1491: The Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
While the book was not chock-full of shocking revelations as its publicity implies, it was a very amenable read on the state of the Americas before Columbus. The only really interesting thing for me was its explanation of the population collapse due to disease, something we’ve known but at least I didn’t quite fathom its scale.
A couple of European colleagues joined me in my last business trip to Mexico and they seemed genuinely surprised by what they saw. It was not as unsafe as they were led to believe, the people were more ethnically varied than they expected, it was not as poor (even though of course they did see a cross-section of Mexican society from wealthy city denizens to farm hands in the hills) and the food was better than they thought.
Also at some point I spent some time with a group of Finnish gentlemen who had a lot of questions about the country, which I did my best to answer in the little time we had together (personal favourite: why do all houses have water tanks in the roof?).
Maybe the place is indeed quite misunderstood as I’ve been saying all these years. I’m not saying it’s better or worse, it’s just not what people abroad without previous experience of the country think.
It’s been a tough 2011 for Europe and it’s going to get tougher. The role of Finland in this whole mess is deeply contested, and is a result of the changes in Parliament after the elections last spring. I personally think Finnish politicians are too smug (see Halla-Aho’s Greece comments). They treat other countries in the EU like a poor relation, but they seem to forget that Finland might be on the receiving end of EU aid sooner than we would like. While the current budget deficit is quite manageable, Finland has the fastest-aging population in Europe.This will have a huge impact in social services and pensions, so I would hope for a return to traditional Finnish caution from the current brashness.
If I put my Mexican hat on, it is very ironic to see developed countries not following their own rules and recommendations for economic recovery (see cartoon in Spanish). I guess the IMF’s medicine is too bitter when you try it yourself.
Below you can see some pictures I’ve taken that show the discontent from the general public in different parts of the continent.
One of the challenges I’ve had in explaining the security situation in certain parts of Mexico to some of my friends and colleagues has simply been the fact that people don’t necessarily understand the size of the country.
Now, courtesy of ifitweremyhome.com, I found this excellent map superimposing Mexico on top of Europe to prove my point. Just as people going to the beaches of Greece and Turkey didn’t need to worry about the Glasgow airport bombers, it makes little sense to worry about the security situation in the northern border if you’re going to the beaches of central and southern Mexico. I certainly won’t, and I go there every year (If you need tips, I wrote a small guide some time ago).
That’s what drives me crazy sometimes about the international news coverage of the country. I’m not telling you that there aren’t places that are screwed up, but using that brush for the whole place is misleading.
I’ve always been interested in finding out “the other side of the story”. That was one of my main incentives in learning foreign languages, and the reason why I usually scan international newspapers. As a recent project put me in constant contact with Turkey, I was able to pick up this book at Istanbul airport and was able to read it through. While this blog gives a longer review of the book than I’d be willing to write here, the most interesting bit of the whole book was that for the peoples comprising Medieval Islam, Europe was an uninteresting barbaric fringe following an antiquated superseded religion, and so approached their contact with Europeans from a stand of perceived moral superiority. Not unlike the way Europeans viewed the peoples of the New World in the 1500’s.
The book then gives a summary of how those attitudes changed with the faster European development of the Renaissance to a situation where while European technical, scientific & military expertise was sought after, cultural contact was still avoided. 300 years later, the situation is starting to change as can be seen in the TED talk below:
Disclaimer: I know Turkey is in general much less traditionalist than other Muslim countries. It is generally agreed that the push West was started by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which was not covered in this book.
After a very interesting presentation by Dr. José Luis Cordeiro of Singularity University, I was left with a few interesting ideas about the coming accelerating technological and social progress.
Recently read an article in a Mexican business magazine where they mention that the 500 euro bill is the darling of the Italian mafia. The simple reason is that while transporting a million dollars in 100 dollar bills cash would need a portfolio or bag weighing up to 10 kg (as previously seen in Hollywood), a million dollars in 500 euro bills would be much more easily concealed and weigh less than 2 kg. No wonder they are starting to find these in seizures in Mexico, Costa Rica and Russia.
I mean, I have never seen even the 100 Euro bill being used normally in the street, much less the 200 or 500. Given that the larger the denomination the larger the bill, 500 Euro are pretty much a purple papyrus 😛
I am very disappointed in the level of the campaigns for the European Parliament elections this year. Since the average Finnish voter knows very little about the EU (they may have not explained it to you, but the European Parliament has broader powers than the Eduskunta in some matters, but not as much as certain politicians would have you believe) and is naturally very sceptic of the unknown, the themes of the election have been mostly domestic issues such as immigration and social security.
Most parties (including those in government) use the cheap trick of blaming everything that’s wrong on the European institutions to the tone wherever the European Union is present there will be problems, forgetting completely the advantages of being part of the EU and being in the decision-making process. You know, small things like access to a huge market for Finnish products and services, huge agricultural subsidies for Finnish farms, a strong, stable currency (just ask the Icelanders or the Swedes if they wouldn’t want that at the moment) and the fact you don’t need to show a passport to go to Greece or Spain are forgotten by most. Shame on them.
Regardless of that if you haven’t done so already, please vote by the 7.6. Any vote that doesn’t go for the Perussuomalaiset is a plus (I mean, do you really want people like them to represent Finland in Europe?).
One of the topics I was discussing with friends is how while in the New World being American, Canadian or even Mexican is more than anything else an ideal that can be aspired to and achieved, being Finnish, German or Italian requires you to be born into it.
If this is true, then for the sake of argument we could assume that the current debate about the need for immigrants to adapt and blend into society (what I sometimes jokingly call soppauttaminen, a play on the Finnish words for soup and adapt) is asking for the impossible, simply because the only way for them to be regarded as to be fully part of society is to be born there, which at least their first generation cannot do. Further down the road it might happen, but is not automatic.
One could argue that this is exactly what happened to Turks in Germany, where until the change of the citizenship laws this decade, the children and grandchildren of immigrants were not allowed to become citizens of the country where they were born. It is documented that even today they live in very tightly knit communities with little contact with the outside world.
In France, on the other hand you have the values of liberty, equality and fraternity that are cherished by all and ensure that everybody who adapts the French language and values will be deemed as French at least in theory, but in practice it might be a little bit more complicated, as the situation in the banlieues shows.
Trying to apply this to my experiences, I have been trying to understand if there is an idea of Finnishness that I can make my own, that would also be accepted by society and followed through. If the perunasuomalaiset and other Finnish politicians really want to take the situation of immigration head on, they should ask that question. A person who has no investment in and no part in society will not be interested in his development within it.
¿Las cervezas mexicanas que se venden en Europa se embotellan de este lado del charco o las importan ya listas para distribuir en sus puntos de venta?
