Angela DiGioia Geography Professor Lucibello 9 April 2013 Guns, Germs, and Steel: Jared Diamond’s “Big Ideas” to Explain Underdevelopment In Jared Diamond’s, Guns, Germs, and Steel, he attempts to explain the factors that contribute to the underdevelopment of certain continents and regions other than the theory of superiority that he strongly rejects. “The explanation based on race is absurd,” Diamond states in the film. The issue of believing that people in underdeveloped countries are simply “not as smart” has no supporting evidence to it. Jared Diamond actually suggests that people in those underdeveloped areas may actually be smarter because they simply have to be in order to survive in their conditions and circumstances. In an interview with PBS, Diamond states that two of the largest factors contributing to the explanation of what the sources of underdeveloped and inequality in the contemporary world are the differences in availability of wild plants and animals suitable for domestication, and the difference in the shapes or orientations of continents.
22 October 2013 Why Can’t People Feed Themselves? In the article by Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins, both authors point to Colonialism as the main reason why people cannot feed themselves anymore. Prior to European intervention in third world agriculture, many of these countries thrived on their land, producing crops not for sale, but for consumption. They looked to diversify their crops and to introduce new crops of Asian or even American origin that could also be grown for consumption. However, many European countries viewed these lesser colonies as “primitive and backward.” Why can’t people feed themselves?
In Chapter 10 of Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond explains the reasons in which the spread of food production and agricultural innovation were different in each continent and why this impacted the societies of each continent. Diamond explains how the Americas and Africa are longer north and south than east and west, while Eurasia is larger east to west. Diamond explains that this is the reason in which the spread of agricultural innovation was different for each continent. Diamond says that because Eurasia is more east and west orientated with few geographic barriers between the east and west, agricultural innovation spread more quickly than in other continents. Diamond also explains that it was because agricultural innovation in Eurasia spread
As we saw in the video “Guns, Germs and Steel” with Professor Jared Diamond, we saw that the tribe’s lack of intelligence was not the case for developing more as a civilization. For example, we saw how the people of New Guinea lived. They used the resources they had around them in order to make food, clothing and weapons to help grow and succeed as a civilization. Not only this, but by having the children help at a young age made the tribe more successful in the way that everyone played a part in contributing to make their civilization stronger as a unit. Another reason that the civilizations might have not been successful could have been the weather and climate that they were to go through.
However, by the time of his graduation, Sun believed that whilst the Manchu dynasty still existed, China would remain corrupt and backwards. His experiences abroad shaped his political ideas as at the beginning of the 20th century, the West were advancing and modernising their countries quicker than Sun’s own country of China. He toured Europe and America in hope to raise funds for the “Save China League” and made attempts to start a revolution against the Qing for example, the unsuccessful uprising in Canton, 1895. Sun worked hard travelling around to different countries, gaining more foreign funds and support. Sun Yatsen influenced the Chinese with his Three Principles – Nationalism, Democracy and Socialism and later in 1905; he formed the United League which was a revolutionary
Abstract The novel, The Good Earth reflects ideologies that, in Pearl Buck’s opinion, society has started to lose value for. These include attitudes about man’s relation to the earth, the corrupting power of the city, and the nurturing effect of the land. The aim of my research is to examine (1) the significance of the title and (2) Buck’s Romanticism with the Chinese farmer archetype. Even though 1930’s society was very much about technological advancements, with the discovery of Pluto, the airing of the first TV commercial and the first jet engine patent; the traditional and rural depictions of life led to the novel being a success. The reason why the novel was received well in America and Europe was because of its candid representation of Chinese farmer life.
This demonstrates how Darwin’s ideals could be applied to other scientific fields outside the sphere of biology to include business progress and political science as well. Another example of this is can be shown from writers who used these theories to support the superiority of the Caucasian ethnicity as well as the dominion over, or eradication of non-white ethnicities, stating that they are “lower life-forms”. Of these writers Paul Rohrbach who was a German Colonial of South Africa wrote “No false philanthropy or racial theory can convince sensible people that the preservation of a tribe of South Africa’s kaffirs … is more important to the future of mankind than the spread of the great European nations and the white race in general. Not until the native learns to produce anything of value in the service of the higher race, i.e., in the service of its and his own progress, does he gain any moral right to exist (Perry. Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society, Volume II, 9th Edition.
Instead, the issues of governmental regulations, individual rights, immigration, the cost of children and the burden of a large aging population contribute to the population’s growth or stagnation. In order to understand the difference between the old view of overpopulation and the new view of the complexities of society, Thomas Malthus and Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich’s theories must be explained. The origin of the population argument is rooted in The First Essay on Population by Thomas Malthus (Chamberlain 1970). The objective of this essay is to arouse consciousness to the plight of the earth’s diminishing natural resources. Malthus first acknowledges the necessity of food for
However, it has dawned upon political leaders that with increasing levels of globalisation, sustainability isn’t an option anymore, it is a path that must be pursued in order to maintain the integrated and developed world we live in. Throughout this essay I will explore the possibility of economic and environmental sustainability existing in tandem on various scales. Newly growing industries, aided by large populations and natural resources, grow at such an exponential rate as technologies are available to them that weren’t available to the initial industrialised countries, now medcs, allowing for leaps in development. As a result, the newly found wealth of nations distracts the horrors of its environmental impact. Indonesia is home to the world’s third largest tropical forest, which is considered not only a national asset and global public good, but also an important contributor to the country’s GDP.
We will, in this paper, research how technology has affected, either through boosting or hindering, humanity, by looking at various ways it can affect us: Farming, and its efficiency, our communication with each other, and information gathering and dispersal, how it affects us medically. We will begin with a point that was mentioned almost through all the articles/papers researched, and is arguably one of the more important points, as it affects the most amount of lives. Communication is a vital part of humans as a species. We would not be where we are in the world in terms of how technologically advanced we are, how we stop some disasters, and generally function as a modern society. However, as communication is a norm of humans, some will use their “power” to hurt or control other people for their own gain.