Crash Course Globalization 2
Hi, I'm John Green
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and this is the final episode of Crash Course World History,
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not because we've reached the end of history
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but because we've reached the particular middle where I happen to be living.
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Today we'll be considering whether globalization is a good thing,
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and along the way we'll try to
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do something that you may not be used to doing in history classes:
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imagining the future.
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Mr. Green, Mr. Green!
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In the future, I'm gonna get to second base with Molly Brown.
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No you won't, Me from the Past,
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but the fact that when asked to imagine THE future,
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you imagine YOUR future says a lot about the contemporary world,
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and listen, Me From the Past,
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while there's no question that your solipsistic individualism is bad
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both for you and for our species,
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the broader implications of individualism in general are a lot more complex.
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[Best]
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[intro music]
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[intro music]
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[intro music]
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[intro music]
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[EVER]
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Man, I'm gonna miss you, Intro. [if only you were a ringtone. wait...]
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So last week (ta da) we discussed how global economic interdependence has led,
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on average, to longer, healthier, more prosperous lives for humans-1:00
not to mention an astonishing change in the overall human population.
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In the West, globalization has also led to the rise of a service economy.
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In the US and Europe,
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most people now work not in agriculture or manufacturing
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but in some kind of service sector: healthcare, retail, education,
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entertainment, information technology,
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Internet videos about world history, etc. [it's been a please to serve you! tear.]
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And that switch has really changed our psychology,
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especially the psychology of upper classes living in the industrialized world.
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I mean, to quote Frederic Jameson,
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"we are ... so far removed from the realities of production and work that we
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inhabit a dream world of artificial stimuli and televised experience."
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Think of it this way:
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If you had to kill a [chicken 57] every time you visited KFC,
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you would probably eat fewer chickens. [yeuup.]
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Another change of psychology: Many historians-of-the-now note
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that globalization has also led to a celebration of individualism-1:49
particularly in the wake of the failures of the Marxist collectivist utopias.
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The generation that lived through the Depression and World War II
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saw large-scale collectivist responses to both those crises.
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And they were responses that limited freedom.
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Like, the military draft, for instance, which limited your freedom,
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you know, not to be a soldier.
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Or
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the collectivization of health insurance seen in most of the post-war West,
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which limited your freedom to go bankrupt from health care costs.
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Or also government programs like social security,
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which limit your freedom not to pay for old people's retirement.
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[as they once did. ah, the circle of life]
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But since the 1960s,
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the ascendant idea of personal freedom
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minimally limited by government intervention has become very powerful.
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Even the Catholic church was part of this new search for individual freedom,
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as the Second Vatican Council
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relaxed church rules in ways that weakened central authority,
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[price paid for Nuns Having Fun?]
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made concessions to individual styles of worship,
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even said that people of different religions could go to heaven.
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What good is heaven if it's gonna be full of Protestants?
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It's just gonna be like Minnesota.
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So here in the last episode of Crash Course World History,
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in the last thirty seconds,
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I have offended, uh, 5/6ths of the world's population in the form of
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non-Catholics and, uh, all Republicans, and probably some political moderates.
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Who are confused about what Obama's healthcare law will and will not do.
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[and will now be allowed to keep doing w/o repeal. DFTVA]
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Stan, maybe I should just make this episode just an extended rant
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where I reveal all of my political biases. And also my personal biases.
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[Cue the flaming pit that is the comments section]
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Look, you're never gonna meet a historian who doesn't have biases.
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But good historians try to acknowledge their biases
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and I am biased toward Canada and its awesome healthcare system.
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I can't lie. I'm very jealous of you guys. [for reals]
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But perhaps the greatest effect of the victory of individualism
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was on sex and the family. [this should be interesting...]
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We haven't talked much about sex because my brother's teaching Biology,
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which is basically just sex, [as 1/2 our viewers flee to Bio playlist]
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but sex is pretty important historically
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because it's how we keep happening. [for now]
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But, in the 20th century, greater variety and availability of contraception
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made it possible for people to experiment with multiple sexual partners
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and helped to uncouple sex from child bearing, which was awesome,
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[and the plot to movie Down With Love]
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but individualism also had a destabilizing effect on families.
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As the great Leo Tolstoy put it,
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all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
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But when your individual fulfillment trumps all,
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you needn't live amid your uniquely unhappy family: You can just leave.
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So, divorce rates have skyrocketed in the past few decades, and not just in the US.
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By the turn of the 21st century, divorce rates in China reached nearly 25%,
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with 70% of those divorces initiated by women.
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Technology has also driven families apart,
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as parents and children spend increasing time alone
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in front of their individual screens, sharing fewer experiences.
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That's individualism, too, but not of a kind that we usually celebrate.
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But probably the biggest consequence of globalization and the ensuing
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rise in human population has been humanity's effect on the environment.
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While populations have increased
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partly thanks to better yields from existing farmland,
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much more land has also been brought under cultivation in the past half-century.
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Often this meant cutting down trees in valuable rainforests-4:44
the best known example of this is what's going on in the Amazon,
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but it happens worldwide. [insert own Pandora joke here, in Na'vi]
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And we're losing land not just for food, but also to grow the global economy.
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Oh, it's time for the open letter?
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An Open Letter to Flowers.
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But first,
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let's see what's in the secret compartment today.
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Oh, it's fake flowers.
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Thank you, Stan.
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One for behind each ear. [because just one would be too girly]
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Dear Flowers,
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You capture the best and the worst of the globalized economy.
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You're so pretty.
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Even the fake ones are pretty. But the real one are constantly dying.
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They've got to be harvested, and shipped, and cut very efficiently.
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And it's a global phenomenon.
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Like there are flowers in my corner market from Africa.
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These are from China, but because they are plastic,
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they could just be shipped in a shipping container.
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More people can afford to apologize by giving their romantic partners
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professionally cut and arranged roses than in any time in human history,
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but in that we have lost something,
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which is that the whole idea of flowers is that you had to go out into the field
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and, like, cut them and arrange them yourself to apologize.
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It's not supposed to be,
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"I'm sorry I forgot your birthday. Here's $8 worth of work that was done in Kenya."
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[sentiment falls a bit flat, doesn't it?]
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It's supposed to be,
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"I'm sorry I forgot your birthday,
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so I went into the frakking forest and got you some frakking flowers.
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Anyway, flowers,
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Best Wishes, John Green.
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Aww.. you guys got me flowers for
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my last episode of World History. [cupcakes now reserved for Merebration]
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Okay, let's go to the thought bubble.
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As worldwide production and consumption increases,
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we use more resources, especially water and fossil fuels.
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Globalization has made the average human richer,
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and rich people tend to use more of...
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everything... but especially energy.
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This has already resulted in climate change, which will likely accelerate.
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The global economy isn't a zero-sum game.
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Like,
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I don't need to become more poor in order for someone else to become more rich.
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But growth, at least so far,
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has been dependent upon unsustainable use of the planet's resources.
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The planet can't sustain seven billion automobiles, for instance,
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or seven billion frequent flyers,
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although most of us who can afford to drive or fly feel entitled to do so.
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You'll remember that when we talked about the Industrial Revolution,
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we discussed the virtuous cycle of more efficiency making things cheaper,
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which in turn made them easier to buy, which increased demand,
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which increased efficiency.
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But from the perspective of the planet, each turn in that cycle takes something:
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More land under cultivation, more carbon emissions, more resource extraction.
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That can't go on forever, but worryingly,
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our current models of economic growth don't allow for any other way.
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Thanks, Thought Bubble.
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And then there is our astonishingly robust health.
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Although much of the world has
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been ravaged by HIV/AIDS for the past three decades,
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there's been a relative lack of global pandemics since the 1918 flu.
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And that's particularly surprising given increased population density and
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more travel between population centers.
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China has seen 150 million people
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leave the countryside for cities in the last 20 years.
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This was Shanghai in 1990; and this is Shanghai in 2010.
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The population of Lagos was 41,000 in 1900;
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today, it's almost 8 million.
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Of course, people have been moving from country to city for a long time;
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remember Gilgamesh? [& the Mesopo-taaaaa-mii-aans]
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But the pace of that change has dramatically accelerated.
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Similarly, there's nothing new about international trade,
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but its pace has also increased dramatically:
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In 1960, trade accounted for 24% of the world's GDP;
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today, it's more than double that.
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Almost no human being alive today
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lives with stuff only manufactured in their home country,
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but a thousand years ago,
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only the richest of the rich could benefit from the Silk Road.
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Still, trade isn't new.
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And while it's tempting to say that the types of goods being traded -8:24
pharmaceuticals, computers, software, financial services -8:28
represent something wholly new,
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you could just as easily see this as part of the evolution of trade itself.
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At some point silk was seen as a new trade good.
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As tastes change and consumers become more affluent,
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the things that they want to buy change.
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So is anything really different, or is it all just accelerated?
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Well, some historians argue that
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an economically interdependent world is much less likely to go to war.
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And that may be true, but increasing global, cultural, and
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economic integration hasn't led to an end to violence.
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I mean, we've seen large scale ethnic and nationalistic violence from Rwanda to
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the former Yugoslavia to the Democratic Republic of Congo to Afghanistan.
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Globalization has not rid the world of violence.
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But there is an ideological shift
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in the age of globalization that does seem pretty new,
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and that's the turn to democracy.
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Now this isn't the limited democracy of the ancient Greeks,
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or the quirky republican system originally developed in the U.S.;
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there are almost as many kinds of democracies as there are
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nations experiencing democracy.
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The fact is, however, that democracy and political freedom,
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especially the freedom to participate in and influence the government,
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have been on the rise all over the world since the 1980s and especially since 1990.
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For instance,
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if you looked at the governments of most Latin American countries
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during most of the 20th centuries,
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you would usually find them ruled by military strongman.
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Now, with a couple of exceptions (Fidel, Hugo)...
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Stan, are they behind me right now?
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Because if they're behind me,
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I am in favor of collectivising oil revenue and distributing it to the poor.
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If they're not behind me, that's a terrible idea.[love the iron constitution]
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Right, but anyway, democracy is now flourishing in most of Latin America.
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Probably the most famous democratic success story is South Africa,
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which jettisoned decades of Apartheid in the 1990s
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and elected former dissident Nelson Mandela
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as its first black president in 1994.
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It also adopted one of the most progressive constitutions in the world.
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But it's worth remembering that
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democracy and economic success don't always go hand in hand,
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as much as some Americans wish they would.
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Many new African democracies continue to struggle, the same is true in some
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Latin American countries, and China has shown that you don't need democracy
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in order to experience economic growth.
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But for a few countries, especially Brazil and India,
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the combination of democracy and economic liberalism has
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unleashed impressive growth that has lifted millions out of poverty.
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So can we say that it's good, then?
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Can we celebrate globalization,
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in spite of its destabilizing effects on families and the environment?
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Well, here's where we have to imagine the future,
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because if some superbug shows up tomorrow [says the hypochondriac, hypothetically]
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and it travels through all these global trade routes and kills every living human,
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then globalization will have been very bad for human history:
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specifically, by ending it.
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If climate change continues to accelerate and displaces billions of people
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and causes widespread famines and flooding, then we will remember
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this period of human history as short-sighted, self-indulgent,
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and tremendously destructive.
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On the other hand,
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if we discover an asteroid hurdling toward earth
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and mobilize global industry and technology in such a way
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that we lose Bruce Willis but save the world,
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then globalization will be celebrated for millennia.
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I mean, assuming we have millennia and can convince Bruce Willis to go.
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In short, to understand the present, we have to imagine the future.
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That's the thing about history: It depends on where you're standing.
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From where I'm standing, globalization has been a net positive,
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but then again,
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it's been a pretty good run for heterosexual males of European descent.
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Critics of globalization point out that
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billions haven't benefited much if at all from all this economic prosperity,
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and that the polarization of wealth is growing both within and across nations.
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And those criticisms are valid and they are troubling, but they aren't new.
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Disparities between those who have more and those who have less
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have existed pretty much from the moment agriculture
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enabled us to accumulate a surplus.
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At some times this inequality has been a big concern,
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as it was with Jesus and Muhammad, at other times not so much.
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Inequalities are as old as human history,
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and almost as old is the debate about them.
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One thing that is new, however, is our ability to learn about them,
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to discuss them, and hopefully to find solutions for them together
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as a global community that is better integrated and more connected
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than it has ever been before.
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Because here's the other thing about history: You are making it.
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That old idea that history is the deeds of great men? That was wrong.
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Celebrated individuals do shape history, but so do the rest of us.
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And while it's true that many historical forces-12:42
malaria, meteors from space-- [bed bugs]
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aren't human, it's also true that every human is a historical force.
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You are changing the world every day.
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And it is our hope that by looking at the history that was made before us,
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we can see our own crucial decisions in a broader context.
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And I believe that context can help us make better choices-13:02
and better changes.
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Thanks for watching.
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But, there's no need to despair, Crash Course fans,
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I'll see you next week for the beginning of our mini series on literature.
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Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller.
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Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko.
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The associate producer is Danica Johnson.
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The show is written by my high school history teacher,
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Raoul Meyer, and myself.
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And our graphics team is Thought Bubble.
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Last week's phrase of the week was
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"Cookie Monster".
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This week's phrase of the week was
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"Bruce Willis,"
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which I am telling you because we are retiring the idea
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of the phrase of the week.
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Thank you so much for watching Crash Course World History.
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It has been super fun to try
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to tell the history of the world in 42 twelve-minute videos.
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I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you'll hang around for literature.
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Thanks for watching,
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and as we say in my hometown,
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Don't Forget How Strange It Is To Be Anything At All.
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outro