Global Dominance and Human Development

Technology and global dominance was the subject for the first half of the lesson.  History has taught us a lot about military dominance of the past. Europeans being more technological advance tried to expand their colonies. They travelled around the world and conquered many lands. As the Americans and Chinese developed, they begin to compete on the chase of global dominance. However, there was a period of time where China felt it was more superior den the other countries and possess all the knowledge. They did not want to share their knowledge and looked down on the others, therefore they decided to shut themselves in from the rest of the world. From then, the Europeans and Americans hunger for knowledge and improvement brought them to greater heights, with better technology and military power, they where able to maintain as dominant players in the world. This thought me that knowledge is ever growing and we should not be arrogant but constantly seek to improve ourselves. We may not seek dominance but once we stop learning and stop developing better technology, we will be increasingly prone to being dominated by others, which is something nobody wants.

Dominance is not limited to the military aspect but economical, social, political, cultural and many more.  With the advancement in communication technology, Internet, skype and blogs, it helps connect people from different countries, races and religions. Being exposed more to culture of certain countries will inevitably influence us to adopt their culture. In the past it was the western culture where many non-westerners will try to dress them like, listen to their music and watch movies they produced. There was a strong dominance of the western culture. These days, Korean drama and music seem to be in trend and many non-Koreans are crazy other K-pop and their drama. It questions if this Korean fever will last and result in the convergence of culture and ultimately being the dominant culture. In my opinion, I feel that culture is a matter of choice and strive to fit in. It is also subjected to popularity and therefore tough to be controlled. Therefore, it is not up to “culture” to dominate us but people’s wiliness to adopt.

Economic dominance will be something more controllable whereby structure and organizational behavior of an entity will enable them to achieve greater market share and be the dominant player.  Organizations with the characteristic of being open, interested and keen to invest in new ideas and eventually gain market share are know was rising stars on the way up to being dominant. In contrast, if a dominant company is complacent and not interested in new ideas they will be moving towards stagnation, which is waiting for an end. Over time, they will start to lose market share and when they continue to misallocate resources and remain a closed mindset, they will be termed falling stars. Therefore it is always important to stay with an open mindset and continuously seek for self-improvement.

With the advancement in technology, human development will increase as well. Human development index (HDI) is the measure of development in a country. It measures level of education, life expectancy, infant mortality rate and GDP. The higher the index the more developed the country. However, the world is facing greater inequity in HDI between different countries. Being lower developed leads to many other problems such as insufficient fund for healthcare, access to clean water and poverty. The issue of poverty is heart wrenching, why do people have to suffer, not having enough food and water each day, but on the other hand in the more developed countries, food is going to waste and water consumption is excessively high. In my opinion, many countries have developed to a sufficient extent such they try are able to provide some funding and do some charity to help those underdeveloped countries. This is one of the goals in the millennium development goals initiative. It is also promoting global partnership, gender equality and environmental sustainability. All humans should be given the opportunity to work toward their goal to achieve contentment and happiness. However, people in those underdeveloped countries are denied their opportunity, where is contentment and happiness when they cannot even afford their basic necessity. Therefore as we seek for further development and enjoyment, we should not forget those who are slightly lagging behind, when we are able to, we should provide them with a helping hand. We might come from different countries, race and religion but we are all humans and deserve the right to live well.