It's been a while since I wrote anything for reasons other than school work. While it's definitely fun to write for the lifelong dreams of understanding the complex systems we collectively refer to as life, I can definitely feel the effect of writing rather dry academic stuff all day and night. It's a slow and subtle process that will one day burn me out. Kind of funny considering just how beautiful the systems in nature can be, I guess it's one of the facets of the human psyche that I just don't understand very well... One day I should really think about this...
It's a weird process that I can only describe as drying out, just like lush forests slowly drying out into a desert. Sometimes everything I do, including the studies of sciences and the essential acts of reading, listening, and sleeping are all just my life's automatic attempt at trying to hold back the inevitable tide of desertification of the mind... The imagery saturated with sand inevitably bringing into my mind the vision of sand castle being built on the beach against incoming tides. Two sometimes opposing elements help me against such natural tides into inflexibility and forgetfulness. Singular obsession in action and variety in life. The more I live singular, almost obsessive dedication to something in life is essential in maintaining one's human quality, through ceaseless pursuit of truth, understanding and change of the status quo. However any decent human being tend to be supported by pool of experience that are at once more varied and detailed compared to the generation's norm. Obsession I fulfill with science, and variety I try to fulfill through act of reading. And writing... Well this is my equivalent of eating junk food. Something I just 'do for fun' to vent out the inevitable stresses of life. Two of the most recent books n my memory are 'The Bottom Billion' by Paul Collier and 'Tokyo Vice' by Jake Adelstein. Both are books I'd recommend any adult to give a chance, though Tokyo Vice can get a little graphic at times in its depiction of sex and violence, and is quite frankly not much of a literary masterpiece (the book was written under a duress that should be understandable to anyone aware of the back story... I'm not going to spoil anything for you). The Bottom Billion was one of the most, if not the most compelling and rational analysis of the very peculiar 'bottom billion' world we live in right now, with some very insightful suggestions as to how we might be able to change it for the better. Bottom billion in the sense of the book refers to more than a simple collection of 'poor people'. It refers to a collection of nations and its people that are caught in economic and political traps of decline, much like wells and traps of physical systems certain elements of the system just cannot escape from. The world in economic sense is expanding. It keeps on getting bigger and richer (in a sense). Even the poorest nations in the world are subject to some level of growth. However, there are certain groups of nations in this world that seem to be stuck in unnaturally low, almost zero growth rate, and they all happen to be situated in the African continent.
The best part of this book for an economics layman like me is the clarification and classification of the problem that had been haunting this world order for past few decades. It's incredibly simple to simply talk about 'poor people' and'poor nations.' While most of us might have best of intentions in discussing world issues using such loosely defined terms, the end result of such discussions just end up being something so obvious and meaningless, a philanthropic equivalent of discussing how many angels can sit on top of a pin.
The freak accident of the modern world is that people can immediately identify just what geographical region of the world is the poorest on the Earth, and by extension, what kind of people. It might be impossible to eliminate human misery from the world, but allowing certain geographical region to fester with the lowest, most miserable conditions of the human world is something that's 1)Inhumane
2)Irrational
3)Wasteful I don't believe for a second that current barrier between the so called 'developed' and 'developing' world that allows members of the developed nations to live their entire live without thinking about the consequences of their nation's international dictates will last. Either it will implode with catastrophic consequences, or be intentionally maintained with heavy price in terms of commodity, human lives, and human future. In the book 'The Bottom Billion', Paul Collier is successful in providing the reader with two things in regards to the issue of the bottom billion. Clarification and analysis of the problem through rational thinking, and suggestion of possible solutions based on actionable items. Compelling, is the word to describe the book, and if you are a young college student who might be thinking of changing the world, this is a book to read whether to agree with the author's specific analysis or not. I will write up another post on Tokyo Vice later on. It's getting a little tough to type up entire blogposts on my mobile handset.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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