Peacekeeping promotes violence

[--Pete]

Hi,

Sure, and if you've got eight centuries to wait, I'm sure the Somalis will catch up.

While I doubt that it will take eight centuries with modern pressures, I would not be surprised if it takes one. So, what to do in the meanwhile and how to apply those pressures in a most effective way seems to be the crucial question.

British (or English, way back) society evolved, slowly and organically, with the will, incentive, and ability to do so moving roughly forward together for centuries. If you'd just told King John "education is the key!", it might have been good advice, but there's not a tremendous amount he could have done with it. Medieval society only had so much use for educated people, and education was costly to obtain.

Education was costly (too much so even for a Plantagenet prince) and not particularly useful. What changed? Why? Can we apply those changes to places like Somalia to accelerate the process? Does history teach lessons, or does it only give warnings? And if it does, who is reading those lessons and how is he applying them?

I've read Hume's History of England. I understand much of what transpired from the Norman Conquest (the rest was prologue, although the nature of the Saxon is of importance) to the eve of the Glorious Revolution. I understand 'factions' and 'favorites'. But nowhere do I see the impetus to educate, the forces making literacy desirable and, thus, more common. So, if education needs a spur other than curiosity, what is that spur? A good job? That's training. And that's a modern notion, born in the industrial revolution.

If that was an easy question, then we probably wouldn't have a couple billion people living in poverty on this planet. But it is the interconnectedness that is the problem of failed states like Somalia, and one major reason why great tons of aid has accomplished quite a bit in keeping people from starving to death, but not a whole lot in putting Somalia on the path to a modern society.

True. But the easy questions are too dull to discuss.

Somehow, conditions have to make being a peaceful farmer, whose kids are getting educated, who pays taxes and saves money for the future, a better deal for Somalis than joining a militia or a pirate crew and making a quick buck. That means security has to be in place, at least in part. It means jobs have to exist, and pay enough to get by. It means that markets have to be secure enough that you can count on not having to scrounge for necessities. It means that your kids have to have a pretty good chance of living well past the end of their schooling. Until those things are at least partially true, education is going to be valued very little, and of very little use.

But, of course, each of those things is in part dependent on the others. The same interconnected web of externalities that make the first world a nice place to live makes Somalia a hellhole.

The history of Somalia is one of brief periods of progress under unification with long periods of stagnation or regression under tribal wars. It is a story all too common in third world countries, but it isn't restricted to them. In 1965 I was stationed in Germany. One evening I was in a local tavern when a loud discussion broke out. My German was not sufficient for me to follow the arguments, but it was good enough to understand, and remember, the parting words of one person, (please forgive my poor German) "Ich nicht bin deutsch, Ich bin preuss!"

When humanity captures more loyalty than the tribe, the millennium may well have arrived.

--Pete