Apocalypse

Maybe this is obvious to everyone but me, maybe not. I just realized recently the implications of all the "zombie apocalypse" craze going around today.

Most popular part of MW2? The zombie mod. Popular movie theme? Post or impending apocalypse. Popular television theme? Survival in the wild.
On okcupid, many people list "the apocalypse" under "things I spend a lot of time thinking about". (yeah yeah I have an okcupid, what of it? I'll tell you more later...)

I'm taking a class here at lovely Cal Berkeley called Global Poverty and Practice. It is taught by world famous Ananya Roy who is possibly the most beautiful woman in the history of ever. Smart, witty, and her voice is just...let's just say her lecture is an hour and a half, at that dreaded post lunch 2-3:30pm time, and I've never fallen asleep. HUGE ACCOMPLISHMENT.

But I digress. In this class we learn about why poverty happens and why it still exists. One at a time the problems with today's world are revealed to me, and I've found that the root of all evil just goes deeper and deeper...
One goal for the millenium (heard of the MDGs? you should) involved increasing foreign aid spending to .7% of GDP in developed countries. The US, however, was at .22% of GDP in 2005. We can't even afford 1%.
This, I thought to myself, this is the root of our problems. We should donate more.

But is aid the solution? The majority of our aid goes to countries that then use it to buy weapons from us...how philanthropic.
The other problem with aid is it simply is not a solution. Sure, we don't give much at all. But private investors do, and not much progress has been made. Sub-saharan Africa is still very poor, Somalia is in a food crisis. We are all aware of this, but we don't change the game plan.
If Ethiopia were to increase its GDP by 1%, the money it would bring in would be 5x the aid it receives every year.
Many developmental theorists similiarly believe that "trade, not aid" is the solution.

Ah, but here is another problem. You see, the Bretton Woods Regime circa 1944 brought about neocolonialism. The US representative in the WTO, Robert Zoellick, once said in reference to developing country's markets "We are going to keep opening up markets one way or another". Repeatedly we pressure developing countries to make their markets "free", and yet in the US our agriculture is heavily subsidized. They can't win in this game, because only they play by the rules.

Now combine all that with companies like Monsanto benefiting from the WTO's awesome Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), and we've got ourselves a nice little nightmare.

Okay, so what does this have to do with our apocalypse craze. Well, maybe at this point it's obvious. People today know our world has problems, we're confronted with them everyday on the front of newspapers, all over the internet, or by people who come up to you with clipboards or flyers wanting you to save the whales.
I believe people are also becoming knowledgeable enough to know that these problems can't be fixed at their surface. We have a garbage patch the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific, and it's got a sister in the Atlantic. Even if we could airlift it all out (we couldn't), the problem remains that we trash our ocean.
Our problems come from deep within the system. And that's why we want the apocalypse.
Our animal side misses the days of every man for himself. We miss the wilderness. We miss simplicity, and fewer choices, and the adrenaline of fighting to live.
And, on top of it all, we absolutely hate the system.
We want to see it all tumble down, and start over again.

I for one do believe that if the world could be shook up in a way that every person was transplanted somewhere radically different, maybe we could suddenly see each other for once on a level playing field.
I would love to see the rich white politician transplanted to sub-Saharan Africa, to see him try and reclaim his meaningless authority. "But I'm a state senator!" But can you survive?
You see, I believe the problems go even deeper than the unfair institutions we've created. It's not just that those people are evil, or some people are apathetic- it is that we don't see all men and women as equal.

We watched a documentary about developmental capitalism called "New Recruits". College grads sign up with a company called Acumen to sell "affordable, much-needed" products in third world countries. It's philanthropy without hand-outs.
The problem was these products weren't affordable at all. For people that make under a dollar a day, 12 dollars is equivalent to $960. Very, very, very few people would pay $960 up front for any product here in the US. Especially if it wasn't reliable, which these lights were not.
For a $960 product we would make a down payment, and then monthly payments. The company would trust us, and we would trust the company to give us help if it didn't work and even our money back if it broke. The company would seek our feedback to improve their product.
All these elements were missing.

These impoverished people were expected to pay up front for this product with (0) reviews, from a company that will not come back and visit to check and see how it works. A Yale grad sent to sell a drip water system became frustrated that the farmers wouldn't buy it, and blamed it on their incomprehension of the money they'd save. He made up charts that they could fill in, do math, and figure out how much money they'd save.

Seriously? Is that a selling technique, or math homework?

He couldn't resist trying to educate them. Why? Because he saw them as lesser than himself.

But he's not the only one.

The whole global community views each other through cracked, painted, warped, clouded lenses.
Thomas Friedman talks about a level playing field, that "The World is Flat" but he is so blind. This world is built from the botttom up- from the bottom of our souls to the perception in our minds to the actions in our fingers.
Our souls are impeccable. It is our perceptions of each other that keep this world unfair.