GaryS, et al -
I was recently trying to make a little more sense of the larger
sociopolitical situation across central/south America and realized that
your location in Ecuador might provide some useful parallax.
https://www.as-coa.org/articles/2023-elections-latin-america-preview
I was (not?) surprised to read that there was a renewed interest in
"regional integration". This article references Lula and Obrador and
several other Latin American leaders who might be attempting a broader
ideological (and economic) alignment/cooperation across the region.
https://www.bloomberglinea.com/english/will-lula-achieve-regional-integration-in-latin-america/
With the unrest of the summer triggered? by energy/fossil-fuel prices it
seems like Ecuador has become (temporarily, modestly) unbalanced which
seems like an opportunity for change, whether for better or worse. I
see in the first article (Elections Preview) that Lasso has a very low
approval rating and the upcoming (February) elections might
include/yield a recall for him?
I lived on the border of AZ/MX as a teen in the early 70s and the recent
memory/residue of the Golden Age of Latin America was still evident.
The Mexican border town (Agua Prieta) still had moderately grand
facilities and institutions (e.g. A huge library with elaborate
fountains on the grounds, etc) even though they were not able to support
them in that grandeur... So I think I still have an ideation that
Latin America has many of the resources or (hidden) momentum to achieve
a resurgence of some sort.
These reflections are partly triggered by this interview/article
produced by WBUR/Boston and distributed via NPR:
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/01/11/8-billion-earth-population-rise-human
Which reminded me that while we *do* have a total-population problem
with our 8B and rising numbers (and 90+ % of land animal by mass being
human or human domesticates), the *distribution* of people, and more to
the point the demographic fecundity/fertility distribution is very
uneven and in fact seems to be inversely proportional to various
features of human civilization ranging from GDP to education to
technological development. Some (like DJT) turn this into a judgement
and a reason for resentment/fear (e.g. S*hole country labels) but others
have a more progressive view. An excerpt from the WBUR interview/article:
*Jennifer Sciubba: *"We're moving toward this aging and shrinking
world, and we are worried because we can't sustain that same huge
level of economic growth in the past. And we do need to think about
what that might look like, so we can look relook at concepts like
retirement. We can look at concepts like what is work life. We also,
though, have to start thinking about family and marriage. And, you
know, we're talking about a paradigmatic shift.
"That means we have to look at the world through a completely
different lens than we've looked at the world in the past. But all
of our theories about the good life, our economic theories, our
political theories, those were all developed under conditions of
population growth and economic growth, as William said. So it's
really hard to get a paradigmatic shift and say, what if we try to
look at the world in a different way? Can we look at an aging and
shrinking society as a good thing? Can we look at growing older
individually as a good thing? We've not been good at that. And so
we're kind of taking that negativity and applying it at the societal
level."
This passage specifically references aging (individual and population)
but there are other references to economic/technological disparities.
I also defer here to others who have an international POV (e.g. Pieter
in South Africa, Sarbajit in India, Jochen in Germany, and I believe we
have someone from Cuba, I think we lost (off the list) Mohammed from
Egypt a few years ago, etc.) as well. We are not a very demographicly
representative group here but still offer a somewhat broad samplying by
some measures.
I realize this is yet another of my rambly maunderings but I'd be
curious to hear what others are observing/thinking about these issues in
this current time of global flux.
- Steve
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
