Second and Third World Join the First - Step Six

The Basic Issue

During the last half of the twentieth century, the world was neatly divided into three segments:

1. The First Worldwhich was "us guys" in the west (or north if you prefer)
2. The Second World which was "the Commies" or more formally , the socialist oriented countries
3. The Third World which was the rest of humanity, the bulk of humanity, the poor, the developing nations, the underdeveloped, the marginalized, (or one of a number of other terms like "south").

In 1988, all that changed when the Berlin Wall collapsed and signaled the formal end of the second world. Its rapid shift towards the first in economic orientation left the label "third world" with little meaning. However, as the term had taken on something of a life of its own for so long, it continues to carry some freight, and will do so no doubt until something better emerges.

In 1997, the Brandon Arts council brought in four speakers on photography from different fields, one of whom was a man on an arts tour from the former USSR, who brought representative work from thirty modern photographers from that "country". It was perhaps one of the most fascinating pieces of social documentary I had ever seen. As we listened, he shared with the artistic expression of the wrestling with the collapse of communism and its repercussions now underway in their country. Following the show I mentioned to him that I appreciated it because it was likely about thirty years ahead of our own wrestling with the parallel collapse of Capitalism in our own country. He seemed a little puzzled at my comment.

At the present time, the west is still gloating that it won the cold war, and its member nations are, with varying degrees of glee, saying "haw-haw your end of the boat sank". The trouble is, we are all in the same boat, and both systems were rotten. It is more accurate to say, their end sank first.

A former chairman of Bell Telephone stated that the difference between large corporations and small was the time it took for them to sink. He stated that small businesses have about six weeks of life at any given time, and the end can always come swiftly. Large corporations, on the other hand, have a larger buffer, and take years to sink. The trouble with large corporations, he observed, however, was dry rot. It looks fine on the outside but is has collapsed and rotted within. So too with Capitalism, it is subject to dry rot, and is just as likely to find a swift demise as Communism, if it doesn't tend to its shortcomings in sufficient time.

Communism was developed as a protest to the shortcomings of capitalism, primarily in its excessive pursuit of the imperatives of the individual. In its place, unfortunately, it established the imperatives of the community. Both are aberrant distortions of the creative tension which exists between individual and social imperatives which we experience in day to day life.

The third world, somewhat in a "Johnny-come-lately" fashion is wanting in on the action as well. No, not all of them, but enough and in sufficient quantity, that serious ecological issues arise if their desires are to be fulfilled. The First world has, in its considerably irresponsible way, pushed the capacity of the environmental absorption features to the brink of their capacity to rebound. If the third world were to fire up their industrial sectors, it would put the global ecosystem over the brink, and we would all be in trouble. Of course, we, the first world and former second world, have less interest in the third's moving on up then the third's interest in doing so. Environmental conferences (Rio de Janeiro and Kyoto) have been held resulting in lots of talk and quasi promises to change the dynamics, but very little action.

It is, of course, difficult to argue with China who says "all we want is a refrigerator in every home. That is not much to ask". The problem is that they have 1.3 bullion people, and if old technology is used, that is enough Freon to totally destroy the ozone layer. Their comeback is "well, you got us to the brink, is it our fault that we are the one to push us over. You have the new Freon-free technology. How about you pay the difference out of the wealth you gained from being the ones to take us to the brink." This is the source of the "trade-off_ bargaining that goes on as the third world joins the first two worlds in capitalist economic orientation.

There is a small group of countries which seem to be different. They used to be considered third world but have broken away into an intermediate group of "newly industrializing nations" (also referred t a "Asian tigers' and so on). They are often held up as being special in their exceptional growth in the past few decades. When one looks closer at their situation however, one finds that they have had a period of favored nation status with the United States for strategic reasons (permission for military bases usually) which has given them an edge over their neighbors.

The third world's desire to join in the pursuit of the good life enjoyed by the first (and some of the second for a while), comes just at a time when all the first five dominoes are falling, and their joining in the efforts is the sixth domino, or "Step" along the road to defining the current situation in the rural scene.

Canada's place in this situation, particular as it relates to the rural aspect of Canada moves us out an examination of the six steps which brought us here, to an examination of several aspects of our present rural reality. The first relates specifically to our placement in the first-second-third-industrializing world scale, because it relates to the non-agricultural natural resource extraction centers in rural Canada.

Rural Development Institute Research Studies