison of America to that of an empire. I never really thought of it that way but I suppose that it does make a lot of sense. It is not so much of a colonial empire, I mean obviously we are not taking over other countries and populating them, rather we sort of influence their economy and politics, a lot of times in a negative way. I thought it was funny that in terms of American global economy and the cultural face of America they used McDonalds as the example. I am not sure if that was just the easiest thing to express it in but I for one think it is not great that the face of our country is a fast food chain. The picture above the military bases in the early 21^st century and you cannot help but question the placement of some of the military bases. For example countries like Greenland, Iceland, and New Zealand, what exactly to we have to worry about from those countries? Or is there another reason for them being there? I mean I don’t know but it is something I found strange. Unsurprisingly however was the fact that globalization helped create the greatest spurt of economic growth in history. It makes sense that if everyone is trading with each other then they must all be getting something out of it, rather than taking over places for the good of one country we began to trade and benefit everyone.

Chapter 22

The second half of chapter 22 seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.  The brief alliances made in World War II between the United States, Russia, and Britain to stop Germany worked effectively in solving that problem but they were not necessarily good matches for each other as Russia and the United States saw each other’s way of governing was wrong. This was the cause of a bitter rivalry and division of all of Europe and most of the world. Fortunately though, the battle that seemed most imminent did not occur due to agreements made by JFK and the Soviet leader. However all these threats and fragile relationships still ended up having a huge impact in the form of the nuclear arms race. Though no one really fought each other in the cold war, the arms race was definitely a huge result which still today is a problem seeing as how we have enough bombs to blow up the world 20 times over. I mean that sounds like a lot of power but what are we going to do with the extra 19 when we destroy the world the first time. Nuclear weapons have been a huge problem since the cold war because of Russia, and now it is still a problem because of countries in the Middle East and North Korea working on these things that could potentially destroy us. In America we seem to think that we should be able to police the whole world and try to control who should be able to have these globe changing weapons but the question is, should ANYBODY have them at all? Furthermore, we have the expansion of military bases throughout the world and the chapter says that there were over a million soldiers in 30 countries including Greenland, because the polar bears were definitely a serious threat to our national security (sarcasm), and we have also had a bunch of roles in different alliances and treaties. Overall, it seems that we just went way overboard on trying to defend ourselves having soldiers all over the world and building even bigger bombs than the Atom bombs dropped in Japan.  Maybe at the time all these precautions seemed necessary but looking back it’s hard to justify the need for all those things looking at how things turned out because of our actions then, but then again hindsight is pretty much always 20/20. A lot of times in history the cold war was a scary time in America because of McCarthyism and the Red Scare and we think that we had the worst of it. However, when you look at Eastern Europe they had it a lot worse than we did. The Russian people themselves were victims of relentless propaganda and the Sovets even had to go into their supposed allies’ counties to put down resistance groups which really says a lot about the freedom of choice Eastern Europe had under the communist bloc during the Cold War. Overall, the cold war was a really accurate name for this time period as the relationships between countries and communication between governments and people were extremely cold; figuratively of course. 

Chapter 21

                In the beginning of the chapter Strayer calls the 3 decades that began with World War I and ended with World War II a period of self-destruction in Europe with effects felt around the globe. The reason that the whole globe was impacted was due in large part to the fact that almost the entire world was at some point colonized by a European country where the wars took place. Strayer goes on to say that the world wars were an accident waiting to happen due to competition among the European states and in hindsight, of course he was right. I think that because one relatively small area had such power over the whole world, any sort of turmoil within this region could potentially be something destructive for all peoples around the world.  One big cause that was mentioned but not completely fleshed out was the idea of alliances playing a big role in starting the first world war. If not for the alliances made between two groups of countries, a relatively minor incident would not have turned into a full scale war. Something I found particularly interesting about this chapter is that the Treaty of Versailles ended WWI but also was a huge cause of WWII because of the conditions it established that punished Germany heavily. And not only did the ending of the war cause another war, but also resulted in the Great Depression because soldiers coming home and integrating them was a difficult challenge. I find it extremely ironic that the end of one war actually played a part in starting another war as well as played a role in what was one of the worst economic crises in human history. 

European Influence

The second half of chapter 20 made me feel as if the second wave of colonization was not all bad for the native peoples. While the racism and economic instability was definitely an issue, the Europeans did offer at least one good thing when they came to colonize. I think the biggest thing they did had to do with the education of the native people. Before the Europeans came, a lot of people were illiterate and did not have the ability to have access to things that previously seemed out of reach. However there were a lot of negative things that happened even with good intentions. Things did not actually work out to the best possible scenarios as a lot of times the people who embraced the European cultures were the wealthier elite classes that looked down upon their own people for not wanting to conform. Another big part of Western culture that spread to the colonies was Christianity. More specifically, the reading said that in Africa it only took 50 years for half of the population that were not Muslims to convert to Christianity. I think that the best thing to come out of these negatives was the formation of a new, more united identity that occurred in Africa. Before the colonization, most of the African people did not even refer to themselves as Africans; rather they were identified by the language they spoke or if they were Muslims. The unifying thing that brought them together was ironically the oppression that they all had to endure under European rule. 

Modern Science

There really cannot be an over estimation of how much modern science has impacted our world today. We wouldn’t have pretty much anything if we were still in the days of looking to the divine or the ideas of ancient philosophers. Switching to a thought system that is based upon experimenting and observing things logically is the largest factor that got us to where we are today. Moreover, I found it interesting that the newer thinkers saw themselves as combatting the older ways of thinking. It almost seemed as if they were not trying to improve thinking by adding new ideas but rather destroying the old and starting with something completely new. I think it took some kind of bravery to go against the social norms and the prevalent thinking of the past thousand years or so. Not only was it going against the norms of society, but also going against the church itself which held a lot of power. I guess that nothing is ever completely good or bad, and the bad thing that came with science that I never really thought about before was the cementing of inequalities, whether they be racial or based on gender, science had a hand in making them more legitimate. It seems to me that the main reason that Europe developed scientific thought ahead of any other part of the world was because Europe was not afraid to value higher learning over religion and government. The advancements made in the Islamic world and China ceased in part due to valuing their religion and government over the education of their people. I find it a bit ignorant to not authorize independent institutions because they thought that education was “useless knowledge”. Besides the impact the scientific revolution had on people’s ideas about the world around them, it also influenced how they saw the world in relation to other celestial bodies in outer space.

            One of the more surprising things was that scientists like Galileo and Newton never rejected the ideas of Christianity or the notion of God, they never even thought that their ideas contradicted faith. However, as expected, the church initially denied the ideas of these thinkers and even burned some as heretics. It was strange to read about how the church developed somewhat of a love hate relationship where they hated the thinkers’ ideas and all they stood for, but still accommodated some of their ideas. This point in time was really critical for human development as it gave us a new approach to thinking logically, that is, using our own minds to reason things instead of declaring everything a work of the divine and believing that angels and a God was overseeing every little detail. I also liked how some of the thinkers did not denounce religion in its entirety; rather saw them as compatible and necessary. The only parts that science really seemed to reject was the superstitious and ignorance of religion, and that itself was probably the most important thing that came out of this period. Not any specific law or idea or the renouncing of religion, but the movement to encourage people to think for themselves.

Sugar connections

Nowadays it’s strange to think that something as simple as sugar was once considered a rare commodity only available to elite upper class citizens. Not just sugar but other things that we take for granted everyday like pepper or sweetened coffee, something we could easily obtain, was once extremely difficult for people to obtain. In the world we live in now, getting these things are as simple as a trip to the grocery store. It just goes to show how dependent we were, and are, on the rest of the world. All the things that are easy to get for us now would not be so readily available if not for expansion and conquest. It’s a sad thought but the truth is that without the exploitation of other societies, a lot of things that we use every day would not be around. More specifically, something like sugar would not be around if not for Muslim expansion. Honestly, I don’t think that anyone in the present would ever think that sugar would not be in America if not for expansion alone, let alone Muslim expansion. If anything, this shows that everything that happens has an impact on the world. Even major events such as a war in another country don’t just impact one region, there is always a global impact in these kinds of matters whether we notice them or not. This is the beginning of sugar becoming an isolated product to a mass commodity. This in itself was a complex process that didn’t happen overnight. After it became known in Europe it became a luxury for people to have that only was available to the elite in society. To me, thinking of sugar as a luxury is a bit of a difficult concept to grasp because it’s found everywhere now, especially in our society. Finding people who cannot easily find sugar would be a difficult task. From the introduction of sugar in Europe came the desire for it to become available to the masses. And because the process of growing sugar requires large amounts of labor, the need for slaves also started to come up, not to mention a need for more land to grow the sugar on. Again the idea of things that could seem totally unrelated actually are more interwoven than they may seem. I mean personally, thinking that the want for sugar eventually caused more slavery in the world is not some type of connection I would have made. Sugar created a connection between things worlds apart like money from one part of the world bought slaves from another part of the world to grow in an entirely different part of the world. And if this is the connection made just for sugar, imagine what kind of impact things like salt or pepper had on the world when they were becoming more popular; not only those but all spices in general.