Reflecting on Travel: What I learnt on My Holiday

Have I changed, has this seeing the world provided any mind blowing insights. Its hard to say, most of my mindblowjobs are given by Chomsky these days, and that is through a book you can pick up almost anywhere anywhen. However travelling through the world I think has changed or at least amalgamated existing prejudices into coherant ideas. Here's what has changed in me I think maybe...

I know me better

Am I an intravert? confirmed, nothing new there, but I have learnt how I think. Largely from a new way to depress myself I found which is reading the 1 star reviews of books I like on Amazon.com . Namely books by Dawkins, books by "liberals", and books that mention Isreal in any way shape or form. Thankfully whilst it is depressing to read the same shit over and over again ´this is a posioness attack filled with misinformation´ and ´beware leftist propaganda´ and 'his credetials aren't very reliable' and so fourth I thought 'I'm scared to write anything and face the prospect of having to defend myself for the rest of my life to these people' especially since I unlike Chomsky or Dawkins almost never go to any effort to support what I think with evidence.
And it wasn't until I picked up a copy of 'The China Fantasy' with what should be a nobel peace prize winning chapter called 'The Lexicon of Dismissal' that this realization that I was no more than a lazy speculator who reads books that interest me and never check the notes and references to qualify how factual they are.
I think from the gut, like George W Bush. Well I don't rely on meticulous fact checking to be more precise, nor do I have any interest in doing so. The way I think I have come to appreciate is in modelling, in game theory. So when Chomsky proposes something that in mainstream media would be sensational such as 'The US is one of the biggest impediments to democracy spreading' I see if in a model, or game that makes sense. And thus I don't really care about how closely, how neutrally or how responsibly an argument is put forward, I give the dismissers no mind. I accept or reject myself simply if it makes sense that something would work that way.

Capitalism is way way overrated

Lets walk through it, you are a player in a big game called Capitalism. Good so far. You have choices you can make. I'm pro choice this appeals to me. The choices you make will effect your value to society. fair enough. Make the right choices and society will give you greater command of resources. Make the wrong choices and society gives you lesser command of resources. Perfect system. You can preserve your resources beyond your value to society. that sounds a bit distortative. Furthermore you can preserve your resources for your offspring even if they never contribute any value to society. Oh well there's a lot of resources out there right, it will take a million years before that wealth preservation thing creates societal upset right?
No you really see it travelling. Here is my news, Capitalism as it is practiced is a centraliser, systems are more flexible and robust if they are decentralised. I think China and India have adopted capitalism well because the inequity in their societies (with a huge distortion post Mao China) can probably be traced back to their adherance to Capitalism in the past. Practicing it with the luxuries of Karma and so fourth which means the priveledged elite deserve their priveledge.
As such what has changed in my perspective is that I used to believe that it was better to be rich in any country than average in a good one. This was my anti-american arguement against rednecks claiming they were in the greatest country on earth. However I now acknowledge that what makes a country really pleasant is the commons. The social programs. So capitalism ostensibly works, but is overrated because the scope is not large enough, particularly in regards to time, as the rich can get richer (and fewer in relative number to the general population) thanks to private property and the ability of all our born-useless progeny to inherit. Thus buffering them from ever being weighed on their true merit to society and this problem will grow greater over time.
Furthermore...

Globalisation is just pure shit

In Glasgow I met a girl from Texas who was studying the bagpipes in the same course as my friend from Ballarat. Whata wonderful diverse opportunity for people to pursue obscure and brilliant dreams.
However the majority of similar arrangements are people from dismal economies studying accounting to undercut a local population of whichever country they are trying to emigrate to. This smacks to me of both avoidance and boredom.
Furthermore globalisation is generally boring. Since travelling from Japan, of which at the time I railed against heavily for obstinately shutting itself off from the bigger game out their, I gradually found myself gaining respect.
Here's the change. Counterintuitively I now believe that diversity is born of isolation and protectionism. Really this should have been intuitive, but living in Melbourne it seems to be the opposite. Sure Australia is a good example of mixing together different peoples from around the United Kingdom and Ireland and coming up with something new, but this was by cutting itself off by use of several oceans and continents.
Take Japan as one of the most diverse and rich and deep cultures in the world most of which emerged from the fuedal tokugawa rule were for 200 hundred years Japan wasn't just cut off from the world, but most Japanese were cut off from domestic travel period. Hence for all the homogeniety on the surface of Japan, you can go to Kyushu province were the different villages have trouble comprehending eachothers dialects just from town to town.
Or Italy, every italian town has its own cultural heritage (and as an aside I don't know why Europe is worried about americanization of its culture when it hasn't even adopted norms on a national level yet) born of their internal warring states period that also generated the renaissance. Each city state is distinctive.
But basically I have learnt that isolation breads diversity, and to enjoy such diversity you have to occasionally cash in. However globalisation as a total and permanent movement is ridiculous. Some degree of small standardisation is good, say McDonalds I can advocate being in every country because its core benefit is precisely standardisation, it is fast food. But that is about it. Otherwise it is boring, perhaps worst across Asia were due to the prevelance of high context cultures, they are consumer lambs to the marketing slaughter, buying all kinds of crap without question that takes careful expensive orchestrated marketing campaigns in the west. I'm talking Louis Vuitton, Channel, Gucci and all the other stores you find at the foot of all 5 star hotels in asia. Then ofcourse there is the prevelance of Nike and so fourth. Just boring, and also for a western observer brings out the worst, because you tend to only accept these western marketing impositions as reflecting the 'quaint' and 'primative' nature of Japanese, Chinese etc.

Labor = Demand

China and India are jokes, tragic, tragic jokes. Like George Bush again I was going on a gut feeling while I was there that something didn't add up, it just didn't work. I had a handy article from the Economist or Newsweek that talked about how the market creates these bubbles like Japan, Taiwan and China in succession by trying to convince itself that a change (such as the internet) is so huge it changes the market forever. That's clearly not the case. And the excesses being indulged in by China in particular are quite scary.
It wasn't till several months later in Nernberg it clicked that China and India haven't actually contributed anything to the world market. That is there are no new resources, inventions or practices that have come out of China or India.
To be fair aparantly they are registering new patents more frequently than America due to a strong science and mathematics bent in the education system, but you know what I'm talking about, nothing groundbreaking like i-tunes, the sony walkman or transister radio. Inovations like the ipod and the Nintendo Wii remain the province of US and Japan.
Nor TV or entertainment, nothing new. Just bucketloads, villageloads of cheap labour.
But how much cheap labour do we need. We had cheap labour even before China opened up its economy.
It doesn't explain the China Fantasy, no the only thing that explains it is that give a man a wage, he can become a consumer.
The key benefit of China and India is that allows the biggest companies in the world to be lazy, they can sell the same old shit relatively easy to a market that is relatively unaffluent. Imagine marketers racking their brains trying to figure out how to sell $50,000 watches to consumers heavily in debt, or something as simple as a microwave to a person in China.
Like stealing Candy from a baby. China and India haven't provided anything that will really profoundly improve the lives of everyone in the world, they have just provided billions of new customers to keep redundant companies in business and not having to face the realities of a market moving towards a sustainable meaningful lifestyle.

Misanthrope or Philanthrope

I was surprised to learn that on the whole (and this sounds worse than I ever intend it to be) I don't like people. That said I still have a strong overriding reaction of indignation, anger and sympathy to the injustices of the world to people subverting the democratic ideal, the exploitation of the poor and ignorant etc.
I want to help these people, I just don't want to have to hang around them. Which is perhaps better explained by another big question I have been forced to ask myself:

Is the function of the earth to try and sustain as many people as possible?

Asians are human beings, believe it or not, and I imagine the victims of the Burmese/Myanmanese hurricanes and governments obstructive relief efforts are going through lots of pain, and then shortly afterwards, the grief of the parants in China who lost their only child to shoddy public school construction and 7.9 ricter scale earthquakes and subsequent aftershocks.
But at the same time, to sound like Lincoln when he said I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. ... And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
A part of me also sympathised finally after seeing at ground level what my controversial friend Felix once remarked 'what the world needs is for 100 million Chinese people to die' anyway enough moral buffer, what I simultaneously thought was 'that's a start' but of course earthquakes and other natural disasters aren't going to systematically cull back the human plague that infests the world regardless of race, colour, creed etc.
The alternative and only moral way to 'solve' the problem of overpopulation seems to be Starvation. That is to let market forces correct the new found desire of the Big Emerging Markets to live the good life. One that inevitably will result in crippling debt and inflation that may be worse than Mao the Genius' flawed 'Great Leap Forward'

Large families are a luxary of the poor

Of course one way you can have a large population and enjoy 10-14 siblings is to be phenomonally poor. That way the earth can sustain as large a population as it can muster. Whilst I agree, Americans, Australians and Europeans could well serve themselves by simply eating less, their low birthrates are actual achievements, and rationally to my mode of thinking make sense.
In the old days, if you weren't dead by 30 you were considered touched by god, there was so much to wipe you out of life in the interim years it made sense to have 10 kids in the hope that 4 might make it. Not knowing when every ten years mauraders or disease would reduce your entire culture by 80% that said population growth is such that half the people that have ever lived are still alive today.
The people in the developing world I think naivelly possess the belief (and with no effort by our business interests to disparage that belief) that they too can have the lifestyles of the great white westerners.
For example, I got the distinct impression that people in China looked forward to being rich like Americans and thus able to eat a meal at home for mere pocket change, not counting on inflation to mean that the moment they are rich like Americans there will be almost nowhere in the world where I Chinese person can actually eat for cheap, unless their growth throws the US and Europe into crippling poverty.
But the most powerful instance for me was my reaction to an Indian boy hefting some hessian sack like device and followed me for 4 blocks palm out and occasionally gesturing to eat. And there I was struck not by a sense of personal guilt (which came as a surprise to me) but the shear irresponsibility of the parents in having a child they presumably could not feed.
I thought, whilst refusing to give any money (which if you did for every begger in India you would last about 5 minutes before declaring bankruptcy) I thought 'kid if it was up to me you wouldn't have been born at all' that's right, I actually thought of mercy killing this kid, except I know he probably isn't that miserable, whilst hungry probably gets lots of satisfaction out of life, and is also blameless relatively for his predicament since the Hindu cast system and so fourth leaves one of the most limpdicked administrations to ever face the challange of poverty and education and contraception and so fourth in the entire world.

Isreal just scares me

Period.