FACTS!

Posted on May 22, 2020 by Ron Pavellas

We see headlines daily, to the effect of— Russia! China! The European Union! The USA! (or, “America!”) These and a few other nations are major players in the world’s economy, and holders of power concomitant with their economic strength, as measured by Gross Domestic Product. (I admit there are other important strengths attributable to any given nation, but these are not as easily measurable.)

Here are ‘facts’ for the most populous nations of the world, the fourteen that each contain over one hundred million people. But, right away, I and the reader have a problem in that one of these ‘nations’ is the European Union. You will have your own opinion as to whether the EU belongs in this list.

These fourteen entities (40, if you count each of the 27 members of the European Union) comprise around two-thirds of the world’s population, so I assert that what happens in and by these nations is vitally important to the remaining 159 countries which are listed in the World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency of the USA, the source of my information.

What a trove! The reader can select the items of his or her interest to ponder; I note these:

  • China and India together contain slightly more than one-third of the earth’s human population. They have an extensive common border with a few small countries wedged between them in the Himalaya Mountain Range. These two countries have tense relations over boundaries, and over the fact that India gives refuge to the Dalai Lama, the leader-in-exile of Tibetan Buddhists of the former administrative region of Tibet, of the Republic of China (before it became the ‘People’s Republic of China’).
  • The EU and the USA hold around 10% of the world’s population. They have  the highest ratio of Gross Domestic Product per person in the world, by far.
  • Not many in the West are aware that Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world; we don’t get much news about Indonesia in Europe and North America.
  • The median age in the EU, Japan, and Russia are all 40 years or more. The USA and China are not far behind at 38.5.and 38.4.  These are aged nations, compared to a median age of 31 years for the world, and the even more youthful nations of Nigeria, Bangladesh, Philippines, Egypt, and Mexico.
  • Japan and Russia have a small, negative population growth rate. That is, their populations are slowly shrinking, currently. Japan has no net migration, but Russia has a comparatively large net migration of +1.7 persons per thousand population. I believe the largest part of this in-migration is due to ethnic Russians migrating from nations which were formerly part of the Soviet Union.
  • Nine of the fourteen countries have a negative net migration; that is, more people leave the country than arrive from other countries. The only countries to which more people want to arrive to than leave are: the EU, the USA–and Russia, as noted in the previous bullet.

What about Gross Domestic Product? See here:

“The definition of a third world country has evolved from the political meaning during the Cold War to the economic meaning of today.” (Source)

The reader will readily note that I have assigned the “Economic Tier Number” of #1.5 to Russia. I believe it is a telling fact that the GDP of Russia is well below the USA, Japan, and the EU, even though Russia gives the general impression, by its international behavior, that it is in the top tier.

Another telling fact is that China, despite its almost constant presence in the headlines, world-wide corporate offices, and halls of governments, is, economically, a second-tier country. It should be remembered that approximately two-thirds of China’s population are the peasantry, not the city-dwellers we see in the news reports. The GDP per person in China is heavily weighted toward the city-dweller, leaving the peasant at the level of “third-world” countries.

I will leave my discussion here, hoping you will find other points of interest which you might share with the reader in the comments section.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Demography, Economics, Gross Domestic Product | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Darkness and Light: Exploring the Limits of the Human Soul, in Two Books

Posted on September 7, 2019 by Ron Pavellas

The books are: “Heart of Darkness,” by Joseph Conrad; and, “Death Comes for the Archbishop,” by Willa Cather. Among other parallel attributes, the two novels show us the geopolitical forces of the times and places of their narration. 

“Heart…” is well known, but “Death…” is not as much, and should be, if for no other reason than as an antidote to the visions Joseph Conrad conveys to us. There are, however, other reasons, discussed further below.

A book important to one’s understanding of Conrad’s experiences and his development of “Heart of Darkness” is “The Dawn Watch,” by Maya Jasanoff, who “brilliantly places Conrad as a pioneer of understanding the forces that shape the modern world… Captain Korzeniowski [Conrad’s original Polish name] meant to stay three years in the Congo, but after just five months of navigating the great waterways between Kinshasha and Kisangani, he resigned, chronically ill and an emotional wreck. He retired to Switzerland “in a state of psychological and moral despair” convinced of “the universal potential for savagery, and the hollowness of civilisation…” But he brought back more from the expedition than dysentery and depression. The notes and jottings the captain had made on his journey infiltrated their way first into the manuscript of a novel named “Almayer’s Folly” that he worked on upriver to keep himself from boredom and madness; then into a short story called An “Outpost of Progress”; and finally, in 1899, into what would become his most famous novel, Heart of Darkness. (Source)

The Europeans who had invaded and enslaved the peoples along the Congo River were not constrained by ordinary social structures—only by the commercial considerations imposed by the Belgian company who bought and marketed the ivory they took, stole, from the country; they were otherwise free to act as they will, becoming beasts, in the worst sense of the word.

The fictional man at the heart of Conrad’s darkness is “Kurtz,” made even darker and more memorable by a film derived from the novel, “Apocalypse Now,” in which Kurtz is played by Marlon Brando.

Marlowe, the narrator of “Heart of Darkness,” as he proceeds hundreds of miles up the river toward Kurtz, describes the jungle in vivid details, and the horror that its alien nature directly imparts to him.

Kurtz has lived for years as the only European (with one unimportant exception), further up the Congo River in a jungle distant from anything that could possibly be called civilization. He has seen into the depths of his own soul and has therefore seen the truth of the soul in all humans, and he has acted upon what he finds there. He has become as a god to the people he lives with. The ‘truths’ are what Kurtz imparts before his death to Marlowe. Kurtz’s final words are “The horror, the horror.”

In contrast, the book “Death…” provides loving and colorful detail of the mountains, hills, and desert of southwestern USA, especially New Mexico of the mid-19th Century, even though similarly alien to the protagonists of the story, two French Catholic missionary priests.

The two books are much alike in at least one respect: poetic use of the language. The opening pages of “Heart…” are like a tone poem in its description of the London harbor at dusk, and in other passages. Likewise, in “Death…” the author, Cather, flows her words over the page in loving paeans to the land, especially, and to the human interactions of the two priests. I want to read aloud portions of both books to a receptive audience.

The human interactions of the priests include those with the church hierarchy in Italy, the native peoples of the land, the Mexican settlers with their mixed Spanish heritage, and “American” military, settlers and outlaws.

The priests, especially the archbishop, are exemplars of humility, kindness and wisdom. They are not superior humans but, have a characteristic not found in the Europeans in the Congo: they are respectful of life—all life—and of the earth.

The priests and their love of the people and the land, as depicted by Willa Cather, become objects of the reader’s love. Whereas, poor Marlowe is pitied, yet the reader is hopeful that he will recover and will have gained a degree of enlightenment which will comfort and sustain him.

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness—Nikos Kazantzakis.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Books & Literature, Church & Religion, Enlightenment, History | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment