I mean I’m aware there probably weren’t many black people during the renaissance. But it would be even cooler if this worked for people with different shades?
As an extension to your point I would also like to add one aspect that is often forgotten when discussing lockdowns. Which is that a complete lockdown might potentially be worse. Because what more important than social distancing is keeping young and old apart. Families that have elderly and the young in them would just be locked in and cause the elderly to get infected and potentially die due to the virus affecting them more. Furthermore what about the medics and their families? in a lockdown they would have to return home and potentially spread it with children and elderly. So a more surgical approach is needed in which isolation happens for the vulnerable groups specifically and the young would be able to participate in the economy and we could weather both the effects of the virus and the economy but im afraid a complete lockdown might cause us to end up in a lose/lose situation. In which case i only see a vaccine as saving grace.
Not to downplay any serious issues of fatigue, overworking or burnout but I personally found good air ventilation, strict rules of drinking water regularly, meditation and exercise did immense things for me. To the point where I have an excess of energy I never used to have previously at work.
What's even more maddening is that the population of flint Michigan is majority Black. Hard to spin that race hasn't got anything to do with the lack of effort in fixing the issue.
This problem is widespread throughout the Rust Belt/Midwest and very costly to fix. Because many of the repairs fall on local governments, poorer neighborhoods struggle with this. So you can point to the water in a poor black neighborhood in Michigan and say it is proof of racism. But why are you ignoring the poor white neighborhood in Appalachian Pennsylvania that has the exact same problem?
To paint this as racism is either dishonesty or ignorance.
Many of the neighborhoods with this problem have been areas of severe deindustrialization. When a city like Flint shrinks because the main factory shuts down, they no longer have the tax revenue to support their own infrastructure, let alone build new infrastructure. They are stuck in a slow decay, and would need Federal assistance to get out.
The opposition of "spin" isn't to counter-spin, but rather to not spin. While the racism-denial narrative is hard to justify (as you state), that does not mean that the racism-encouraging narrative is worthwhile (as you imply).
As Hans Rosling pointed out in Factfulness, the birth and literacy rates in Sweden in the 19th century were on par with the poorest of African countries today, resulting in fully 20% of the population becoming refugees in North America to escape famine. And today, 150 years later, it's... Sweden. The ideal of modern civilization. He said he was born in "Egypt", by which he meant the economy of Sweden in the late 1940s was similar to Egypt today.
With that in mind, is there any reason that the poor countries of Africa today can't be the Sweden of tomorrow? It's more irrational to say they'll stay poor and overpopulated than it is to say they'll become wealthy and modern with zero population growth.
Egypt's per capita income grew over 20x from 1965 to 2015. And consider the population increase that happened over the same period. The overall GDP (constant US dollars) grew from $5B to around $335B.
Egypt is the cradle of civilization. The Nile hasn't gone anywhere. As soon as they get their heads out their asses and let farmers own farms rather than military cronies, they'll be able to feed themselves again.
No, see, "cradle of civilization" is exactly about resource constraints. They have water and sunlight and good soil, and those are the resources needed for agriculture. People living in Egypt and running short on grain is a temporary condition that condemns their government not a permanent one that condemns their land.
That's okay, because the population density of Africa is very low (it's comparable to that of the Americas, much less than Europe/Asia)[1], it's currently only 15% of the world's population[2], and Africa is an enormous continent[3] the fact of which the Mercator projection distorts[4].
You're right there, however I'm afraid the issue won't be density but a much different issue: Unemployment. [1] Reason this could be a worldwide issue is the opportunity cost. Can we afford not to have a billion or more minds on board to solve some of the worlds most pressing problems? China is trying its best to industrialize and capitalize on the growth. But many are claiming their tactics are almost neocolonialist. [2]
Let's take an example I read the other day about recent nobel prize winner in literature Kazuo Ishiguro.
He thought he was finsihed writing his book and coincidentally listened to a ballad by Tom waits which left such an impression on him that he changed the ending of the book that won him the nobel prize.
In his own words "The song is sung in the voice of a rough American hobo type utterly unaccustomed to wearing his emotions on his sleeve. And there comes a moment, when the singer declares his heart is breaking, that’s almost unbearably moving because of the tension between the sentiment itself and the huge resistance that’s obviously been overcome to utter it. Waits sings the line with cathartic magnificence, and you feel a lifetime of tough-guy stoicism crumbling in the face of overwhelming sadness."
This goes to show that insight can come from entertainment.
Also Kendrick has numerous songs with similar emotion evoking moments as the one described by Ishiguro.
