re AIDS:
<it could lead to blowback just not unlike what happened as the Islamic world failed>
Yes, when 30-50% of a nation's population dies, and an even greater percentage of the educated urban workers, the result has to be chaos. Social chaos, which will lead to political and military chaos. This process is well advanced in Africa.
Any nation which, for any reason, has large masses of angry desperate people, and no functioning government, is going to be prone to millenial, extreme, violent politics. Which means that sub-Saharan Africa is going to be every bit as much a threat to the Security of the Civilized World, as N. Korea and Iraq and Iran put together.
Here's what I see happening: African societies, as a whole, don't work. A Darwinist would call them UnFit for their Environment. AIDS is the particular stress which is pushing their existing societies to extinction. But even without AIDS, the challenge of the emerging Globalization, means the end of existing methods of organizing society, across the continent.
Specifically: to become Fit, to survive, they need to enforce behaviors on their populations, that will stop the spread of the HIV virus. Or at least marginalize the infection to small subgroups. Without that, they will die. There are two memes that are spreading rapidly in the continent, which can stop AIDS: societies based on Fundamentalist Islam, and Fundamentalist Christianity.
Fundamentalist Islam has succeeded in keeping rates of infection very low, in areas where they control society. Islamic nations already own the North of Africa, and they are spreading South. In nations like Nigeria, with mixed Muslim and non-Muslim areas, the demographics will swing in favor of the Muslims, because they aren't dying. Islam has succeeded, in enforcing codes of personal conduct throughout society, in contrast to many non-Muslim societies. Contrast Egypt with Uganda, or Thailand with Malaysia. Only Cuba has done as good a job as the Muslim countries, at enforcing behavior that leads to survival. Contrasting Cuba with Haiti, is another interesting exercise.
Christianity is spreading rapidly in Africa. I believe the success of Christianity, is largely due to the chaos caused by AIDS. AIDS is dissolving all older memes, which have proven dysfunctional. The Christian sects that are wildly successful in Africa, are the new militant vigorous ones, the kind that are not at all shy of saying: "premarital sex, all sex outside of marriage, is a sin, and any ethical government will act on this basic morality. God watches you everywhere all the time, and AIDS is His punishment for sinners who break His rules." It is not the older, more traditional Christian sects that are gaining new adherents. It is the new ones, that demand total obediance, that insist their Holy Book is infallible and perfect and has a specific rule for every possible action (especially including the most private and personal actions). This meme shows Survival Traits, it is Fit to meet the challenge of the HIV virus.
After independance, Africa flirted with the meme of Socialism. They never seriously even tried secular democracy. Now, both those Ideas, plus all the older pre-colonial cultural Ideas, are Unfit and dying. Eventually, on the graveyard of all other societies, I see Africa as a battleground for Fundamentalist societies/governments, either Islamic or Christian. This emerging 21st Century Africa is the antithesis of the Enlightenment. But it is quite Fit to survive and reproduce itself. |
