thirdworld

Third world

by Bob on June 5, 2007

The idea of a first world, second, and third world country and state of existence is changing its meaning.

For example, cities which have a poor class and rich class, and nothing in between, are by definition part of a third world.

And many first world cities are falling now into that definition. Rich, poor, with nothing in the middle. Not even social services.

The concept of a Third World is a seems to have come to usage in 1952 by French demographer, historian and anthropologist, Alfred Sauvy.

He used the model of the French statesman and priest, Fr. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes, and Sieyes observation about the Third Estate in the French Revolution, in his "What is the Third Estate?". Fr. Sieyes wrote that everything is the Third Estate, whereas Sauvy wrote rather something seemingly different in the French magazine L'Observateur on August 14, 1952:

"...because at the end this ignored, exploited, scorned Third World like the Third Estate, wants to become something too."

So there must be a first world, and second world, in addition.

The Second World was used to label and describe Communist countries, especially during the Cold War. The term seems not to be used quite often now. So much for the Second World. Let alone the Second Coming.

The First World is the rich and prosperous one and the countries and people therein contained.

Actually, the Chinese leader and reformer, Mao Tse-tung, wrote about a "Three Worlds Theory". But it was a bit different in conception and political. He held that the First World belonged to the superpowers, the Second World to the allies of the superpowers, and the Third World to the non-aligned nations.

The phrase "the third world" has become synonymous with the poorest nations and their poverty and their presumed abandonment by the world in their plight.

It is now being used to describe inner cities, if not simply the cities of rich nations.

Lack of affordable housing, homelessness, major communicable diseases, no appropriate medical care, employment opportunities -- these all fall into this equation and definition. The old model seems to break down now.

Some brilliant mathematicians have always held that numbers are special and mean something beyond just a numerical value. Numbers were super-loaded ideograms and concepts. Dr. Carl Jung went along this path in his book, "Synchronicity", wherein he said that man did not invent numbers, he simply uncovered them. Numbers are universal ideations.

So we have three medals in the Olympics, gold, silver, and bronze. Three members of the Christian Trinity. Two human shoulders with a head and consciousness in between. Freud defined the Ego, Super-Ego, and the Id. In Anthropology, we have 3 distinct species of the genus Homo (Homo habilis "capable man", Homo erectus "upright man", Homo sapiens "wise man"). In History we have the three-age system to divide prehistory in the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, invented by the Dane, Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. The Three Wise Men. Jesus rose on the third day. There is in Roman Catholicism, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, almost like floors in a department store. There are three branches of the US government: legislative, judicial, and executive. There are many instances of rule by three people simultaneously, as in a troika or triumvirate. Plato divided his idealised Republic into three groups of people: laborers, guardians ho were protectors and warriors, and philosophers who were rulers. The symbolism of the Triskelion. A tripod in ancient Greece.

Three is everywhere.

But not in the Third World model anymore. The Third World is everywhere. That makes it more fair and, in common parlance, "in our face" in the First World. Right in your street. Not even just on TV. It's your paupered neighbour. Your lost and broken-hearted homeless uncle. Your way-over-the-credit-limit parents.

Then we look at medicines. One good working characteristic of the Third World was lack of sensible and effective medicines for diseases already conquered in First World nations. Well there are some problems with that now.

It is perhaps dubious in a larger sense to think that "mechanical" medicine of the present Western model, which largely makes the patient akin to a turkey in an oven being cooked, and a side-effect of no human intervention and a slew of instruments and computer print-outs -- that this "mechanical" medicine is more appropriate or effective than that of the Eastern models, and especially the Shamanistic model perhaps originating from Central Asia in antiquity.

So we saw a re-surgence of diseases already thought to have been conquered in the West, like Tuberculosis, etc. in near-epidemic proportions in major affluent cities. And viruses which have mutated to the point where they are hardly able to be conquered by the body's immunological system and its catalogue of invaders. And bacteria which have become totally resistent to antibiotics.

And Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard University Medical School has written extensively and studied the power of mantric prayer, and the power of belief in being cured. It seems that the more the afflicted believes in the doctor tending to his healing, the better is the chance that the healing will happen. So there is a synergy. It doesn't really work if the doctor is not in the equation. It is not the same to have this synergy with cold computer printouts.

Whither the Third World ? Like the Frenchman, Fr. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes wrote about the Third Estate, in essence and paraphrased, it is all of us, and all around us.

This beckons us all to smarten up. It's the same Ship of Fools we are on together. For better or for worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

Jim Morrison of The Doors used to sing about this. One can easily remember his opening with "Horse Latitudes" (which really exist) followed up by "Moonlight Drive". A poem and the seminal song for their 1967 album, "Strange Days".

"Strange days indeed" as John Lennon once sang in his 1984 (of course) song "Nobody Told Me".

Both Jim and John profoundly knew about this world we're in. And they both said these were strange days. And knew about Horse Latitudes. Especially realistically and metaphorically.

So it goes.