After a long break in posting to make room for finals and other such testing, I thought it would be a good idea to start up again with the product of one of my finals. This semester I took an anthropology course titled: Anthropology and Contemporary World Problems. This course dealt with cultural anthropology and related it to problems in the world today to help bring students an understanding of the cause and scope of global issues. I found the course very enlightening and a lot of fun. The final exam was a take-home essay, and I thought that my essay was relevant to the scope of this blog. So, without further ado, I present my essay.
Novus Terra: The Problems of a Global Community
(Anthropology Final Essay)
Abram Nothnagle
In every age there is a crisis. It
would be nice to believe that the problems of today are unique and will go away
once they are solved, but such a belief leaves the truth far behind. Every
period in history has seen its share of starvation and disease, fought against
extinction in countless wars, and has been subject to a never-ending stream of
prophecies of doom and destruction. In the face of such historical plights, how
can we say that our problems are unique and that our fears are valid? We can
say that our problems are unique because we now have a chance to break the
cycle of crisis, and we can say that our fears are valid because our crises
could destroy us if we let them. In every age there is a crisis, but in this
age there is a chance to escape the prophecies of the End of the World.
Our world, not just one individual
country, is faced with a number of problems. Life would be too easy if we only
had one thing to worry about, so the universe, in its infinite wisdom and
benevolence, has decided to make things interesting and has provided us with a
veritable sea of horrible and terrifying obstacles to occupy our imaginations.
We are threatened by a total collapse of our environment, by rampant starvation
and overpopulation, by ethnic conflict and the threat of war, and by the ever
present need to reach beyond the limited bounds of Mother Earth. Which problem
will we solve first? Which of these quandaries will get the better of us and
drag us down into the oblivion of societal collapse? Only time, and the human
will to persevere, can tell.
The first and foremost concern on
the mind of the developed world is that of “Global Warming” or climate change.
Mankind, with all of its ingenuity and technology, has found method after
method of destroying the very planet that they live on. From even the great
city of Ur, humans have been destroying the land they live on and themselves
with it. For the people of Ur, destruction was wrought by over-irrigation and
the resulting salinization - the accumulation of salts in soil due to
irrigation that causes a loss in fertility1 - that accompanied it2.
Their problem was that their agriculture was unsustainable, and it
destroyed the land that they farmed. They grew too much, too fast, and had no
way of knowing what they were doing to the earth. For them, there was no
solution, and their civilization collapsed. Still today, all over the world,
irrigation systems much like those used in Ur are being used. This has lead to
a similar problem of salinization in the Middle East, Northern China, Central
Asia, in the San Joaquin Valley of California, in the Colorado River Basin, and
countless other world regions3. This repercussion of irrigation is
causing a massive drop in agricultural yields worldwide and has been the cause
of much starvation and misery. The problem is not even over yet, unless
something is done to reverse, or at least stop, the process of salinization,
then starvation will only continue and get worse, and diseases bred from the
dead land could threaten many more lives. The only way to “de-salinize” soil is
to flush it with water, a costly solution that does not necessarily solve the
problem as it contaminates ground water and nearby rivers. If a farmer is
extremely wealthy, or supported by a wealthy nation, then desalinization plants
can be constructed to remove the salt from rivers to make them usable after
desalinization of the soil has taken place, or to counteract the problem of
salinization before desalinization becomes necessary. But what can be done in
countries where this process of desalinization is too costly? Sadly, unless
more technology is developed, nothing can really be done to reclaim this
overused soil. The only true solution to the problem in such cases is to stop
it from happening in the first place. Salinization can be prevented during
irrigation by allowing 10-20% of the water used to “leach” into the soil, that
is, the water must be allowed to soak into the soil and be drained off to carry
away excess salt4. But even this method of prevention is not free of
problems. The salt carried away by the leaching moves down-river and could
contaminate water supplies or damage the fertility of soil elsewhere. Given
this problem, it is important to practice sustainable agriculture. The risk to
the water system from irrigation must be considered and agriculture
appropriately controlled to prevent any further damage. There are no easy
solutions to the environmental problems that we face, but there are solutions.
When it comes to the environment,
humans have to deal with much more than just salinization. Global climate
change is one of the biggest buzz words in the media today, and it is of
paramount concern to our environment. Primarily, global climate change is due
to the overall heating of the atmosphere as a result of an increase in the
levels of so called “greenhouse gases”, so named for the “greenhouse effect”
that they have on our plane. As these gases accumulate, gases like carbon
dioxide and methane, infrared radiation is absorbed into the atmosphere and not
released back into space, as it normally would be. This process causes a
gradual increase in global temperatures, which can have a wide range of
detrimental effects on the planet as a whole. Anything from massive crop dying
to seemingly paradoxical brutal winters.
Ever since the invention of the
gasoline powered automobile in 1885 by Karl Benz5, our atmosphere
has had to deal with an ever-increasing influx of carbon dioxide and other
pollutants, such as lead. At the outset of the automobile, this machine was a
luxury item that could only be afforded by a few individuals, and was thus not
much of a threat to the environment. However, many businesses found an
opportunity to turn a massive profit, and the production cost of motor vehicles
dropped dramatically, opening up the floodgates for consumer vehicles. First it
was only the developed world that could afford vehicles for every citizen, but
now we are seeing an increase in purchasing power around the world, and many
more motor vehicles are finding their way onto the roads. We have to look no
farther than China to find where this is becoming a growing concern. The
population of China is 1.3 billion people6, who are increasingly
able to afford vehicles. Compounding the problem of the massive increase in the
number of motor vehicles on the road is the problem of China’s low emission
standards. Gasoline sold in China is not unleaded, as it is in places like the
United States, putting out millions of tons of toxic chemicals on top of the
choking CO27. All over the world trends like this
continue. Developing nations build large industries and give their populations
more buying power to purchase pollutant-emitting vehicles with little
regulation on the emissions that these vehicles give off.
A similar problem to that of motor
vehicles comes from industry itself. Much of the world’s electrical power is
generated from coal burning power plants or from the combustion of other
pollutant-emitting substances. Metals, like steel, used for anything from cars
to trashcans are smelted by burning coal, and virtually every product used in
daily life comes from large manufacturing plants that are massive contributors
of environmental pollutants. The most obvious harmful byproduct from these
industries is the carbon dioxide from the burning of materials and the
accompanying soot, but the problem is deeper than that. Almost every
manufacturing plant has some form of toxic byproduct that is not an atmospheric
pollutant. Whether it be formic acid from the production of rubber products or
the chemical wastes from the production of energy drinks, more often than not,
these byproducts are dumped into water systems, like rivers or lakes, and
contaminate the ecosystem for miles around any given production plant. In
places like the United States or countries where the Kyoto Protocols have been
signed and heavy regulations environmental regulations are enforced, this
problem is not so bad, but many countries around the world haven’t signed the
Kyoto Protocols or have not enforced any real form of environmental
regulations. As industry booms in these developing countries, the problem of
global warming only gets worse and worse. Nowhere has this been more obvious
than in the former Soviet Union where steel-producing plants pumped hundreds of
thousands of tons of waste into the atmosphere and pesticides and chemical
fertilizers all but destroyed the ecosystem8.
Currently, climate change has
reached such and advanced state that it may seem like humanity will never be
able to reclaim the ecosystem that once housed it, and this might be true to a
certain extent, but hope is not lost. Much of the progress of climate change
can be halted, if not reversed, by simple regulations. Most nations are
attempting to enforce some form of environmental control over the multitude of
corporations that produce the consumer goods that have ruined our soil and
atmosphere, but it is not enough. Further regulations are needed, and research
into sustainable sources of energy must be furthered so that solar panels and
windmills can replace the coal burning furnaces that provide us with much of
our power today. Furthermore, we currently have the technology to scrub the
atmosphere of greenhouse gases and to return our world to the way it once was9.
It is within human power to fully transition from combustion power to wind,
solar, and electrical power, and further to scrub the atmosphere of CO2
and completely alleviate the burdens of climate change. Why isn’t this being
done? The simple answer is that it is costly and no direct economic benefit can
be seen. This is where anthropology comes in. The study of culture lets us see
how people think about the possible solutions to things like climate change. It
is possible to reverse global warming, but it is very costly. Resources must be
appropriated and man-hours spent to achieve such monumental goals, but no one
wants to pay for it. From a capitalist mentality, there is no direct benefit to
anyone to implement these plans. No business can be built on the principles of
carbon sequestration because there is no good or service to sell. The problem
is not that the technology doesn’t exist; the problem is in the culture itself.
The solution, therefore, is to change the culture itself so that people will
believe that it is worthwhile to reverse global warming.
The next biggest problem that
plagues our world is that of starvation and overpopulation. Humans have an
unbridled ability to propagate and adapt to almost any environment the world can
supply. This has caused many people to live where agriculture cannot be
sustained or where agriculture can be sustained, but populations have grown too
much for the land to support them. There are two main problems to focus on with
this topic, the problem of food production, and the problem of overpopulation.
The first problem, food production, concerns the human ability to produce
enough food to feed the population, but this ties into the second problem
because the ability to feed the population depends on the size of the
population. Problems like salinization, as mentioned before, and topsoil
erosion have drastically reduced the human ability to produce food. All over
the world, agricultural plots are being unsustainably farmed, and thus
production potential is being lost. As land becomes infertile humans look to
find new land to farm. This causes problems like deforestation or the
destruction of natural marshlands. As trees and other native vegetation are
cleared for agriculture, soil cohesion is lost and topsoil, which is vital for
agriculture, is degraded and pesky things such as landslides begin popping up.
As wetlands are destroyed for use in pastures or for agricultural products,
floods begin to occur. Nature has set up a lot of checks and balances over time
to maintain the homeostasis of the environment, but as humans expand farther
and farther looking to increase their land usage these balancing systems are
destroyed and ecological disasters follow. For example, soil from clear-cut
forests is only fertile for a year or two before it becomes unusable10,
but the repercussions of that clear-cutting last much, much longer. The carbon
dioxide sequestering ability of those trees is lost and the binding forces from
the vegetation are eliminated, causing soil to erode and collapse. Furthermore,
biodiversity is lost as old growth forests are cut down. There are millions of
species yet undiscovered by humanity, most of which are in tropical
rainforests, rainforests that are being cut down to make way for agriculture,
human residences, and for the sale of wood. As biodiversity is lost, the
environment is destabilized in ways that we cannot know, and many possible
medicines and food sources that have yet to be discovered by humans disappear.
Then there is the destruction of wetlands. Wetlands are like the world’s
sponges. Not only are they home to an uncountable number of species, but they
also provide a way for water to be filtered into aquifers and they act as
buffers against natural flooding and the like. When these wetlands are
destroyed to make way for farms, water becomes a big problem. Aquifers can dry
up, ground water can be contaminated, and most of all, flooding occurs. The
floods caused by the destruction of wetlands can destroy the very farms that
replaced them, and can cause further damage to nearby civilization, causing
even more famine and disease.
There is another problem with food
production besides the search for arable land. Oftentimes, countries, like
Mexico or India, have enough arable land to feed their populations, but the
land is not used for the native populations. All too often, agriculture is done
entirely for the benefit of foreign nations. Luxury foods, like bananas or
tomatoes, are often grown for international sale while the people of the native
populations starve. This is yet another problem with capitalism and culture in
general. In many nations, people focus on material gains for themselves and not
necessarily for the benefit of their own countries.
The problem of food production is not
easily solved, but it can be solved. One of the main solutions is the
utilization of sustainable agricultural practices, like the prevention of salinization.
But even beyond that, there are technological solutions to the problem of food
production. In the past, genetic engineering and the breeding of new crops has
gone a long way towards increasing agricultural yields, but this genetic
engineering is not the final solution. As our understanding of biology and
genetics increases with time, it is entirely conceivable that we will be able
to produce new crops that are resistant to disease, insects, weather
fluctuations, and can produce more food in shorter time with less water. These
genetically engineered crops could very well be the “holy grail” of agriculture
that will end hunger globally, but that is a lot to hope for. Even without this
“holy grail” of genetically engineered plants, we can still reduce, and even
eliminate hunger. The solution for this comes with improved farming techniques.
Old-fashioned farming utilizes only the two-dimensional surface area of the
land and is subject to seasonal changes. Because of these limitations, a new
form of farming must be developed, a greenhouse form of farming. Within
greenhouses, many of the environmental limitations of old farming can be
eliminated by temperature control. Pesticides can be rendered unnecessary
because pests can be kept outside of enclosed structures. Lighting can be
controlled to grow any crop in any environment, and the fertility of the soil
is irrelevant, meaning that, theoretically, even rice could be grown in a
desert. Furthermore, the two-dimensional limitations of old farming plots can
be surpassed. In a greenhouse with artificial lighting, crops can be grown in
three-dimensions, with rows of plants being grown on top of each other. Currently,
these solutions are expensive and thus not quite as attractive for many
farmers, but the technology can produce a continual supply of crops regardless
of season, and the maintenance costs can be more than made up for. If more
research is done into these novel farming solutions, and they can be
implemented on a global scale, then land can be much better utilized and hunger
can be greatly combated.
The other half of this problem is
the problem of population growth. Humans have a natural inclination to
reproduce; it is in our biology. This desire to procreate is what has kept us,
and every other living organism, alive throughout the millennia, but it comes
as a problem in today’s world. Obviously, children must be born in order to
perpetuate the human race; the problem is that too many children are being born. We live in a world where the
obstacles to human life are rapidly being destroyed, allowing us to propagate
without restraint. As our populations increase, the need for food and land also
increases. No matter how well humans learn to farm, it will ultimately be
insufficient to feed the entire population if the population continues to grow.
There are conflicting theories on the causes of population growth. Some people
say that poverty causes population growth, while still others say that wealth
causes population growth. The fact of the matter is that developing nations are
experiencing an explosion in population while developed nations have mostly
leveled out11. This is bad because populations are growing in
nations that are not necessarily able to feed their populations.
The most obvious solution for this
population growth is some form of population control, like the Chinese
one-child policy, but these solutions have their own problems. The one-child
policy in China has seen a massive shift in the female-male ratio, as male
children were culturally preferred to female children. Any form of population
control will have to take culture into consideration. Will one gender be
preferred if we limit the number of children one can have? Will the people
accept these new restrictions? What will happen economically if we don’t have
as many young people? These questions, among many, must be answered before any
policy can be created. But there could also be other solutions. It is true that
some nations, like Germany12, have managed to achieve a population
growth rate of nearly 0%, but there are still nations, like Bahrain12,
that have growth rates of nearly 5%. What is the major difference between these
two countries? Neither of them have implemented population restrictions, so why
is there such a stark difference between their rates of population growth? One
explanation is wealth. Some theories hold that countries have lower birth rates
as they become more affluent. However, countries like Moldova12 who
have managed to somehow have a negative population growth, yet are not
considered wealthy countries, combat these theories. Obviously the problem is
not so clear cut as “high income equals low population growth” even though the
general trends would seem to indicate that. If the problem of overpopulation is
ever really going to be solved, then the causes of population growth must be
addressed. If the causes can be found, then unique solutions might be adapted
specifically for those causes. Only through anthropological research, the
studying of the people and their life ways, can the problem be understood, and
only through understanding can the problem ever be fixed.
Whenever humans speculate about the
far future, they must be concerned about their own survival into that future.
The fear that we won’t survive to that future does not come from global warming
or starvation, for most human groups believe that these problems can be
addressed before they become extinction level events. The fear really comes
from war. Humans are gluttons for conflict. Throughout all of recorded history
there have been wars; terrible conflicts between humans that have left
hundreds, then thousands, and then millions dead. As technology has advanced,
so too has our ability to kill. First it was just stone and stick that were
used to kill, then came metal and the sword, then bow and arrow, followed by
steel and gun, and finally championed by atom and nuclear bomb. Still today,
even after the king of all weapons has already been developed, humans are
trying to create newer and better weapons, like unmanned drones and newer and
cheaper guns. If humanity is ever going to survive well into the future, then
the problems of war and ethnic conflict must be addressed.
Let us start close to home. The
most recent conflicts that is still on everyone’s mind are the current and past
wars of the United States’ involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of these two
wars, only the war in Iraq has ended. The cause of this conflict was “to disarm
Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger”13.
The purpose of US involvement in Iraq was a response to the possible threat
from nuclear weapons, but it was more accurately due to a desire to eliminate a
totalitarian regime and impose a democratic style of government on the people
there. As early as three months from the start of the war, the capital had been
taken and Saddam Hussein deposed. The war was supposed to be over at this
point, but it was not. The war officially lasted well into 2010, over 7 years
of conflict13. Why did the war take so long to end? The answer is an
anthropological and cultural one. The United States fought war in an old
fashioned way. They were used to the antiquated tactics of World War I and
World War II, where the enemy was known and would fight face-to-face in
trenches and the theatre of war. Iraq was different. The Iraq war became a
conflict of “terror”. Guerilla cells opposed the United States’ imposition of a
western democratic way of life and frequently made attacks to show it. The war
was not face-to-face, and thus it took a long time to end, and caused countless
deaths, both Iraqi and American. The same problem that the US had in Iraq is
happening in Afghanistan today. And this isn’t something new, either. The US
had the same troubles in Vietnam. All of this bloodshed and pain comes from a
simple misunderstanding of culture. One nation tries to impose its will upon
another for one reason or another, but their cultures are not compatible. No
matter how hard they try, the “imposer” will be thwarted at ever turn by some
caveat of the native belief system.
Further, ethnic conflict is a
serious problem in many parts of the world today. Ethnic conflict will be
defined here as the conflict, oftentimes lethal conflict, between two ethnic
groups. We have to look no farther than Africa to see where ethnic conflict has
become a problem, and to see why it has become such a problem. Africa went through
a long and troubling period of colonization that saw its essential conquest by
European powers14. These European nations divided Africa into
distinct principalities that later became countries when the Europeans “left”
the continent. This might seem all fine and dandy, but the problem was that
these Europeans did not take into consideration the native cultural identities
of the people that they were dividing. By the end of the colonial period of
Africa, the African countries contained a multitude of rival ethnic groups
within themselves, dividing the very fabric of any government they tried to set
up. These rival groups being forced to contact one another caused mass
conflicts and terrible suffering. We need look no farther that Rwanda to see
where this is evident. Everyone is familiar with the Rwandan Genocide, when the
Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups committed terrible acts of violence against each
other, and thousands were killed14. What many people don’t
understand, however, is that the Hutu and Tutsi were both a part of the same
culture. They shared a language, they shared a territory, and they shared many
of the same beliefs. The Hutu and Tutsi were not two rival nations, or two
separate people fighting each other. These two groups were in fact just two
ethnic groups forced together. The Rwandan Genocide is just the most widely
known ethnic conflict, but this problem pops up all over the world. Whether it
be the various ethnic groups of Sudan or the people of Nigeria, all over the
world ethnic groups are forced into contact and thus conflict with one another.
The causes of this conflict are
more than just simple contact, however. The main cause is sovereignty. These ethnic groups all want the ability to
make decisions for themselves and to be allowed to be free from control by
outside powers. But, more often than not, other ethnic groups want control. In
the Hutu-Tutsi situation, the Tutsi dominated the Hutu. In ancient Rome, the
Romans tried to dominate the northern Germanic tribes. In much of the Middle
East today, the Shi’ites and the Sunni are vying for political domination15.
In Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey there are the Kurds who want political
autonomy, yet are separated by arbitrary political boundaries15. These problems are present all over the
world, and cannot be solved by military might. The problem is that these
cultures don’t understand each other. Each ethnic group thinks of every other
ethnic group from their own cultural perspective. They all seem to think that
the other cultures can be assimilated, but oftentimes these groups are so
vastly different that they can never be truly integrated. So what possible
solutions are there? Honestly, the best solution might just be the philosophy
of “live and let live”. Trying to fight other nations to impose your own laws
and values is a doomed proposition. We can never truly force our opinions on
others. If a group of people disagrees strongly enough, they will never sit by
and be subjugated. The same thing goes for these ethnic groups. All too often
nations with arbitrary political boundaries try to impose their own rules and
life ways on the ethnic groups that happen to wander into their land. The
problem is, those ethnic groups don’t think of themselves as a part of that
nation. There might be some terrible and unforeseen consequences of giving each
ethnic group its own autonomy, but it might be the only way to truly stop the
conflict. If it is impossible to give autonomy to each group, then their
cultures must be understood. For example, the Kurds in Iraq cannot be forced to
accept Iraqi law, but they can be encompassed by the Iraqi government. Each culture must be understood, and
governmental policies concerning them must take this culture into consideration
when making laws and policies towards them. Only through understanding can
peace ever be truly achieved.
Finally, the last of the top four
problems that our world must face is that of the limitations of our own planet.
There are solutions to climate change, hunger, poverty, overpopulation, and
ethnic conflict, but the solutions are difficult to implement and inherently
imperfect. Over time, we will slowly use up the resources of Earth. Our planet
is but an insignificant speck orbiting a lonely star which is itself just a
speck among billions of specks floating around in our galaxy which is itself
just a speck among trillions floating, lonely, in our universe. Humanity is
driven to expand by our most basic urges. We want to live and to gain dominion
over the universe that we can manipulate. Eventually, Earth will not be enough
for us. We will need more resources than this one planet can provide, and we
will need more room to live than one planet can supply. It will become
necessary to leave this planet and to colonize the solar system, and eventually
beyond. Therefore, our final problem is the problem of leaving Earth, the
problem of intrastellar and interstellar travel.
Take the problem of ecological
collapse first. If climate change is not reversed, then the biological
diversity of our planet will plummet, causing starvation, disease, and even
potentially extinction for our species. It is possible that climate change can
be stopped, but it is by no way guaranteed. By leaving our planet, we can plant
life, or find life, on other worlds, thus ensuring the continued survival of
the human race and the species that we manage to transplant to other worlds.
Survival can only be assured once more than one planet can be harnessed.
Take the problem of starvation and
overpopulation. We are running out of space to plant crops and places to live. If
we could travel beyond the bounds of our tiny world and make our way to other
solar systems with other habitable worlds, then we could acquire more land to
live on and to grow crops on, not to mention the discovery of native plants and
animals that could potentially supply us with an abundant food supply. It has
been estimated that as much as 10% to 20% of the global landmass has been
affected by salinization3, while still another 10% to 20% of the
world’s dry lands have been subject to deterioration and desertification16.
It is readily apparent that our world is quickly being used up, and our land is
being destroyed. It might be possible to reclaim this land, but it would be
costly and time consuming. The most powerful solution would be to colonize
another planet, where a “powerful solution” is one that offers a doable
solution that would solve the problem for a long period of time. Think of how
long it took humanity to damage this planet to the level that it has been
damaged. If we could obtain just one more habitable world, and practice
sustainable agriculture there, then all of our ecological, food, and living
problems could be solved for hundreds of years.
Finally, let’s look at the ethnic
conflicts that plague our societies. One of the major problems is that ethnic
groups are forced to live under the jurisdiction of foreign ethnic groups
against their own will, purely because of some fluke of geography that drew
political boundaries around a group that never wanted to be a part of that
nation. We cannot give these ethnic groups their autonomy because no one wants
to give up the land that has been cut out for them, but if we could find new
and uninhabited land, then why couldn’t these ethnic groups be offered a place
to live, free from the grips of others? There are obvious problems with the
fact that many groups would not want to leave their ancestral lands or would
not have the money to pay for the interstellar flight, but it opens up another
possibility for solving many of these group’s problems. It is also conceivable
that opening access to an entire new world worth of resources could spawn
conflict over those resources, but the sheer cost of interstellar flight would
make it economically disadvantageous to have wars on Earth over the resources
on Novus Terra.
How could this extra-solar
colonization be achieved? The fact of the matter is that the technology and
resources exist today to allow a mass human exodus from Earth, but it would
take a long time and we have yet to locate a habitable planet beyond Earth. The
first step would be increased funding to exoplanet identification and analysis.
Already, organizations like NASA are scanning the skies with missions like the
Kepler to identify and analyze exoplanets17. As technology advances,
these analyses become more and more precise, even to the point where we have
already begun to identify Earth-sized planets elsewhere in our galaxy. Planets
like Kepler-62 e and Kepler-62 f have been identified that could both be similar
to Earth in mass, and covered in water, the fundamental element of Earth-like
life18. Further, a nearly Earth-massed planet, Alpha Centauri B b,
has been identified in our very back yard19. To truly be able to
send a mission to a planet beyond our solar system, we’d have to know that it
was habitable before we even started. It is becoming more apparent that we will
soon find a habitable world that we can verify, and it is certain that we will
find that planet if more funding and time goes to exoplanet research. The next
step is building the spacecraft. Current technologies would not allow us to even
get to Alpha Centauri, the arguably trinary star system about five light years
from our planet, without it taking hundreds, even thousands, of years. This
time scale is far too great for any human civilization to seriously consider,
but it is technically possible to achieve such a space flight. Either through
further advances in cryogenics, the preservation of humans through freezing, or
by building a generational spaceship, it is possible to jump from one star to
the next using the technology currently available or the technology that will
be available very soon. If it is decided that hundreds of years is too long,
then improved propulsion systems will be necessary. Already, technologies like
ion engines could provide thrust to a spacecraft over a long period of time to
accelerate it to nearly the speed of light. As speed increases towards
light-speed, the object under acceleration experiences time more slowly. This
means that a star system over 100,000 light years away could be reached by an
observer from within the spacecraft itself in less than 50 years, well within
the lifespan of one human. If further research is put into propulsion systems
like this, it is conceivable that the time requirements of interstellar
journeys could be drastically reduced.
It may seem unlikely, but it is
very much possible to colonize other worlds, if a society with sufficient
resources were to decide to do it.
After this analysis of global
problems, it seems like the most important anthropological concept is that of
culture. I don’t mean any nebulous and indistinct definition of “culture”, I
mean how culture impacts every action we do and every interaction we have. Most
of our problems today are caused by culture. Environments are destroyed by
cultures that utilize polluting technologies for their own benefits. Famine is
created by cultures that sell their goods overseas in order to earn money,
instead of feeding their own people, or by unsustainable agricultural
techniques passed down through their culture. Overpopulation is caused by
cultures that encourage child production. And most of all, conflict and war is
caused by a misunderstanding of culture and a failure of different cultures to
interact. Each society, and many subsets within each society, is defined by its
culture, where “culture” defines their practices and beliefs and general way of
living. What policy makers and everyday citizens must understand is that
culture is different all over the world, and thus one group’s decisions may
seem insane from the point of view of another group, yet are still logically
consistent. It is impossible for us to solve global problems without first
understanding how cultures interact.
This concept of culture is also
related to anthropology because it defines the main concern of cultural
anthropologists20. There is an entire branch of anthropology
dedicated to the analysis and understanding of cultures around the world, and
applying this understanding to further understand the impact of culture on the
world as a whole.
Notes
1. Cultural Anthropology, Sheldon Smith, Philip Young. Pg. 321
2. Cultural Anthropology, Sheldon Smith, Philip Young. Pg. 195
8. Cultural Anthropology, Sheldon Smith, Philip Young. Pg. 239-240
11. Cultural Anthropology, Sheldon Smith, Philip Young. Pg. 434-442
14. Cultural Anthropology, Sheldon Smith, Philip Young. Pg. 300-309
15. Cultural Anthropology, Sheldon Smith, Philip Young. Pg. 328-348
20. Cultural Anthropology, Sheldon Smith, Philip Young
