I think we have a skewed perception of ability, now that we’re connected via the internet to the whole rest of humanity.
Nature is ableist in a lot of ways… if you had diabetes in some ancient tribe you’d basically be screwed. But if you had an amputated leg, I dunno. You could still be the best flint knapper in the tribe.
I mean, think of your extended circle of friends and acquaintances, your 100 “closest” friends. In particular, think back on the community grew up in, if you’ve subsequently moved to a tech hub that accumulates rare talent. I bet picking through your hobbies there are a couple potentially useful things that you’d be a top-tier contributor in. Most people are really bad at almost everything they don’t do, after all.
I’m not going to engage in some prehistoric idealism. The past was pretty brutal. But we’d probably all die by getting little infected cuts, not because we were abandoned by our tribes.
The early nod to Agora Institute mission of “building stronger global democracy” Followed by bemoaning USAID cuts makes me wonder if the author is deliberately missing one of the most glaring examples of this.
How can we have a "stronger global democracy" if we don't currently have "global democracy" to begin with? Democracy suggests it is worldwide, whereas we know a number of countries out there are not democratic, or are barely democratic (due to corruption, war and other issues.)
This is all debatably valid, except for the fact that the entrenched system produced massive fraud, money laundering, wagging-the-dog and worst of all, a decade of domestic propaganda and anti-democratic schemes in an attempt to protect the machine from widespread exposure.
Except all of that was widely recognized and reported on at the time. People just didn't care. Lots of people will argue about this stuff until they're blue in the face, but no one is "surprised" by any of the evidence. The malfeasance was going to happen anyway, it's an inevitable consequence of global realpolitik. There's no Rule of Law on the high seas, as it were.
My point really isn't that cynical, it's more optimistic: if you're going to do all that stuff (and let's be honest and admit upfront: we were 100% going to do all that stuff) you might as well feed a bunch of people and garner some good will along the way.
On the contrary ... we LOVE the perennial underdog who stays in the fight. Like the British, once you start winning consistently you quickly earn our contempt.
Nature is ableist. Humanity rises above it to the extent that we can, but ...
reply