What is the third world, and why are some countries developing while others claim to be developed?
Today, we had class with Johnny, who talked about the third world with us.
We started the course with a quiz about the third world. I was surprised and shocked that I didn’t have so much knowledge about its positive and negative developments. But this beginning was a good introduction to that important topic.
The question which was raised in the course of the seminar was what the third world is. I think it is easier to explain if we define what a developing county is.
“Developing country:
is a term generally used to describe a nation with a low level of material well-being. Since no single definition of the term developed country is recognized internationally, the levels of development may vary widely within so-called developing countries. Some developing countries have high average standards of living”1
The third world on the other hand “is the term used during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism or communism”.2
From the perspective of the western or rather industrialized world, the third world is getting judged to be third world, because they do not seem to develop at all. This disability is seen as weakness because people living in third world’s countries can’t improve their standard of living and so on.
For me it is just wrong. Recently, I read the biography “Wüstenblume” by Waris Dirie. In her book, she describes her life as nomad in Somalia and also writes about the mentality of her culture. It was very suprising for me, because it totally changed my mind about my view on the third world. Waris Dirie explains, that most of the Africans have a very close connection and relationship to nature. They love their country and therefore, they want to take as little as possible away from it. That is why they live as nomads and they only produce what they need for living. That can be called subsistence agriculture. She also defines her culture’s mentality as modest and explained that the nations have, of course, the chance to develop, but they are just very satisfied with what they have. Therefore, the demand of getting more and more, which the industrialized nations have, is very low.
This fact is very interesting because we think that they are not able to develop, but they are. They just decide not to do.
I really like this attitude because they account for keeping the world’s resources and the maintenance of our world. The third world’s lifestyle does not account to global warming as much as industrialized countries, because of their little industry and so on.
While industrialized countries try to develop technology and knowledge, the third world is carrying on its lifestyle. I found it very interesting that Truman once said “greater production is the key to prosperity and peace”.3 I totally disagree because just the mentality of the industrialized nations to get more and more and therefore, wanting more power and influence took them all their peace away.
But nevertheless, I think it is very essential to develop knowledge about health (most of the children in the third world die because of easy treatable diseases).
I don’t think, that the first world has the right to force the third world to change. The only way is to assist them and to tell/teach them about hygiene and so on. But in the end, they have to decide themselves how they want to live. I don't like our modern/western and extravagent lifestyle and think, that we could even learn a lot about protecting our culture and our planet from them.
2 Wikipedia: Third world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World
3 Truman, Text Escobar
