Video of the day -- a walk around town
This is a few minutes just walking around in an ordinary town (I'm not sure which one) in the country of Angola in western Africa. Compare what this looks like to where you live. Watching this, a couple of salient points immediately occurred to me:
First, try to imagine the mentally debilitating effect on a child growing up in a stultifying environment like this. We all know the benefits of a colorful, variegated, stimulating environment with trees and interesting things to do. Even for an adult who is used to these conditions, it seems it would be depressing living among this all the time.
Second, you are probably asking yourself "why does Angola look like this?" when in fact you should be asking "why doesn't the whole world look like this?" Because most of it did, for most of history. A typical European village a thousand years ago probably looked almost equally miserable, centuries after the loss of the advances under the Romans and centuries before the beginning of their restoration in modern times. At least some houses shown in the video have electricity, based on the overhead wires, even if it only works some of the time.
Poverty and squalor and filth are not some special condition that requires malevolence or a conspiracy to explain. They are the normal default state in which life naturally languishes when nobody undertakes the hard work of improving things. That hard work -- scientific research and the technological infrastructure it makes possible -- are why we live our lives at a level of hygiene, convenience, and variety which our ancestors of a few centuries ago literally could not have imagined. What hardships remain within the developed world are mostly due to extreme unequal distribution of wealth -- the product of a flawed economic and political system, not of science or technology.
One final observation: The life expectancy in Angola now is sixty-five years. This is among the lowest in the world and obviously far worse than that of the West or eastern Asia -- or most regions today. But it's far better than that of even the richest countries in 1900. The reason for the difference is vaccines and other modern medical innovations, which are available to some extent even in the poorest countries today.
posted by Infidel753 at 8:21 AM
8 Comments:
Really makes me appreciate all the things I take for granted…
That's really sad.
Interesting analysis. Having spent the weekend, working on my yard and basement, with lots more to do, I believe it. Ha!
That video is truly shocking. The squalor and dereliction is extraordinary. I'm sure most Brits are unaware of just how decrepit many parts of the world are and how lucky we are to live in such privileged conditions. As you say, the fundamental cause of this difference is the extreme unequal distribution of wealth.
Interesting... no pajama bottoms or Crocs. No throngs of people, face down on a mobile device. I see... positive energy. I see pride. Attire like they gave a damn before walking out the gate, even if that gate opens to a drainage ditch. I hear conversation; calm conversation. Greetings. Occasionally seeing people sitting together.
I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood that was carved out of a valley just over the ridge from steel mills of Pittsburgh PA. The home my dad built overlooked the home he was born in, in 1918. All the homes were smashed up against each other and carved out of the hillsides; single family, mulit-family, apartment buildings. The streets were narrow and precarious. We had a "stream" (open storm sewer) that ran through the (coal mine dump) hollow a few blocks down the hill from our home (we'd hunt crawfish!). My dad lived from paycheck to paycheck, but we never considered ourself "poor" (my dad earned a staggering $24k annually as a foreman at the steel mill!). My parents made it our home; taught me to respect my elders, say "Good Morning!" when walking. To be appropriately dressed before leaving he property. At that time of my life, it was the BEST world I ever knew, the ONLY place I ever felt like I wanted to live. I knew nothing else. Even when our home was caked with orange dust from the coke furnaces of the mills and the air had a stench of sulfur. I did not have some outsider telling me it was a terrible shit-hole community. All I knew was, it was home. Then I grew up and grew out.
I see photos of the south hills of Pittsburgh; many YouTube videos about the street car routes I still find fascinating. But I see the same homes; covered in tar-paper shingles with doors opening to a main drag, the same empty lots that may have evolved to community gardens or just remained dumps. To an outsider, it may look like squalor, but to those there, it's probably considered home.
Context is everything.
I have relatives who still call Southwest PA home. I've visited, but it just does nothing for me. My soul needs to be near the North Atlantic.
Paula: We all should appreciate modernity more -- it took a lot of hard work to get us here.
Mary: Yes, it's unfortunate. Things have moved on a lot over the last fifty years, but something like a quarter of the world's population still lives in dire poverty like that.
Carol: Thanks. Modern life does require work, but of course many people in places like Angola work hard too, and get far less for it.
Nick: I found it disturbing too. You probably would no longer find many places this bad in, say, Latin America or the Middle East, but sub-Saharan Africa really seems to be lagging behind in development.
When I spoke of extreme unequal distribution of wealth, I meant within developed countries (especially the US), not between countries. I realize the way I wrote it was ambiguous, so I've adjusted the wording to make it clearer. While I was writing this I was well aware that many people in the US do not have luxurious lives, even if they're much better off than people in Angola -- but that isn't because our economy doesn't produce enough for everybody, it's because the wealthy oligarchy skims off so much of the wealth the workers produce.
Rade: You make a valid point -- living in poverty does not mean needing to give up dignity. But I suspect most people in Angola would jump at the chance for a US urban standard of living, even if it meant some of their neighbors were slobs. Also, it might be dangerous there to walk around gawking at a phone instead of paying attention to your surroundings -- violent crime rates in sub-Saharan Africa are far higher than in the US.
That video made me grateful for what we have.
Me too.
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