Umm, actually, it does.
Lust4Life In the cases of those African colonies the answer is that they never actually advanced. The colonialists were running everything, and when they left it fell apart because the people from the advanced culture were no longer around.
Unfortunately, I cannot access the article. It requires a paid subscription to Scientific American or a per-article purchase. Furthermore, from the preview, the main thrust of the article is not related to relative national abilities in protein manufacturing, but rather generally describes some of the difficulty in protein engineering including the difficulty of structure prediction, etc.
“Protein engineering,” which is esentially still a pipe-dream technology with no existing applications yet (this is, there are certainly plenty of proteins being manufactured now for use as therapies, but it isn’t really used for any industrial material sciences applications that I know of), when and if it does exist, will be like software. The expertise needed to design them will be great, but the manufacturing will require only modest infrastructure. Furthermore, for the pharmaceutuical protein manufacturing going on right now, Asia and other places worldwide are already participating on a level just as advanced as the United States right now.
http://www.innovationmagazine.com/innovation/volumes/v4n3/coverstory3.shtml
The relative advancement of China’s molecular biology vs. the United States’ advancement is a debate-worthy topic, but their expertise is already extensive and rapidly expanding. I wouldn’t place any bets as to who would be intellectually dominant in 20 years, although I don’t see the world in terms of a constant national, racial, or cultural struggle as I suspect you see it. Rather, we’ll benefit as consumers from whatever advances they make in science and they’ll continue to benefit from whatever advances we make.
I believe that some of what the OP referred to may have some merit, but possibly from a more idealogical/religious perspective than from say, an infrastructure or economic one.
You could argue that in terms of the treatment of humans under the rule of law and in terms of expressions of freedoms of speech, religion, etc that some of the regions mentioned by the OP are regressive in nature when compared to the Westernized parts of the world.
Clearly, since Western society is founded upon Arab mathematics, (stolen from Indians), Chinese paper and printing, Arab and Turk metalworking, and, most importantly, Chinese gunpowder, Western society is not advancing, merely returning to the roots from which it stole its apparent success.
Well what I meant was that US firms would hold patents and copyrights on their material, and thus dominate the manufacture of such things.
I agree with you. I don’t see the world as a constant national, racial struggle. The dominant institutional form right now is the corporation. To put it in terms of software, I see nation-states as legacy corporations. They will be the dominant corporate form for quite a while, but the rise of multinational corporations and non-state political entities such as Al Qaeda will change the way we organize our allegiances slowly over time. This more than anything affects what we see as ‘progress’ or ‘regress’. I generally divide my mind into two modes with this one. I try to understand things from a nationalist perspective, and I try to understand things from a globalist perspective.
Something I have been confronted with a lot lately is the notion that many of my friends, fellow Americans are afraid of their employment and monetary prospects. I on the other hand am quite confident that my earnings potential will increase in the next few years. I have a lot of really good opportunities in the wind in a few different fields that I’ve been working toward. I also have a portable skill-set that is not linked to dependency upon a local economy. Basically, I can see myself as an internationalist globalist, but a lot of my friends do not see themselves in those terms. Basically, my friends are talking about the good wage of $ 10-20 per hour. I wouldn’t take a job for those wages unless it was some kind of creative job writing for a project that has a limited budget.
E-Commerce has increased the ability of the average citizen to have multiple revenue streams, but that also requires a certain entrepeneurial mindset that a lot of people seem to be lacking. We have a culture that trains people to become cogs in a machine just as that machine is becoming more ephemeral. As you saw in the Democratic debates last night, they put a pall over the audience at St. Anselm when they talked about 30,000,000 white collar jobs leaving the US, affecting middle-class college students. It was quite interesting to see the reaction shots on the faces of those college students when the candidates who are competing for their votes talked about them specifically not having jobs when they get out of college, as though that concept isn’t daunting enough for a student about to graduate. However, I think America’s strength is our ability to retool to the modern environment. We always have adapting downturns in the form of recession and then come back with a new perspective on the current market. I would only think that we regressed if that suddenly were not the case.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the future of synthetic biology. It would be cool if you started a thread as you seem to know what you are talking about. I’ll probably mainly ask questions and lurk. I think synth-biology, and nanotech are the most relevant new developments to the question of where the economy is going, though it’s tought to discuss because the black swan potential is huge.
But doesn’t that mean deciding which is more “advanced”? There used to be freedom of speech and education for women in most Middle Eastern countries, and now, in some of them, women are “protected” and “kept sacred” by the males who do all that tedious thinking for them. Wouldn’t they say we’re the ones who haven’t “advanced” as quickly as they have because we allow our women to be defiled by outside influence?
I mean, it’s obvious from my use of quotes what I think about the issue, but I’m also aware that I have the perfectly natural bias of thinking that my people’s way is the best, most advanced way there is to be!
“Man [has] always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much-the wheel, New York, wars and so on-while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man-for precisely the same reason.” – Douglas Adams
While I agree with the “eye of the beholder” premise here, perhaps the best way to answer the question would be to ask the women in those Middle Eastern countries you referenced whether they view their being “kept” and “thought for” is in their best interests or not.
But such care for how the individual feels about their place in society is at the root of the cultural difference. So even caring how they feel about their place in society is judging it by western values.
Culture != Civilisation.
I don’t know about that. People have feelings, no matter their culture. I think that women KNOW they are being repressed in such cultures, they just aren’t allowed to say so to their “keeper”.
I think that’s not always true. Some of the staunchest supports of and actual “surgeons” doing female genital mutilation, both in the Middle East and countries of Africa, are women. Mothers and aunts teach this stuff to their daughters as the way things should be.
That’s beside the point. Many cultures do not care about how the individual ‘feels’ about it’s societal oppression. Many people in our culture feel alienated and are convinced that the system is keeping them down in some fashion. In our culture we care about this and have a sense of entitlement toward the ‘pursuit of happiness’ ie we feel like we shouldn’t have to suffer. Islam on the other hand is about peace through submission to Allah. They don’t believe that personal liberty is important as a culture. Judging how people feel about their cultural situation is a value from a culture that values personal liberty. This is the essential characteristic that defines our culture as opposed to old world cultures. This is not to say that other cultures are devoid of compassion, or that people don’t care about how they feel individually, only that by taking such a stand you are judging Muslim culture by your own Western, specifically American values system.
Lust4Life writes:
> I saw a CNN report recently about white collar workers in Japan dropping dead
> at an incredibly early age after being literally worked to death,according to the
> report this was not only not a rare occurrence but their was talk of legislation
> being introduced to discourage this in the future.
>
> Apart from going home to sleep,shower and change it said many workers are
> spending their every waking moment excluding commuting time at work.
Americans work more hours in a year than Japanese do:
I suspect that that report was exaggerating.
The reason for the plummeting is pretty obvious if you think about it.