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Globalizacion II
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Hi, I'm John Green, and this is the final episode of Crash Course World History.
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Not because we've reached the end of history, 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 do something that you may not be used to doing in history classes, imagining the future.
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Mr. Green! Mr. Green! In the future, I'm going to 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, you imagine your future, says a lot about the contemporary world.
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And listen to me from the past.
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While there's no question that your solipsistic individualism is bad 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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Man, I'm going to miss you, intro.
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So last week, ta-da, we discussed how global economic interdependence has led, on average,
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to longer, healthier, more prosperous lives for humans.
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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, most people now work not in agriculture or manufacturing, but in some kind of service sector.
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Healthcare, retail, education, entertainment, information technology, internet videos about world history, etc.
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And that switch has really changed our psychology, especially the psychology of upper classes living in the industrialized world.
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I mean, to quote Fredric Jameson, we are so far removed from the realities of production
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and work that we inhabit a dream world of artificial stimuli and televised experience.
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Think of it this way, if you had to kill a chicken every time you visited KFC, you would
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probably eat fewer chickens.
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Another change of psychology, many historians of the now note that globalization has also
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led to a celebration of individualism, particularly in the wake of the failures of the Marxist
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collectivist utopias.
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The generation that lived through the Depression and World War II saw large-scale, collectivist
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responses to both those crises.
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And they were responses that limited freedom, like the military draft, for instance, which
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limited your freedom, you know, not to be a soldier.
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Or the collectivization of health insurance seen in most of the post-war West, which limited
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your freedom to go bankrupt from health care costs.
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Or also government programs like Social Security, which limit your freedom not to pay for old
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people's retirement.
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But since the 1960s, the ascendant idea of personal freedom minimally limited by government
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intervention has become very powerful.
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Even the Catholic Church was part of this new search for individual freedom as the Second
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Vatican Council relaxed church rules in ways that weakened central authority, made concessions
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to individual styles of worship, even said that people of different religions could go
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to heaven.
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What good is heaven if it's going to be full of Protestants?
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It's just going to be like Minnesota.
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So here in the last episode of Crash Course World History, in the last 30 seconds I have
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offended five-sixths of the world's population in the form of non-Catholics and all Republicans
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and probably some political moderates who are confused about what Obama's health care
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law will and will not do.
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Stan, maybe I should just make this episode just an extended rant where I reveal all of
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my political biases and also my personal biases.
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Look, you're never going to meet a historian who doesn't have biases, but good historians
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try to acknowledge their biases, and I am biased toward Canada and its awesome health
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care system. I can't lie, I'm very jealous of you guys.
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But perhaps the greatest effect of the victory of individualism was on sex and the family.
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We haven't talked much about sex because my brother's teaching biology, which is basically
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just sex. But sex is pretty important historically, because it's how we keep happening.
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But in the 20th century, greater variety and availability of contraception made it possible
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for people to experiment with multiple sexual partners and help to uncouple sex from childbearing,
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Which was awesome, but individualism also had a destabilizing effect on families.
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As the great Leo Tolstoy put it, all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family
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is unhappy in its own way.
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But when your individual fulfillment trumps all, you needn't live amid your uniquely
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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%, with 70% of those
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divorces initiated by women.
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Technology has also driven families apart, as parents and children spend increasing time
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alone 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 rise in human population has
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been humanity's effect on the environment.
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While populations have increased partly thanks to better yields from existing farmland, much
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more land has also been brought under cultivation in the past half century.
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Often, this meant cutting down trees and valuable rainforests.
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The best known example of this is what's going on in the Amazon, but it happens worldwide.
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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, 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.
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Dear flowers, you capture the best and the worst of the globalized economy.
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You're so pretty, even the fake ones are pretty, but the real ones are constantly dying.
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They've got to be harvested and shipped and cut very efficiently, 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, they could just be shipped in a shipping container.
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More people can afford to apologize by giving their romantic partners professionally cut and arranged roses than in any time in human history.
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but in that we have lost something, which is that the whole idea of flowers is that
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you had to go out into the field and, like, cut them and arrange them yourself to apologize.
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It's not supposed to be, I'm sorry I forgot your birthday, here's $8 worth of work that
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was done in Kenya. It's supposed to be, I'm sorry I forgot your birthday, so I went into
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the fracking forest and got you some fracking flowers.
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Anyway, flowers, best wishes, John Green.
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Aww, you guys got me flowers for my last episode of World History.
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Okay, let's go to the Thought Bubble.
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As worldwide production and consumption increases, we use more resources, especially water and
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fossil fuels.
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Globalization has made the average human richer, and rich people tend to use more of everything,
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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, like, I don't need to become more poor in
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order for someone else to become more rich.
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But growth, at least so far, has been dependent upon unsustainable use of the planet's resources.
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The planet can't sustain 7 billion automobiles, for instance, or 7 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, we discussed the
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virtuous cycle of more efficiency making things cheaper, which in turn made them easier to
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buy, which increased demand, 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, our current models of economic growth don't
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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 been ravaged by HIV-AIDS for the past three decades, there's
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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 more travel
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between population centers.
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China has seen 150 million people 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, today it's almost 8 million.
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Of course, people have been moving from country to city for a long time, remember Gilgamesh?
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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, 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 doubled that.
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Almost no human being alive today lives with stuff only manufactured in their home country.
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But a thousand years ago, 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, pharmaceuticals, computers,
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software, financial services, represent something wholly new, you could just as easily see this
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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, the things 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 an economically interdependent world is much less likely to
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go to war.
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This may be true, but increasing global, cultural, and economic integration hasn't led to an
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end to violence.
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I mean, we've seen large-scale ethnic and nationalistic violence from Rwanda to the
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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 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 or the quirky republican
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system originally developed in the US.
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There are almost as many kinds of democracies as there are nations experiencing democracy.
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The fact is, however, that democracy and political freedom, especially the freedom to participate
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in and influence the government, have been on the rise all over the world since the 1980s,
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and especially since 1990.
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For instance, if you looked at the governments of most Latin American countries during most
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of the 20th century, you would usually find them ruled by military strongmen.
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Now, with a couple of exceptions, Fidel, Hugo, Stan, are they behind me right now?
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Because if they're behind me, I am in favor of collectivizing oil revenue and distributing
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it to the poor.
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If they're not behind me, that's a terrible idea.
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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, which jettisoned decades
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of apartheid in the 1990s and elected former dissident Nelson Mandela as its first black
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president in 1994.
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It also adopted one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, but it's worth
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remembering that democracy and economic success don't always go hand in hand as much as
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some Americans wish they would.
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Many new African democracies continue to struggle.
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The same is true in some Latin American countries.
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And China has shown that you don't need democracy in order to experience economic growth.
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But for a few countries, especially Brazil and India, the combination of democracy and
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economic liberalism has 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 in spite of its destabilizing effects on families and
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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 and it travels through all these global trade
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routes and kills every living human, then globalization will have been very bad for
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human history, specifically by ending it.
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If climate change continues to accelerate and displaces billions of people and causes
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widespread famines and flooding, then we will remember this period of human history as short-sighted,
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self-indulgent, and tremendously destructive.
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On the other hand, if we discover an asteroid hurtling toward Earth and mobilize global
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industry and technology in such a way that we lose Bruce Willis but save the world, then
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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.
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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, it's been a pretty good run for heterosexual males of European descent.
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Critics of globalization point out that billions haven't benefited much, if at all, from all
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this economic prosperity, and that the polarization of wealth is growing, both within and across
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nations.
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And those criticisms are valid, and they are troubling.
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But they aren't new.
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Disparities between those who have more and those who have less have existed pretty much
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from the moment agriculture enabled us to accumulate a surplus.
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Sometimes this inequality has been a big concern, as it was with Jesus and with Muhammad.
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At other times, not so much.
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Inequalities are as old as human history, and almost as old as the debate about them.
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One thing that is new, however, is our ability to learn about them, to discuss them,
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and hopefully to find solutions for them together as a global community
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that is better integrated and more connected than it has ever been before.
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Because here's the other thing about history.
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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, malaria, meteors from space, aren't human,
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it's also true that every human is a historical force.
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You are changing the world every day, 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 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, 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 Cookie Monster.
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This week's Phrase of the Week was Bruce Willis, which I am telling you because we are retiring
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the idea 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 to tell the history of the world in 42 12-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, and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.
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Oh, Stan, that's a crash.
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- Subido por:
- Jose Manuel G.
- Licencia:
- Dominio público
- Visualizaciones:
- 10
- Fecha:
- 1 de abril de 2016 - 10:59
- Visibilidad:
- Público
- Centro:
- IES MARIA ZAMBRANO
- Duración:
- 13′ 55″
- Relación de aspecto:
- 1.78:1
- Resolución:
- 426x240 píxeles
- Tamaño:
- 66.49 MBytes