Posted on 01/13/2015 3:43:21 PM PST by MNDude
Maybe this is a rant as much as it is a question, but I often find myself astonished by third (and 2nd) world culture from what I've seen of it.
Mexico: OK, this is probably more 2nd world than 3rd world. They do many things like USA. I have inlaws in Mexico, so I've spent some time there. One thing that seems to be consistent, whether you are visiting someone's home or a gas station, is that the toilets are rarely completely functional! So often they'll have a large bucket outside or in the bathroom that you have fill up with water and then use it to flush the toilet. WHY? It's pretty rare in USA that I've found a toilet that way. How is it that everyone's freaking toilet breaks...and there's never anyone there to fix it! If it is working, then there's a great chance that the toilet will be missing the toilet seat. Are they content to sit without a seat? Can't be poverty, because many of these homes I've seen like this are filled with X-box games.
India: Now we are down to 3rd world. I've spent several in India. I have often looked at awe in the lack of inefficiency and the way they do things.
Constructing a building: A person on the bottom fills a bucket with cement, who then hands it off to a person standing on a platform 6 feet above them, who then hands the bucket to a person on a platform 6 feet above them, who then hands it to a person above them (about 4 or 5 platforms high, I can't remember). Have they never heard of the pulley?
Sweeping the floor: I remember at my hotel, every morning about 5 people would come out to the plaza with a handful of thin sticks, that I guess kind of was supposed to resemble a broom. These workers began scratching their sticks back and forth on the ground swiftly, raising a little dust, but mostly just scratching the ground. A few hours later they were done. Have they never heard of a push broom?
Scrubbing the floor: Always on hands and knees with a scrubber. Never heard of the Mop?
I remember I asked an India guy at the hotel why they work this way. He replied "Oh, this way they can employ a lot more people!" I answered "Why don't they just hire them to fix the broken doors, the holes in the ground, and pick up the garbage lying around outside?"
Africa: Last, and YES LEAST. Is there such thing as 4th world? I was in Africa, and one day I was with a tour and we went to visit the tribe where the people worked. These people herded cattle. At nighttime, the corralled all the cows into the center of their village made of mud huts to keep them safe. Of course the cows pooped like crazy in the center of the village and the area was just swarming with flies! The kids had flies crawling all over their faces. I remember as a kid seeing a picture of a starving kid from Africa covered with flies. I asked my mom why they don't shoo away the flies and she answered "They are so hungry they can't even think of brushing away the flies." Nope...these kids weren't starving, they don't shoo away the flies because they don't. In any case, why does it never occur to these people to build a corral outside their village?
While I was in there, I visited a city with the population of probably 50,000, although it's really tough to tell. Guess what the people used for their bathroom. Modern plumbing? Nope. Port-a-Potty? Nope. Outhouse? Nope. Dig a hole and poop in it and cover it up? Nope. These guys had NO bathroom facilities and would just go out and poop in whatever area with no attempt to cover it. I mean seriously!! When I was in Jr. High I went on a camping trip with class, and first thing the teacher told us was what to do with the little shovel. Family of Laura Ingalls arrives by oxcart to Walnut grove in 1877, and first thing Charles builds is an outhouse! Have these people never heard of a hole before?
Anyhow, that's my rant. Anyone else had any experience in 3rd world countries? Any insights?
Hate to burst your bubble,but “third world” doesn’t have to do with wealth, or lack of it. During the cold war some pundit stated that the countries of the world were in three camps, the free world, which are the US and the West,the Communist world and the non-aligned countries or third world.
There's a Filipino movie called "Manila" on Netflix that has a scene where a young family is forced into the slum. A lady living in a slum shanty points them to a filthy empty shanty and the husbands replies "Thank you, but we have no money". To which the lady laughs and replies.."No one in the slum has any money. That's why we live in the slum"
Milton Friedman had an interesting related comment.
He observed a third world construction project, and asked if it would not be more efficient to use a backhoe, instead of the many men they had digging with shovels. The manager/politician in charge told him that they did it this way to provide more jobs. Well then, why not have them dig with spoons then? asked Friedman. It was more an indictment of the Government’s wastefully inefficient economic policies than it was of third world culture.
Sometimes they don’t have the equipment, sometimes they don’t have the know-how, sometimes it is due to culture (traditional or political). Whatever the reason, it is changing at dramatic pace, by historical standards.
Technology is spreading much more quickly now than ever before, with better transportation and communication. No place is out of reach anymore. The percentage of the human population that lives in abject squalor - a hand to mouth existence of less than a dollar a day - has been plummeting in the last few decades, and will probably decline into the single digits within a generation, or be done away with entirely. Africa is not just the next frontier for industrialization and a modern standard of living - it is the last such frontier. The robots that are teetering around with their baby steps this decade, will automate much of farming and production next decade.
Enjoy the quaint eccentricities of the old third world - they will make for unbelievable tales for the children of future decades.
Why? Man this one is too easy.
The evil white man of course.
Bauer presents a convincing case for the proposition that “economic achievement depends on people’s attributes, attitudes, motivations, mores and political arrangements. . . . Moreover, policies of many Third World governments are plainly damaging to economic achievement”....Bauer shatters the misdirected attempts to promote Western guilt for Third World poverty. “The West has not caused the relative poverty of the Third World,” Bauer writes. “The opposite is the case. The contacts established by the West have resulted in improved living conditions, longer life expectation and much wider choice for hundreds of millions of people in the Third World . . . . Indeed, millions of people who would otherwise have died survived because of Western techniques and ideas, notably medicine and public security which came with colonial rule.”
-- from an online review of P.T.Bauer's book Equality, the Third World, And Economic Delusion
A lot of liberals say these countries are impoverished because whites stole all their resources. Otherwise, they would be just as productive and wealthy as America is.
I just imagine in a parallel universe where white men never destroyed the opportunities that awaited African nations.
“Come Abasi. We must review our nation’s scientists’ plans for putting a man on the moon. Please be careful not to step on my poo.”
Honestly I don’t give a darn what they do in their own countries but I am sick to death of them coming here and still trying to live that way. 2 houses down we had Guatemalans? Move in. The gorgeous house is now a dump and I keep having to call the city code people on them. First they were running an unlicensed daycare out of the house.....with huge signs everywhere. I called and they shut it down. Next they be got 10 cars parked all over the street....with flats and non running. I called and they moved them. No clue where. Then they’ve got fricken living room furniture in their front yard, a sofa and recliner. Luckily, Some other neighbor sick of looking at it hauled it off in the middle of the night. Lol
The lawn hasn’t been mowed since the middle of last summer and we had a huge wind storm that broke off a huge limb on a tree in their front yard. It’s still there.
If they can’t assimmilate to our culture they should be sent the heck back where they came from. Sick of them.
Constructing a building: A person on the bottom fills a bucket with cement, who then hands it off to a person standing on a platform 6 feet above them, who then hands the bucket to a person on a platform 6 feet above them, who then hands it to a person above them (about 4 or 5 platforms high, I can’t remember). Have they never heard of the pulley?
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When you have 1.2 BILLION people, who needs a pulley? Where is room for a pulley?
True, that’s how the meaning started, but the typical understanding of the term “3rd world” has meant impoverished S Hole for a long time.
I guess I could have said “developing countries” but does anyone here really think these countries are doing much developing?
Reminds me of an old PBS show on Africa years ago.
The women traveled five miles to get water.
The UN then drills them a well and shows them how to use it.
Two years later the women are traveling 5 miles to get water as the well pump is broke, and NONE of the men will fix it.
Result, The UN brings in parts and teaches the WOMEN how to pull and repair it as the men refuse to do anything.
Reminds me of a story Peter Hathaway Capstick used to tell about Africa.
The women traveled to get water. At a certain river with easy access to the stream they filled their jugs.
Unfortunately, often a crocodile would grab a woman and submerge with her.
All the tribesmen had to do was build a row of poles to keep the crock out of the area where the women got the water, but no-0-o. Too much work. Easier to replace a woman ever so often.
I remember a Wall Street Journal article a couple of decades ago on a similar subject to what you just posted.
The reporter was hanging out with some men in Jamaica (I think). The men were lounging around on a hillside watching women walk up and down the hill with empty water canisters on their heads on the way down and full of water on the way back up.
Some of the women were pregnant and the men were making bets among themselves which women would be able to make the uphill trek (fully laden with water) without having to stop and rest.
That image has stuck in my mind all these years and I thought of it immediately when I read your post.
We all look at the world through our own cultural lenses. From my time elsewhere I found that although we value individual initiative and problem solving, many other cultures do not, and this extends also to some of the inner-city facilities here I’ve worked in. The main thing for many people, in order to survive, is to fit in and not make anyone angry by challenging the status quo.
Regarding the cattle in the middle of the town, I would expect that would be to repel predators or discourage thieves.
I think it is both intelligence an culture.
Sowell’s trilogy on cultures answers a lot of questions.
My daughter lives in a Central American country. She says that she loves the people but cannot get much done. If she goes to the store she has to stop by each house on the way there and on the way back or the people living there will be angry and say that she doesn’t like them. And this goes for everyone. They are all building and maintaining relationship that it bleeds into everything.
bump
great points
The thing that burns my rear end is the Mexicans putting their used toilet paper in the trash instead of flushing it...gross.
I think the worst part would be kids prostituting, much worse than begging IMO
Yes, and the OT is full of good things to keep people healthy.
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