I was thinking today (as I rode the bus to work) about the financial crisis in Dubai. I think what triggered it was someone else on the bus mentioning that they had visited Dubai over the Christmas holidays. That led me to think about how there might be some very good travel deals available for Dubai right now, since it needs the money, which led me to think about how I had actually heard of Dubai’s financial troubles almost a year ago, while everyone else in North America seemed only to hear about it sometime just before Christmas.
All of these thoughts led to another pile of thoughts about information, and how (despite the worldwide connectivity afforded by the internet) the places where we live still dictate how much we know about what’s going on in the rest of the world. I knew about the Dubai situation far earlier than most North Americans because I live close to it, I know people who are working there or who have worked there recently, and because many people in this area tend to go there for vacations or conferences, and come back talking about Dubai news.
What I didn’t understand was why the average North American didn’t learn about Dubai’s financial problems until recently. Most people who are semi-educated about the state of the world today have some idea that Dubai is a place of extravagant architecture, big spending, and hot temperatures. They have seen pictures or heard about the man-made palm-shaped islands that offered huge stretches of beachfront property in Dubai, and they heard rumours that Dubai was building a really really tall building. But it wasn’t until December, when the international news services reported that Dubai was asking its neighbour for some bailout money, that everyone found out that Dubai wasn’t doing so hot (so to speak), even though the real-estate market there fell out in early 2009. It took almost a year for news of Dubai’s situation to make it across the world, and yet information now travels at the speed of light.
It made me think too about how the average Canadian knows quite a lot about what’s going on in American politics, while the average American is completely clueless about what happens in Canada, a country that the USA shares the longest undefended boarder in the world with. I’m sure the reason for this is that most Americans simply don’t care about Canada (and when you think about it, why should they?), but it leads to a situation where the average American might know a lot about the USA and very little about anywhere else, while the average Canadian knows a lot about both Canada and the USA (and probably very little about anywhere else!).
Growing up in Hamilton Ontario, we had the same situation in relation to the rest of Canada. We knew a lot about what was happening in the area along Lake Ontario, between Toronto and Niagara Falls, and very little about what was going on in the rest of Canada. When I moved out to British Columbia for 7 months, I suddenly learned about the rest of Canada, but was still up-to-date with Ontario news. Conversely, people who live in Toronto often know a lot about Toronto, while even neighbouring cities like Hamilton or St. Catharines would be completely off their radar. Toronto is to Ontario what Hamilton is to Canada, which is what the USA is to the rest of the world.
Now, all of these situations assume that if you do live in some popular “happening place”, while you might not know much about what’s happening outside of where you live, you should still know a lot about where you actually are. But this isn’t always the case either. Sometimes living where you are makes it more difficult to find objective information about your own location. For instance, I had several Chinese friends who were completing their Master’s degrees in my program several years ago who had no idea that China had a reputation for human rights violations. Any newspaper or magazine article outlining such situations had not been made public in their home country.
By the same token, since the 9/11 attacks in the USA, many Americans put forward all kinds of theories about why people from the Middle East might want to attack America. Many said that those terrorists hated American freedoms. Others said that the terrorists were jealous of American prosperity. A large number of people thought the attacks were religion-based, and blamed Muslims as a whole. But very few average Americans had any idea that most of the rest of the world (including much of the world outside of the Middle East) hated American foreign policy, and that such policies were being blamed for the treatment of Palestinians in Israel, among other things.
As someone who lives in the Middle East, I can give you 3 good reasons why people in this part of the world might hate the USA. Two are reasons that are well-established, and one is a reason of my own deduction. First, many in the Middle East consider Western (American) morality to be substandard when compared to their own moral standards. The thought of allowing pornography, adultery, and free sex to run rampant without societal restraint is completely perplexing to the Middle Eastern mindset – you might as well shoot your society in the foot and still expect it to run. Second, there is the foreign policy situation which I mentioned above, which views America as the self-declared police force of the world, imposing its own political and economic self-interests on everyone else because of its own unrivaled military strength.
The final reason people in the Middle East (or elsewhere) might hate America, and this is just my own idea here, is that the USA is (arguably) the only global superpower, and if you get your kicks killing people or blowing stuff up (or ordering others to kill and blow stuff up) the USA is the most challenging and globally visible target. Attacking America shows that you have balls, gets you onto the elite list of worldwide criminal organizations, and guarantees that you’ll get big, worldwide publicity. I believe that the number one reason why anyone decides to enter the terrorist profession is because they like doing stuff that terrorists do – killing people, torturing people, raping people, blowing stuff up, getting good drugs, getting recognition for bad-assery rather than intelligence, etc., and if you can do some damage to the USA, you’re gonna have a lot of future job opportunities in terrorist circles.
But getting back to the topic of Information and Location, here’s a question. If living in some places means you’re ignorant of other places (or even of your own place), where is the best place to live where you’ll have maximum access to what’s actually going on in the world, globally speaking? It would have to be someplace that’s not too big and exciting, otherwise you’ll only be concerned with your own news and events (like the USA or Toronto), and it can’t be someplace attached to somewhere big and exciting, or you may only be concerned with yourself and the place you’re attached to (like Hamilton or any country in Europe). That leaves us with living in places that are somewhat isolated, with very little going on locally, and ready access to worldwide news.
So, in my mind, we’re left with several options: Scandinavia (Sweden or Finland or Norway), Australia/New Zealand, or (ahem…) Qatar. Scandinavia is isolated enough, and has little drama within its own boarders. Also, the few people I’ve met from Scandinavia have been excellently well-traveled, and can communicate in English better than some North Americans I know. And if you do any traveling anywhere outside of your home town, you’ll know that people from Australia and New Zealand are always traveling everywhere – soaking up new experiences and exploring the world. Because really, who is more isolated than Australia and New Zealand? And after you’ve spent a few weeks seeing the major sights in those countries, you have no other cross-cultural options but to hop on a plane and visit the rest of the world.
And finally, of course, there’s Qatar. I just note that many of the Qatari locals have done very little traveling outside of the Gulf, and few take a huge interest in cultures outside of their own. But if you’re an ex-pat in Qatar, you’re in the perfect situation to stay globally connected – You’re surrounded with English-speaking expats from everywhere else in the world, Qatar itself is so small and inconspicuous (and boring) that the newspapers are filled with news from the rest of the world, and geographically speaking, Qatar is close to the center of the (non-American) world, so it’s easy to travel from here to most (non-American) countries.
So, what started as some idle thoughts on the bus about Dubai’s financial troubles has brought us through to the motivations of anti-American terrorism, and lead us to the recognition that I am living at the hub of all worldwide knowledge. All-in-all, I’d say that I had a fairly productive bus ride today (mentally speaking).
Leave a Comment