By Diana Holbourn
Becky and Other Students Discuss World Problems, How Some Have Been Unintentionally Made Worse, and How Some Have Been Diminished
Book three of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 3 continued.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
Then one said, semi-seriously, "Do you think people who are clinically depressed could be the ones who've got the most realistic take on the world, and all the rest of us are just delusional, not feeling depressed a lot of the time because we just assume things are better than they really are?"
One of the ones who'd been talking about recent improvements in the world before said, "No! You know that's not really true. ... Or at least it only partly is, ... maybe.
"I mean, despite the nasty things some governments and lots of other people have done, there are still a lot of good things happening in the world. And you can tell how much progress has been made overall if you just imagine what it would have been like to live, say, 150 years ago. Imagine if you'd been born in around 1800. If you'd had cousins in Australia or something, you wouldn't have just been able to pick up the phone and talk to them instantly or email them, or go to visit them on the plane and be there the next day like you can today. You'd have to have sent a letter, which might have taken about three months to get there! Just think what a difference there is today, with the number of cars on the roads and planes flying at any one time.
"And since there were no fridges and freezers in those days, food would have gone off more quickly; and since most people were poor, it might have been a lot harder for a lot of people to afford to buy food, and there probably wasn't anywhere near so much around anyway, so if you were poor, and you found out that some of your family's food had gone off a bit, you might have thought you had no choice but to all eat it anyway.
"And loads more women died in childbirth in this country than do now. And there weren't any antibiotics, so even if you got a little cut and it got infected, you might end up dying. And there was loads more disease around! And there were no anaesthetics, so if you had to have a tooth pulled out or something, well you'd have to have mustered up a load of courage for a start.
"And imagine how it must have been when there was no Internet, no computers, no radios or televisions - life must have been a bit boring! And housework would have been a lot more laborious than it is today. You couldn't just put dirty clothes in a washing machine and wait for it to do the work for you; people would have had to do all their family's washing by hand, and I think it might have often taken most of the day. I read an article on the Internet about what housework would have been like in those days. It said that to do the washing, a housewife would have to go through some laborious procedure like soaking it and then scrubbing it all by hand - and in those days she might have had six or more children, so that would mean having to handwash a lot of clothes! And wringing every bit out by hand afterwards could take ages too.
"And most families would have had to go and collect the water they wanted to use from a well or a pump, or something like that, and it could take some time out of a person's day, especially since they'd have to go there several times to get all the water they needed to wash clothes and do everything else they'd need to do. And dirty water would have to be taken out of the house by hand. ... Or maybe flung out of the window if they could get away with it.
"And the article I read about this said that cooking would have been a lot more difficult too. It seems that if you wanted chicken, or something like that, you had to buy it while it was still alive, and then kill it and do whatever it took to prepare it yourself. And if you bought some fish, I think you'd have to take off its scales, cut out its guts, and do whatever else needed doing to make it fit to eat before you could cook it.
"And you couldn't just turn a knob on a cooker; I think you'd have had to cook on a stove that was powered by burning wood or coal, and you'd have had to keep taking out old ashes and putting more wood or coal in it; and you'd have had to keep a close eye on what you were cooking, because you couldn't set it to the temperature you wanted.
"No wonder people who could afford it wanted servants!
"But that just shows how far we've come! Well, at least in Western countries. There might be a lot of countries where most of the people haven't been able to come so far, but I think at least some countries are catching up pretty fast. So that just shows that as well as being full of bad news, the world's full of loads of good news too, and that despite lots of setbacks, things are getting better and better for more and more people.
"Anyway, I was talking about how much a lot of developing countries are progressing before, wasn't I. What I was thinking of saying was that thankfully, it seems things did at least get better in the 1990s, after communism stopped being a major force in the world, so there wasn't this sick competition for dominance over the world or whatever it was that had made Russia and America support brutal dictators and warring factions in lots of countries in the world before.
"And also, after lots of countries rejected communism and then started growing more prosperous when they gave their people more freedom to set up businesses and things, it seems the governments of other countries that used to be communist realised that would make their own countries more wealthy too, so they started doing the same. After all, there might be less wealth inequality in communist countries, but maybe that's because it keeps almost everyone poor, not just some people, like you get in capitalist countries. ... That's just a thought that popped into my mind just now though; I don't really know that much about it.
"But anyway, an article I read said another reason developing countries started getting richer around then was because globalisation started speeding up more than it had before, so more trade agreements were made that helped poorer countries sell goods they produced, more companies started expanding into poorer countries and employing people there, and new technologies like the Internet and mobile phones made it easier for people to get information from other parts of the world and find out about new things that could benefit their countries.
"And another thing that happened was that there was a new generation of political leaders in some countries who actually had the well-being of their people at heart, and ideas about how to improve it. Some countries changed from dictatorships to democracies, where the governments were answerable to their people so they wanted to please them more, partly because they didn't want them to vote them out of office at the next election; and there were new initiatives to build schools and hospitals and other things that benefited the people.
"And a lot of foreign aid was given to some countries that helped. Not all of it was used well, but it did do a lot to improve health and reduce diseases like malaria and TB and HIV, and it helped people organise mass vaccination programmes that protected a lot of people against some diseases; and it helped a lot of people rebuild their lives after natural disasters and wars. And things like schools were built with some of it, so children could be better educated.
"So however depressing it might be to hear about horrible things going on in the world, at least we can know that in a lot of places, big improvements are still being made. I'm pretty sure there's a lot still to do, but things in a lot of places are at least a fair bit better than they were a few decades ago."
One student said, "I read that one thing that's holding back Africa's development is corruption, since there's so much of it there, and it discourages people from starting businesses, since if they think everyone they need to buy products from to use to manufacture new things, and anyone they want to rent premises from so they have a place to make them, and who knows who else, is going to ask for bribes all the time before they'll be persuaded to let them do that, a lot of people will think there isn't any point in trying to make money, or that they won't be able to afford all the bribes that are being demanded so they won't even be able to get going. So corruption's partly what keeps some countries poor."
One of the group said, "I remember I once heard someone from Kenya say he was grateful that the British ruled Kenya for a while. I was surprised about that, since I'd assumed everyone from developing countries that used to be ruled by European ones would think it was a bad thing. But this man said he thought the living standards of a lot of people there had been improved because of it, because hospitals and schools were built that the local people benefited from. He said other things as well, but I can't remember what now.
"But it made me a bit curious; so then I read some articles about what was bad and what was good about colonialism.
"I don't know why it happened in the first place - I mean, what kind of person would think it was OK to walk into someone else's country and take over! Well, what happened was probably more complicated than that, but still. You wouldn't want someone who thought it was OK to take over other people's countries in your house, would you! I mean, they might be a guest of yours, and you might only expect them to stay for a couple of hours, but then they might say, 'I'm taking over the bedroom tonight; you can sleep on the floor.' Some guest that would be!
"I mean, I suppose you might get used to it if they also decided to take over the cooking and the washing up, and the washing and ironing and other housework, and they actually made a good job of it! But you still wouldn't want to be bossed around.
"Actually, that reminds me of one of the articles I read. It said we can tell the British Empire was a bad thing, because we know we wouldn't like it if people came and took over our country. Well, we wouldn't; but things might sometimes be a bit more complicated than that.
"I mean, it would be horrible if another power invaded this country and took over; but that's if they invaded this country as it is now. But imagine if this country was mired in vicious civil war, and had a tyrannical government that caused a lot of suffering, and it was pretty lawless so criminals caused a lot of suffering too, so, say, you might be happily working on your computer one day, and the next day you might have no computer, and be suffering serious injuries, knowing there was nothing you could do to get justice. And imagine if there were no sophisticated trade networks with other countries so not enough food was being imported, and people sometimes had to go hungry, and there were no sophisticated hospitals where you knew you could get medical treatment - imagine this country was like that, and then some other power came and took over, not too brutally, and then they managed to impose peace, and improve a lot of other things, - then who knows, maybe we'd all be grateful in the end.
"I mean, a lot of people think the Romans taking over this country was a good thing for it. I heard someone on telly say he wasn't so sure though, since he thought the Celts were more sophisticated than people give them credit for; but it just shows you that it's possible for people in a country that was taken over by another one to think it turned out to improve things in the end.
"Things probably weren't as clear-cut as that a lot of the time with the Empire. Some of the countries or areas that got taken over might have been full of lawless warring tribes, but some of them might have been peaceful and well-organised, and being taken over might have caused the people a lot of suffering.
"And obviously some things were really bad, like slavery. It seems to me that you'd have to have been a psychopath to have been willing to ship loads of people to another continent where you knew they were going to be made slaves, or to actually own some! But they say psychopaths are only a small minority of any population, so other people must have tolerated it and owned slaves too. I suppose if you were brought up with slavery just being thought of as normal, you might just accept it, although I don't know how it could have been easy to do that. I mean, imagine if you went past a plantation and saw a slave child being whipped and then crying; I can't really imagine that anyone could think, 'These slave children! The wretches will insist on crying when they're whipped, the barbarians!' and then just shrugging their shoulders and walking on.
"I think some slave owners were a lot kinder than other ones though, partly because they worked next to them and thought it was a way to prevent them causing trouble, but maybe because they had some decency too. But I don't know why they'd want to own them in that case. And I can't imagine how it would have been possible for people not to care when they read about slavery, unless they were a bit psycho. So why so many people thought it was an OK thing isn't something I can understand.
"Mind you, I think the media was still pretty much in its infancy in those days, so a lot of people in this country might not even have known it was going on, since a lot of things that would be reported on nowadays weren't in those days. After all, I suppose if you can only get from, say, Britain to America, by spending weeks and weeks on a grotty overcrowded ship, and then it might be months more before you can get back with whatever you're reporting on, it's going to be a long time before what you say can end up in a paper, and you'll have to somehow know that something pretty dramatic's happening thousands of miles away before you'll even want to bother going to find out about it! And I think it was mostly only well-off people who could read and write in those days, before schooling was made compulsory in this country. And I think it was only in the later 1860s that it became possible to transmit news between Britain and America fast, after the telegraph was invented, and a transatlantic cable was laid.
"But maybe as well as that, a lot of people's lives were so grotty there wasn't all that much difference between them and slaves, I don't know! Mind you, even in the days before antibiotics and modern medicine, and before electricity was invented, that made it possible for there to be loads of things now that they wouldn't have had in those days, life would still have been a lot better for well-off people than it would have been for poor people."
One of the group said, "It's hard to imagine how anyone could have approved of slavery. Imagine if one day you heard the prime minister announce that the government was about to make slavery legal again, and sea captains were going to be allowed to capture people from other countries and sell them. There would be an outcry, wouldn't there! People would find it difficult to believe he'd said it! But the fact that it's unthinkable that a Western government would have those policies nowadays is at least some good evidence that the world really has improved."
One student smiled and said, "Or it's evidence that the government would be too worried about being voted out of office at the next election if they had policies like that. And so they should be! There's someone on a forum I post on who's got a signature that appears under all his posts that says, 'governments should fear their people, not people their governments.' Maybe there's something in that, although you'd hope that at least Western governments wouldn't even be tempted to do anything bad enough that they'd need to be scared off doing it.
"Anyway, to get light-hearted for a while, One day I asked the man with that signature where it came from, and he said, 'It's a speech by a fictional character based on several hundred years of philosophical tradition I think.'
"I joked, 'What? So someone delved into several hundred years of philosophical tradition, just so when they were several hundred years old, they could come up with that? Was it someone in the House of Commons? Oh sorry, you said it was a fictional character. It was the bit about them being several hundred years old and carrying out such a boring pursuit as spending their time delving into several hundred years of philosophical tradition in order to invent speeches that made me think they must be in the House of Commons. Or should I say working for someone there.'
"There was another time when I complimented someone on the forum, saying I liked his new signature; but then I had a thought, and said, 'Actually, it's suddenly occurred to me that that post will still say I like your signature no matter what you change it to; so if you change it to something really offensive, it'll still say I like it; so what will people think?'
"There was another time when someone there said something gloomy about the world being in chaos, and I joked, 'Well, I know Just the person to put everything right! You are the man! You have been specially chosen to save the world from destruction! Today if possible. So, tell us: How do you intend to go about it? Or will it take a little planning first? OK, tell us tomorrow.'"
The students grinned.
Then the one who'd told them about conversations she'd had with a man who'd called himself Chess Master and his friend who called himself Memnon on a forum said, 'You know that bloke on the forum I was telling you about earlier who called himself Chess Master? He was talking to one of his Sri Lankan friends, Memnon on there one day in his Sri Lankan language, with a few English words mixed in, and I got the impression he was just doing it to be annoying, deliberately trying to wind us up by saying things we wouldn't understand. So I joked, 'You do realise, don't you ya scum, that one more message like those to Memnon, and the world is going to catastrophically plunge into an ice age and implode under the pressure of the ice, and we're all going to die horribly! Stop it this minute!'
"The forum went down for a little while after that, for some reason, and I joked, 'Gorr, now Chess Master's even made the forum server crash! Thank goodness it's back so quickly!'
"He joked that he was going to start being rude to me, and called me a coconut-headed turnip.
"Then he started talking to his friend in his Sri Lankan language again, and I was joking around, pretending I understood what he was saying and translating it. I said things like, 'For the benefit of most of the forumites: I actually happen to know the Somali lingo Chess Master and Memnon are talking. I may translate for your information. Basically, Chess Master's ordering Memnon to wash his socks and perm his hair. He's also addressing him as "Slave", and calling him a turnip and a coconut. Why Memnon isn't objecting, I don't know.'
"They said something else to each other in their Sri Lankan language, and I joked, 'Chess Master's ordered poor Memnon to deny what's happening. But he also ordered the poor thing to lick his feet clean and then rinse them gently in warm soapy water, then massage them for half an hour. ... Wow, I nearly missed that bit: He also wants him to dig him yet another swimming pool in his garden, ... by tomorrow! Poor Memnon!'
"Memnon joked, 'Carrot Top, you are translating the orders of the Somali president!'
"(Remember my username's Carrot Top on there.) I joked, 'What? You mean Chess Master's the Somali president?'
"They kept on talking in their language, in between being insulting. So I joked, 'Wow, right in front of us, the Somali president has the cheek to order Memnon to get under his sixteenth luxury car and mend it!'
"And I said, 'Now he's insulting me again. Still, I bet that's the way he talks to all his slaves as well, when he isn't ordering them to lick his feet clean or lick the rubbish in the palace skips clean to make it presentable for when it's collected.'"
The students grinned.
Then the conversation turned serious again, as the one who'd brought up the subject of slavery before said, "Talking about slavery for real though, I wonder if some African leaders really do have servants or slaves they treat like that nowadays. I read that there used to be a slave trade in Africa itself at the time when Europeans started shipping Africans across the sea to be slaves, and wars were even fought by some groups of Africans against other ones, specifically so they could capture people from them to sell as slaves. That's how European slave traders got to own them to sell. It's pretty gross really!
"I think I can understand how some people from this country might have started off deciding to make people from other countries slaves hundreds of years ago. Not that it's justifiable ... of course. I'd better say that before you all kill me. And I might be totally wrong in thinking it had anything to do with this, but apparently, slavery's been going on since ... I dunno, even near the beginning of time or something! But in about the 16th century, pirates from North Africa would come and kidnap people from places on some of our coasts and take them away as slaves and commit atrocities against them; so maybe other people from those areas decided to get some kind of revenge by capturing some people from there, I don't know. It would probably have been better if they'd decided to patrol the waters off our coasts with gunboats to stop pirates from other countries taking people from this country slaves in the first place, but I don't really know much about what did go on.
"But anyway, as well as that, I heard that pirates from European countries used to take each other's pirates slaves, and they might have worked as slaves for a few years and then escaped, and joined a ship from their own country where they went and took other people slaves. So it seems as if being captured and made to work as a slave by other countries' pirates was a bit of an occupational hazard if you wanted to be a pirate yourself! I don't know that much about it though, so I can't be sure how much it was like that.
"But goodness knows who decided to turn taking slaves into something like an industry! I think lots of countries were at it though, including the leaders of African tribes who sold other Africans into slavery.
"It seems to have been a pretty barbaric world in those days! I'm glad I didn't live in it! And I think the countries that took part in the slave trade didn't treat most of their own people much better than the slaves! You know, while they were shipping people from other countries over to America and places to be slaves, a lot of their own people were working in terrible unsafe conditions in factories and mines, where accidents were common and hours were long, and wages were low, and children had to work hours that were just as long as the hours adults worked, even little children.
"So it seems that when people who only care about themselves are in government, and not many people can vote, so the people who are suffering can't try voting them out, which was how things were in the early 19th century in this country, then anyone who isn't them or one of their supporters might be at risk! That's probably especially if some MP's have got second jobs on the boards of businesses who employ people working in bad conditions, who want to make as much money as they can, so they don't want to spend any on improving safety if they can help it.
"I heard that some politicians spent years trying to get laws put through parliament to abolish and change things, like slavery, and long working hours in unsafe conditions, and the employment of children, opposed all the way by politicians who had business interests in things like that, or who had relatives who did, and that kind of thing. But the ones who wanted to improve things at least had quite a bit of success in the end, so conditions at the start of the 20th century might have still been bad in some industries, but some big industries were at least much better regulated than they had been a few generations earlier. And after Britain banned the slave trade in 1807, the British navy was used to free people from ships they caught trading them as slaves.
"And it seems that a lot of improvements were made to the countries Britain and France ruled during the 19th century as well. Some pretty bad things still happened, I think, but quite a few good things happened too.
"I read that tropical medicines were developed at first because there was a big incentive to put money and effort into developing them after a lot of people sent out from Britain to help rule tropical countries died of tropical diseases, along with a lot of the people who were native to the places. So the rulers knew that only if they discovered ways to get rid of the bugs that were causing the diseases could they make a success of working there. So a lot of research in Britain and France went into finding out how to cure and prevent those diseases, and then hospitals were built that helped the native people get over the diseases too, so they benefited from the new treatments.
"And lots of people in Africa and other places benefited from learning English as their official language, and to a lesser extent French or Spanish, because it helped tribes communicate with each other, when they hadn't been able to understand each other before because they spoke different languages. I think there were loads of languages that only small numbers of people spoke, say a few hundred sometimes, with neighbouring tribes speaking completely different ones. I hardly know anything about it, but I think that's the way it sometimes was. So when they all started speaking one language as their official one, I think it could even mean they could become friendlier, and much more easily make trading agreements, and not want to fight battles against each other that they might have done before when they were strangers. And people who've grown up speaking a language that millions of people around the world speak as their official one will likely find it easier to communicate if they travel to other parts of the world too.
"Anyway, it seems that a lot of bad and terrible things happened along with a fair number of pretty good things, so whether you thought British rule was a good or bad thing would depend on who you were, when and where you lived, whether you were benefiting or losing out, the competence and humanitarianism or bad governance and callousness of the individuals who happened to be ruling Britain or the area you were living in at the time, and what you were hearing on the grapevine about what was going on, including whether you were hearing any hate speech, accurate or inaccurate, that might influence the way you thought about things.
"I tried to find out more information about it, but it takes a bit of effort, because you get some articles that make out that colonialism was far more good than bad, not mentioning some of the bad things, and then you get other ones that try to persuade you it was all bad, and even blame Europeans or the British for things you realise weren't their fault, or weren't all their fault, once you've looked into things a bit more.
"One example of that was that India and Pakistan used to be one country, just India; but in the late 1940s, when Britain was giving India its independence, it got divided into India and Pakistan, and then the two of them started fighting each other, and there was a lot of brutality and killing, where Hindus who found themselves living as a small minority in the Muslim country - Pakistan - were attacked, and the same thing happened to Muslims who found themselves as a hated minority in the Hindu country. Goodness knows why! It seems they just hated each other, and suddenly thought they'd found a cracking good excuse to fight each other, with both majorities thinking it would force the minorities to leave the areas that had just been designated as meant for the majorities and go to their own areas! But I'm not sure about that. I haven't read much about that bit at all.
"But I read one or two articles that blamed Britain for dividing up the country. But then I read a long one that explained that the person pushing for the division was actually a Muslim leader of one of the parties in government, who complained that Hindus mistreated the Muslims so they needed their own state, and he wouldn't change his mind, so the person Britain had sent to negotiate with him agreed in the end, although no one else wanted it, not Britain, and not the Hindus.
"It does seem that the partition into India and Pakistan was done cackhandedly and ignorantly, with not enough thought put into it, and the person Britain had sent out to negotiate the independence agreement with the Indian leaders and then decide what to do, who was actually a member of the royal family who was pro-independence for India, - which might have been why they chose him, - seriously wasn't up to the job! Actually, I reckon one of us could have done a much better job than him. I mean, it might only have taken a bit of psychological knowledge about what makes for successful negotiations and good problem-solving!
"I don't know, since I haven't read all that much about it; but if it had been me negotiating with the Muslim leader who wanted India to be divided into Muslim and Hindu countries, I would first of all have told him I wanted to hear in as much detail as possible what his concerns were, and all the reasons why he thought the country ought to be partitioned into Muslim and Hindu areas. Then when he'd told me all about it, I reckon I'd have asked him to just imagine for a minute that the country didn't get partitioned, and think about what would be second-best, writing a list of all the reasons he thought the country needed to be divided, and then going through the list, thinking about them all in turn, and seeing if he could come up with ideas for alternative ways of solving each one of the problems if partition didn't happen.
"And if he didn't want to think of possible alternative ways of solving the problems, or couldn't, I'd have tried to think of some myself, and then talked about the pros and cons of each one of them with him, to try to come to some agreement with him about which ones would be the best options.
"And I would have told him that if he wanted, I would give his list of problems to the Hindu party that really didn't want the country to be divided, and say, 'OK, these are problems that seriously need sorting out, so if we're not going to divide the country into Muslim and Hindu bits, we need to think up ways to solve these problems; so I'd like you to try and come up with ideas that you know the Muslim leader will like, about how to solve all these problems if we don't divide up the country.' So they'd both end up working together to think up solutions, instead of being bitter rivals, like they were at first.
"I don't think this man they sent in tried to do anything like that. I might be wrong, but from what I've read, it seems he just tried to persuade the Muslim leader to accept something different from what he wanted, and the negotiations got stuck going round and round in little circles, where the Muslim leader would say he wanted India to be divided so Muslims could have their own homeland, and then this man who'd been sent in would tell him that India couldn't be divided without various problems or conditions, and then the Muslim leader saying he didn't want those things, and this man who'd been sent in saying that in that case, he'd have to accept that the country couldn't be divided, and the Muslim leader saying he wanted it divided; and then the whole thing would start again, and it would go round and round like that for ages.
"The Muslim leader probably just got more insistent the more this man tried to convince him to change his mind, since I think people tend to do that when they get put on the defensive, and they think they'll lose out if they accept what the other person's trying to insist on. But since the Muslim leader wouldn't give in, eventually the man who'd been sent in to negotiate with him agreed he could have what he wanted. And when he got it, all hell broke loose, with all the fighting!
"But actually, I read that the Muslim leader hadn't demanded that the country was divided at first, but had just wanted to make sure the Muslims had enough power in parliament so as to make sure it wouldn't be easy for the Hindus to have such a majority they could easily make laws that put the Muslims at a real disadvantage; but the Hindu leaders refused the demand, since Muslims only made up about a fifth of the country's population, so they thought they should only have a fifth of the MP's, I think. I think the Hindu leaders refused to budge on that, so the Muslim leader decided there was nothing for it but to have a separate Muslim state, and then both sides got more stubborn in their demands as they got more annoyed with each other, I think.
"It's a shame they couldn't have come to some kind of agreement where there would only be a fifth of the number of Muslim MP's as Hindus, but that if there was any new law or action being proposed that would mean Muslims might be put at some kind of disadvantage, the vote of each Muslim MP would be treated as if it was the equivalent of the votes of five MP's, so it would be as if equal numbers of Muslims and Hindus were voting, or something like that.
"But anyway, as for the articles I've read that just blame Britain for the problems that happened when India was divided, they're a bit one-sided; I mean, it wasn't just the man from the royal family who was negotiating with these leaders and the people who sent him out there who somehow believed he'd be up to the job who were at fault; I mean, for one thing, surely the Muslims and Hindus who started killing and torturing each other immediately after the division was made ought to bare some of the blame for what happened! But you just never get that impression from some of the things you read; you'd think it was all Britain's fault!
"And then I've read some opinion pieces that aren't just a little bit one-sided, but they're either full of anger and give the impression that the British Empire was just nothing but evil from beginning to end, - which it can't really have been, or what countries would ever have wanted to join the Commonwealth and be associated with Britain after it broke up - and then you get some articles that are completely the opposite, that try to persuade you the Empire was fantastic for the world!
"Maybe it's because of this old problem you read about in psychology books, where when people believe a certain thing, whatever it is, they're not going to be interested in reading about anything that contradicts their point of view, unless they're doing it specifically to find flaws in it so they can contradict it, because they won't see the point because they'll assume it's wrong, and maybe subconsciously they won't want to have their views challenged and possibly end up believing it; but they'll be attracted to information that says the kinds of things they can easily believe because they're similar to what they believe already, so if they read things that are exaggerated, or aren't quite true in other ways, they might easily be able to believe them, since they fit in with the beliefs they've already got, so they won't see any need to investigate to find out if what they're reading is accurate, even if it sounds worse or better than they ever thought things were; so their points of view might get more and more extreme over time, because they won't read anything that challenges them.
"Then they might repeat what they've heard to other people, angrily or proudly or whatever, convinced it's absolutely true.
"Well, I don't know if that kind of thing was going on with the writers of those articles. It's just a possibility.
"Anyway, whoever was most at fault in India, and whatever else happened as a result of colonialism, it's a bit late to do anything about it now! The best thing to do seems to be for everyone to do their bit to try to make sure the world gets to be a better place in the future!"
The students agreed.
Then the one who'd been talking before about her teasing matches with the man on the forum whose username was Chess Master said, "I don't know why so many people have wanted to go to war over the years! It's a pity they can't have confined themselves to just arguing about their differences on Internet forums. ... Well, apart from the fact that those didn't exist till the Internet came along.
"Imagine if there were forums where world leaders and other politicians would argue, and anyone could go and read what they said, and we discovered they were saying things to each other like, 'It's cretins like you who are holding world progress back!' and, 'Why do you have to have such ignorant policies, you creepy lump of lard?' Anyone who was expecting them to seem intellectual and educated might get a bit of a shock!
"When I was on this forum with Chess Master and his friend Memnon who pretended he was a commander of ancient Greek armies, I sometimes used to tease Memnon, after he said insulting things to me or about me. One day he said something rude to me, and I joked,
"'You poltroon! Off with his head! What are you talking about? Stop this nonsense right away, or I'll tell everybody about your guilty secret that you were the one who opened the gates of Rome and let all those barbarians in. Yes, you could be said to be almost entirely responsible for the collapse of the Roman Empire! It's a disgrace! You are a criminal of the highest order!'
"He joked, 'Oh and I also sold weapons to both the romans and the barbarians. And I follow the "dead men don't bite" rule of Theodotus. So what the heck I don't care.'
"I said, 'You sold weapons to both the Romans and the barbarians? So you didn't care who won, as long as they went to war and you made lots of money out of it? You low life!
"'And I heard that after the volcano in Pompeii, instead of caring about the people who died, you thought it was a brilliant money-making opportunity, and went there to collect lots and lots of bits of solidified lava, and you had them all carved into all kinds of statues and ornaments and jewellery, and you sold them in shops all over the Roman Empire. You made lots and lots of money, and it wasn't long before all the upper class Roman women were wearing jewellery sold in your shops and you lived the high life. It's scandallous!'
"Memnon joked, 'Actually it wasn't all about money. I was conveniently distracting the Romans while I was fighting the Egyptians. I was serving the Carthaginians as a mercenary general at the time. I didn't want any roman interference. You always have to look at the big picture.
"'And as for the jewellery, I have no idea how to make it from bits of lava, other than finding rare gems and diamonds from inside volcanos. But I didn't get into that business until I helped the Egyptians massacre the Carthaginians. Well don't take it badly but they offended me by comparing me with Hannibal, a worthy general but nothing in comparison with me.'
"I joked, 'OK. But I also heard you were the one who ordered the temple in Jerusalem to be destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. What did you do that for? And it wasn't even the first time you did it, was it. I heard that 500 years earlier, you whispered enticingly in the ear of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, telling him how much fun it would be to invade Jerusalem and how much treasure he could get if he destroyed their temple and looted all the gold in it. That sounds like a terrible thing to have done! Those poor people of Jerusalem! What did you do that for? I know the history books don't mention you, but I have my sources who I trust absolutely!'
"He told me my informers were stupid and unreliable, and that I ought to open a history book once in a while, since then I'd discover he never fought for the Romans.
"I joked, 'Why don't you trust my informers? They've all been to propaganda training school, you know, - good, educated people!'
"He said that what had actually happened in ancient Babylon was that Nebuchadnezzar had asked him to find and bring him the most beautiful women in the world, and since it was such an impossible task, it was really time-consuming, and Nebuchadnezzar became impatient; so he came up with an idea to divert his attention, and got the king's political adviser to pass it on to him. He didn't realise Nebuchadnezzar would actually go through with it! ... But it did mean he built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
"Not long after that, Memnon said something insulting to me, and I joked, 'Well at least I don't go around pouring termites and dry rot into all the best buildings, like you do. I have it on the best authority that all the most beautiful buildings from the Roman and Medieval times would still be standing if it wasn't for you. There would be no ruins; all old buildings would be perfectly preserved. Now what's the point of ruining all the most beautiful architecture in the world?'
"He said, 'Termites! Actually it was dynamites. I think you must have misheard your informer. Ah, mistakes. Easily made - we're all human. Well, possibly with the exception of you. But if you're not human, perhaps you're in a species that isn't known for making mistakes, so you're an anomaly who ought to be ashamed of yours.'
"I joked, 'Maybe things are worse than my informers thought! But I'm going to believe most of what they say whatever you say about them. They told me another interesting piece of information:
"'They said that once, when you were about to lead thousands of troops into battle against the Romans, you saw a couple of signs in the sky that looked oval and round. You interpreted them as meaning that instead of using the usual weapons, the gods were commanding you to use rotten eggs and rotten fruit against the Romans. So you ordered all your troops to put down their weapons, and you all went to local farms asking for any rotten eggs and bad fruit they had. When you all had some, you marched on the Romans, and charged into battle, throwing them at them.
"'At first, the Romans were startled, not being sure what had happened. They wondered if your troops had a new scary secret weapon and they ought to retreat. But as they cleaned rotten egg and over-ripe fruit off themselves, their commander shouted at them not to be cowardly but to charge like men! So they got their courage back up and charged! Since your troops didn't have any weapons, they all turned and fled for the hills! You suffered the most spectacular defeat in the history of your career. Is that true?'
"Memnon said there was no truth in that whatsoever.
"I joked, 'I believe my informers much more than I believe you. Something else they tell me is so shocking I just have to believe it! I heard that in about the year 200, you led a band of barbarians against Rome. Rome was extremely sophisticated in those days; they had electricity, and even computers and the Internet, televisions, telephones, CD players, fridges, and all kinds of modern things. They had a sophisticated rail network, and all the trains ran on time. And the streets and motorways were full of cars. But you and your barbarians devastated the place so terribly that all that was destroyed, and they didn't know how to invent it again. It would take over 1500 years before even electricity was discovered again! It was all your fault. Why did you do such a terrible thing? ... Or are you going to say my informers are talking rubbish again?'
"He said they must have been trying to predict the future to please me, not talking about the past, and I must have made a silly mistake and misheard them.
"I said, 'No, they were sure it happened in the past. And they told me something I have to believe, even if some of what they said about other things wasn't quite accurate: They said you once found a tiny kitten that had been abandoned. You picked it up and cared for it. You fed it by dipping your finger in milk and letting it lick your finger. You grew very fond of it. You got so fond of it that you ordered all your thousands of troops to call you General Kitten Cuddler every time they addressed you. You even let some of the officers shorten it to Kitten or Cuddles. Civilians walking by marvelled when they heard an officer say to you, "Hello General Cuddles." Surely that's true!'
"He said, 'Well that's partially true: This kitten you mentioned was an Indian tiger I got as a gift. And I got fond of it. So what?
"'and my men don't call me code names or any pet names. There's a code of conduct in the army, you know! Even if I ordered them to call me a pet name, they'd call me "My lord", or "Commander". My status was always Commander Memnon, and it will always be.
"'No matter what you hear, it's always only ever half true!'
"I joked, 'What about this new thing I hear? Scary stuff! Now they're telling me you control the weather. They say you were the one who caused global warming. You thought people would like it. But they say you're so fed up with all the criticism global warming's getting that you're going to punish the world by causing another ice age, and it'll start right on the equator! Yikes!'
"He said I was right about that one, and that Chess Master was in the plan too."
The students giggled.
One said, "I suppose nuclear war would reverse global warming pretty quickly if it caused a nuclear winter. It's probably not the ideal way to achieve it though."
Then one of them said seriously, "I heard that war sped up the industrial revolution, because there was so much demand for new weapons and things. Still, that's not the ideal way to advance technology either!"
The student who'd been talking about the pros and cons of the British Empire before said, "One thing I read about colonialism that could be thought of as an advantage was that wherever Britain and France ruled, they took democracy, because they set up governments like their own, with parliaments where the things that were being done to govern the country could be debated, which were sometimes big improvements on what had gone before, where kings and chiefs and the like had sometimes controlled the lives of their people, ordering them to fight in whatever brutal campaigns against surrounding tribes they felt like carrying out, or other unfair things, without them having much say in it. Real democracy means you can vote out tyrants, although quite a lot of supposed democracies across the world nowadays aren't real ones. Governments rig elections, and suppress opposition figures."
One of the students said, "I read that one reason Africa hasn't developed more than it has is because there's so much corruption there, including that it can be hard for some kids to get a decent education, because in countries where primary school education's supposed to be free, teachers can demand the parents pay for it; but if parents are too poor, they can't, so it means their children don't get a proper education, so they can't get such good jobs, so the country loses out on what could have been their skills.
"I read that one reason why corruption got so bad in the first place was that when a lot of Africa was ruled by colonial powers, not much effort was made to educate the people being ruled and give them the skills to rule and take top jobs in a modern-style country. I suppose that's not surprising, since the people in charge who came in from overseas probably wanted them all themselves.
"But it meant that when those countries were given independence and the people who'd been running things left, there weren't good systems of government and good legal systems and so on in place, run by locals; and people who'd taken the lead in the fight for independence took leadership jobs themselves, even though they didn't really have the skills to run a government well; they just wanted those jobs, maybe because they liked the idea of the money and power they could get if they had them. Apparently they wanted to live as luxuriously as the top colonial rulers and their families had, and it didn't matter to them that spending so much money on luxurious lifestyles for themselves and their own families and friends would mean the money couldn't be spent on actually improving the lives of poor people.
"I actually heard about one of those men who'd fought in a war for independence, who used to make angry-sounding speeches about how much he hated Britain for once ruling his country, but who loved the idea of being like the British upper classes so much that he took on all the trappings of a British upper class lifestyle, like going to the opera, and having afternoon tea with little china cups. And I think he had shelves full of books with impressive-sounding titles, that I wouldn't be surprised if he never read, but that he just had to make him look cultured or something! He certainly wasn't any good at running his country, going by the mess it got into, with million per cent inflation or something, so a lot of his own people couldn't even afford to eat well, since prices would rise massively even during the course of a day!
"And people like him gave other jobs to people who weren't skilled at doing them either; they just gave them out as rewards for helping in the independence struggle, to people who probably just wanted them to get money and power too. They would favour their own friends and family or their ethnic group above everyone else.
"I can't be absolutely sure all this is true, since I've only just read a few articles about it, so I don't know enough about it to be sure they're accurate; but considering the state of a lot of those countries, and other things you hear, it seems to me that it's pretty likely!
"And I read that when the new governments decided to set up industries, like to manufacture things they could use to export to bring wealth into their countries, and to do things to improve the countries themselves, such as building schools and things, and also when they wanted to create organisations that would supposedly keep law and order like police forces, the jobs they wanted them to do went to their supporters, not to the people who'd be able to do them the best. So it seems they often didn't get done very well.
"And when the new organisations run by people who didn't have enough skills to run them, but just wanted to use them to make money, were given the task of improving things for other groups of people in their countries, they took lots of any money they were given to supposedly enable them to achieve what they'd been asked to do for themselves, so they themselves could live in luxury. So it seems the ordinary workers in a lot of those companies stayed poor, and sometimes worked in bad conditions, while the top people got rich.
"And people employed as teachers and doctors and in other kinds of work that was paid for by the government wanted to benefit too, so they would often not turn up to work, and not be penalised for it, because they were government supporters. So children could end up deprived of a good education, which would have given them valuable skills that would have helped them get good jobs when they grew up. ... Well, I'm talking in the past tense, but it seems it's still going on in a lot of places.
"From what I've read, it seems that profiteering happens in lots of parts of the world, where business leaders are allowed to get away with it. I think countries all need laws to stop workers being exploited. And I wouldn't be surprised if in every country, powerful business leaders have enough influence over governments to stop them making laws that would hurt their profits, either because politicians come from their families, or they're a part of those businesses themselves, or have an interest in them making as much profit as possible because they've got shares in them, or the business leaders have the power to give or withhold big donations to them, so it's in the politicians' interests not to make laws that would mean the businesses couldn't make so much money because they had to spend more money improving pay and conditions for their workers.
"Then again, sometimes the opposite's happened, and politicians have put so much pressure on businesses to pay workers high wages that the businesses haven't been able to succeed, because they've had to spend so much money on their workers they've had to put the prices of their products up to pay for it, so not many people have wanted to buy them, so they've had to lay workers off in the end.
"Really, you need some kind of balance, where workers aren't being exploited, but businesses can still make a decent profit, so they can spend a lot of the money from it developing their businesses so they can employ more people; and also they do need some incentive to keep going, because if business leaders can't make a decent amount of money for themselves, they'll likely start wondering why it's worth bothering to run their businesses, and go off and do other things instead, where they're not employing lots of people and enabling them to make money."
The student who was talking paused to eat something. During the silence, they heard a bird chirping outside.
One of the students said in a flash of irritation, "Ignorant bird, sounding so cheerful! Doesn't it know we're talking about depressing things in here?"
One of the others grinned and said, "It would be a surprise if it did, wouldn't it! Scientists would be really interested in that, to find a bird that could not only tell what people are talking about, but hear it clearly from some distance away on the other side of a window!"
One of the others chuckled and said, "Yeah! Just imagine if there was a nature programme on BBC1 or something, where the presenter claimed that the entire scientific community had recently come to believe that birds can understand human speech, and hear so well they can tell what people are saying from dozens of metres away!"
They all giggled, and one said, "I think the viewers might think the entire scientific community must have gone stark raving bonkers in that case, or they'd think the presenter might be delusional or something, although they might think what he said must be true if it was on the BBC."
One of them said, "I remember one day in the last summer holidays, I woke up early one morning and heard the dawn chorus. Another thing I could hear was my dad snoring! I thought there was quite a contrast between the nice sound of the birds and the sound of snoring. But just imagine if the birds heard it, and for some reason they thought it would be fun to imitate it, or they liked the noise so much they thought they'd like to make snoring noises from then on instead of chirping, and they all managed to imitate it really well, so from then on, whenever anyone in the area woke up early enough to hear the dawn chorus, instead of birdsong, they'd hear this horrible noise that sounded like a whole load of mini snores outside! I wonder what they'd think must be going on!"
Then one student said, "Actually, you think birdsong sounds pretty, but I read that some scientists think the birds singing in the dawn chorus are males, and what they're really doing is trying to warn off other males from their territory, and attract mates. The sound they make doesn't sound like a warning to me, but I suppose you never know. If it is, then maybe that bird outside isn't singing because it's cheerful; maybe it's really saying something like, 'Rotten old humans! They've vandalised this place so much, there isn't any greenery left! No soft earth where I can find worms to eat, and no fruit trees with fruit I can nibble on, all because they want to build those brick structures they seem to like so much! Why can't the wretches be content to live in nests like us birds do!'"
They giggled.
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