Self-inflicted? That is a bullshit western justification. Those poor peoples have been milked to extinction by colonial overlords and left do die.
Not to mention that their very countries were designed and drawn on the map by colonial powers, like dividing loot, with no respect to local populations and tensions (or with full intent to exploit them, in a "divide and conquer" move).
Or that even today the governments of those countries are appointed and remotely controlled by western powers, with everything from under the table deals to open military support for their cronies.
Calling poverty in those places "self-inflicted" is like saying a raped woman "deserved it".
>Religion and ignorance go a long way. You can't throw money to the problem
Those places have been far more tolerant before they had colonial overlords and post-colonial interventions. Islam in particular was nowhere as strict and even more progressive that the feudal European populations of the time (and developed math, poetry, etc).
(And it's not like the Bible Belt for example is a paradigm in the case of "religion and ignorance").
>Now try teaching people about safe sex and AIDS. Try teaching people about the importance of an education.
You cannot teach them in abstract. You have to build the foundations to teach them. And all the foundations that we took for granted in the western world have been either destroyed or not developed in the past in those countries.
Note also that when people say "try teaching people about the importance of an education", they mostly mean: try teaching people about WESTERN style education and western work ethic / values, etc.
So a tribe in Africa that lived perfectly fine in a relative balance, Amish style, for millennia, has the modern world (in the form of the colonial and post-colonial powers) invade in it's culture, their farmland or hunting places destroyed etc, and they are left to adapt to this new context or die. So they have to be "educated" to get some mind-numbing soul-crushing job as a factory worker, reject their culture, etc.
The same thing happens in Latin American tribes.
We adapted to the modern world by choice and by developing it (and over centuries at that). They are FORCED to "adapt to it or die, pronto". It's not at all the same.
"And all the foundations that we took for granted in the western world have been either destroyed or not developed in the past in those countries."
I agree with this. But "try teaching people about WESTERN style education and western work ethic / values, etc." Yes, cultural relativism only goes so far. But one could try teaching them japanese values as well, it would be good.
A society can only progress with certain values and rules, and what we call "western civilization" is pretty much that, otherwise, we would be maybe talking about tribes in Europe being conquered by who knows (not that tribes in Europe didn't exist).
But of course, as you said, it needs a foundation, and this took a long time even in the case of Europe.
"So a tribe in Africa that lived perfectly fine in a relative balance... and they are left to adapt to this new context or die."
This has happened how many times in world history again? Oh and "relative balance" may be an exaggeration. Old "innocent" tribes could and have destroyed their habitat. Example: Easter Island. That also happens in South American tribes.
"We adapted to the modern world by choice and by developing it (and over centuries at that). They are FORCED to "adapt to it or die, pronto". It's not at all the same."
I agree. But see, several countries are already adapting. Angola for example.
>Those places have been far more tolerant before they had colonial
Stop right there. Before colonization those lands were dominated by the ottoman empire, which exported "black gold" from there. By which I mean that they'd ride into the villages on horseback, kidnap the young into slavery, to be exported into North Africa, the Middle East or Asia. Similar things happened in India. They left the old or infirm to die of hunger and thirst, wounded and alone.
Coming out of ottoman domination, the indigenous population was literally worse off than in the stone age.
Colonization, which of course was not free of exploitation, was a massive improvement of these people's situation. Yes it was not perfect, far from it. That is a bit like criticizing George Washington for being a slaver. In the 6 cities in Congo that I visited that were colonized after WWI, the older generation says that the current situation is worse than colonization. In places where the old wars have resumed, like near the Sudan border, it is much worse.
Unless, of course, you count the muslim conquest of Africa/Middle East/Asia as the vast bulk of colonization. Then, maybe, you have a point.
Before that, during Roman times, Africa (esp. North Africa) was a lot better off than Europe and massively better of than North America. Africa was called the bread basket of Europe in Roman times, although that did not include anything south of the Sahara where we don't seem to really have historical records for.
>So a tribe in Africa that lived perfectly fine in a relative balance, Amish style,
There is a huge difference between tribal life in a hostile environment and Amish life in contemporary America. In every Amish village you easily find people aged 70 and over, thanks to modern medicine. In regions of Africa were tribal life still exists, you won't find a single soul over 35.
In an African village there's lots and lots of easy ways to die, and it's just a part of life there. They are trying to fix this, but it'll be decades or centuries before it's done. If you go outside of villages without backup, nature will kill you. It may be hunger, germs, it may be poison plants (who kill people who think hunger is easily solved), it may be poison snakes, it may be other snakes (you best pray if you die from snake attack, it's poison that kills you), it may be large animals (although they've been hunted to near-extinction in many places, they remainder still kills lots of people), it may be people from other villages (they are not friendly towards one another, though during peace time they'll generally let people who wander off go with a beating or a wound). And if you stay inside of the village, you may still get killed by hunger, thirst, germs or snakes, and there are regular fights for tribal leadership that "usually not everybody survives". Most kids do not live to see their fifth birthday (most are never recorded, and thus not in anyone's statistics).
And that's ignoring the larger wars, that are usually between ethnicities, like the Hutu-Tutsi conflict. These wars are uncoordinated, it's just one ethnicity expanding by moving it's outer villages in a particular direction, and they know full well there's exactly one way they can get access to other's hunting/farming grounds. These wars are slow-moving, taking decades to move a few dozen kilometers (because even a village at war, without supplies, still has to farm and hunt while also killing any neighbour they come across). But slow-moving enemies doesn't help you if you don't have intelligence going further than the next village.
>Stop right there. Before colonization those lands were dominated by the ottoman empire, which exported "black gold" from there. By which I mean that they'd ride into the villages on horseback, kidnap the young into slavery, to be exported into North Africa, the Middle East or Asia. Similar things happened in India. They left the old or infirm to die of hunger and thirst, wounded and alone.
Coming out of ottoman domination, the indigenous population was literally worse off than in the stone age.
My country was a subject of Ottoman domination. The Islamic world was far more progressive a lot before the Ottoman rule you mention. And even the ottoman domination, cruel as it was, was nothing like the colonial situation. Only white people, and far away from there, would ever think it was any better.
>In the 6 cities in Congo that I visited that were colonized after WWI, the older generation says that the current situation is worse than colonization. In places where the old wars have resumed, like near the Sudan border, it is much worse.
The current situation is not the old situation. It's the post-colonial situation, and colonialism (and subsequent interventions) is what shaped the current mess.
Like the bloody divisions the British Empire ensured they left behind wherever they left (Israel/Palestine, Ethiopia/Erithraia, Cyprus/Nothern Cyprus, India/Pakistan, etc).
Congo, for one, was no actual country, with history, sovereignity etc. It was a claimed property by Europeans in Africa, that was made into a country. They drew their plot on the map and took over, not caring about what tribes it contained, what the local tensions were, etc. Of course the resulting country would have a problem after they leave.
It would be like an invader coming and making a "country" out of Texas and part of southern Mexico. He rules with iron fist (and guns and tons of blood) and keeps things stable. What will happen when he leaves? Are the Texans and the Mexicans going to enjoy peace in that BS "country" he designed, or fight for control?
"Those poor peoples have been milked to extinction by colonial overlords and left do die."
That's bullshit anti-Western propaganda. Those "poor peoples" as you call them are responsible for their own fates, just as all of us are, no matter the situation we're born into.
Pity won't save them, and neither will trillions in charity as has been demonstrated for decades. There has been no improvement from the trillions in redistributed wealth from first to third world. The only major improvements have come through vast system improvements, such as in China (and spill over effects, such as Chinese investment).
They have to take control of their own destiny. They have to fight for their own freedom, their own property rights, their own right to exist and pursue their own lives. The West is now very bankrupt, it will soon have no more trillions to throw at the global poverty issue, it's sink or swim time.
You don't get to have colonies all other the world, exploit people, invade their countries, have millions of black slaves, and then dimiss the effects of this as "anti-Western propaganda".
>Those "poor peoples" as you call them are responsible for their own fates, just as all of us are, no matter the situation we're born into. They have to take control of their own destiny.
Easy for the 200-pound armed-to-the-gills bully that keeps them down to say that. But yes, it would be nice if they managed to get control of their own destiny and pay back some justice. Like take 20-30 million white western people to use as slaves in their fields.
Ah, said by a dude on hacker news. I'm sure that a bunch of people in shitty situations so the west can exploit them will appreciate your inspiring advice. It's naive reductionistic right wing garbage like what you just posted that fucked the world up so bad in the first place.
Self-inflicted? That is a bullshit western justification. Those poor peoples have been milked to extinction by colonial overlords and left do die.
Not to mention that their very countries were designed and drawn on the map by colonial powers, like dividing loot, with no respect to local populations and tensions (or with full intent to exploit them, in a "divide and conquer" move).
Or that even today the governments of those countries are appointed and remotely controlled by western powers, with everything from under the table deals to open military support for their cronies.
Calling poverty in those places "self-inflicted" is like saying a raped woman "deserved it".