Spontaneous Theories: Population
I had a glimpse of the Bollywood movie “The Three Idiots”, which focused on the pressures of what was India’s academic condition by the time the movie was made. Firstly, a group report about bollywood exposed me to a significant song-and-dance number in the film, and secondly, my mum had a copy of the film. Don’t ask me questions you would not wanna hear the answer to.
As I was deducing the probable origins of the seeming degeneracy of the somehow democratic Indian Nation, founded in part through the efforts of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (his efforts to liberate the entire British colony on India would then be screwed over by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, an ex-compatriot of Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru who would move on the establish Pakistan), I took into consideration the population and, given that India ranks a significant second against China, probable micro-solutions, if I may be so allowed to borrow a concept from economics—I am gunning for perhaps a vague representation of interdisciplinarity in case you are baffled, to alleviate poverty.
Thereby, as I was about to sleep just this early morning, I got to thinking about theories I have conjured in the blink of an eye. Theories about population, its connections with the history of a certain state, and their connections with the current condition of the state now.
China and India, when all things are considered, have a greater population compared to the other nations in Asia alone. And, if history may be bothered to lend a few of its facts in establishing a good point in some of my theories, China and India are by far the world’s oldest surviving civilizations. The only western penetration, if Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie would allow me to be “dare-teah” for a few seconds (or more), these two civilizations have experienced which affected the way of life in the aforementioned countries greatly, are either ideologies or typical European colonializing methods (I say typical due to bringing in to consideration a different approach to colonialization the then-rising U.S. empire has brought the world to revel upon—that of their exceptionalist paradigm, as suggested by historians and historical thinkers such as Glenn Anthony May and Julian Go, et. al.
These ideologies and colonializing methods even worked to serve the purpose of the country they are involved in. Take, for example, China, and Mao Zedong’s usage and application of the Marxist theory in integrating a socialist principle whose operation and utilization in a feudal, colonial, and basically economically backward society, such as the China of dynasties past. It may have failed to erase the Chinese dynastic influence amongst the inhabitants (the need for a male offspring is an underlying cause for female infanticide in Chairman Mao’s China, and the tradition of offering incense sticks to deities representing something good that would probably happen is not that weaned away from the Chinese), but it has established a great deal of social change that adapts with the global technologization and neo-industrialization. In the case of the Tibetans, the theory may be disputed, but remember that the bulk of the 1.7 billion Chinese people in the entire land area are mostly in the big cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. And besides, it’s a theory.
A better example of how my theory works would be India itself. The British Colonization led to a significant change in the culture, but the pre-British traditions remain, thanks to the written versions of the tomes of Indian culture, which for long have stood the test of time: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Now I don’t know how they plan their families in India, let alone in what is known as the Old Delhi, but the population boom is primarily due to the revolutionary technological changes India has learned to adapt since their liberation from Britain.
There, so in a theory a dumb fuck like me could conceive, India and China are the most populated countries mainly because of their status as being the oldest surviving old-world civilizations.
What about those next in line?
This other theory concerns those who became powerful in the second millenium of the common era. From the Iberian Superpowers to the Dutch and British, to the French and Italians (to a lesser degree), to the “exceptionalist” Americans in the U. S. Their domination boils down to influence. The Iberian superpowers made their mark in making the old Central and South American civilizations obsolete, and integrating a form of language foreign to the colonies into the colonies themselves. The Philippines, a former colony of Spain, remains a largely Catholic nation, with people adapting Spanish surnames (or Spanish derivatives of their native of Chinese surnames) as per Governor General Narciso Claveria’s instructions in the nineteenth century. The Brazilians are an example of Portugal’s influence in the new world, with the language and the culture of the Portuguese being integrated in the native aspects of Brazilian culture. And damn it, Brazil is huge.
Britain exercised its command over India and their colonies, even up to America and reaching as far as the Pacific Ocean, and therefore, the culture was engraved in the colonials’ way of life. And the Filipinos know about the exceptionalism of the American occupation as compared to the European colonial powers. But hell, even in places not occupied by the US, the American way of life, let alone the American dream, is well-represented and well-incorporated around the world. Their rise as a superpower came at a time when globalization was enjoying perfect upshifts as time progressed. That’s one of the reasons why more and more green card holders progress to being legitimate citizens of the United States of America; that and the American Dream.
The influence matter is another thing to look at when concerning population and current situation of countries. That, aside from the unfazed cultural history and civilization of the countries involved.
Anyway, these are merely theories, and I think I’m straining my brain too much by going worldwide in one sweep. Everyone is bound to refute some ideas here (mostly grammar nazis probably correcting construction), since these arise from spontaneity (a trait well known amongst musicians and other people from the humanities field), and the bases these ideas are established upon may have not been well-researched by yours undoubtedly. So, yeah, feel free to slam me and fuck my brains open until you make me (spoiler alert) hang myself like the Joy guy in “The Three Idiots”.
