The Student Room Group

Immigration - Was Enoch Powell Right?

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Reply 20
Original post by The Angry Stoic
I'm not so afraid of the people who come here but the ideas they bring.


:yy:
Original post by Darien
Most of what you mention there are because of what we (or the Romans) picked up from the middle east. With hindsight, the technological improvements in our country were the only good thing to come from our earlier raiding of other nations during wars like the Crusades.

I'm not disagreeing with the rest of what you say, just pointing out that 'western' doesn't quite cover the basis of our technological society.


To be sure, the Arabs had a good hand in starting it. You will agree though that the Arabs provided little more than the starting blocks and perhaps a way of thinking. If we only had their work, live wouldn't be very good. The meaningful work and discoveries were done in the west.
Reply 22
Original post by Am I Really Here
I'd have to disagree with living standards in poor countries being due to exploitation by westerners. What do you think living standards in Africa would be like if we Europeans had never interacted with it? No science, no medicine, no engineering, few clothes, terrible housing, no contraceptives, no famine or drought relief. If Africa had been cut off, Africans would still be living in conditions similar to those of their ancestors thousands of years ago. Living standards, life expectancies, literacy and education have all rocketed up because of western involvement. Has our involvement and interactions with Africa and Africans always benefited them? No, certainly not, and we should do more to help them improve, but the access Africa has gained and continues to gain to western advances and discoveries have benefited them greatly, and hopefully in not too many decades they will begin to make similar great achievements of their own.

Don't blame us for Africa or other similar areas with low standards of living. Without westerners and our achievements they would still be dying at 40 or under, having far too many children and losing many of them too soon.

It is our duty to bring Africa on par to our standard of living- if it wasn't for exploitation of their raw materials, slavery and underpaid labour today, there is no way under our current economic system we would have had the means to engineer such an *advanced* society.
Original post by PhysicsKid
It is our duty to bring Africa on par to our standard of living


It's our duty to try to help and guide them, but only they can be responsible for the work required. We're only as powerful as we are due to the work of hundreds of millions of people over many centuries. We can't do the work for them.

Original post by PhysicsKid
if it wasn't for exploitation of their raw materials, slavery and underpaid labour today, there is no way under our current economic system we would have had the means to engineer such an *advanced* society.


If we didn't engage with Africa at all, they wouldn't be getting anything for their raw materials, they wouldn't even be able to extract them.

Slavery certainly didn't do Africa much good, although many black people living in America would be living in Africa were it not for slavery, so it wasn't all bad.

Workers in Africa may not be paid a fair wage - that is, one which can provide them with a minimum standard of living we think they should be entitled to - but nobody forces Africans to take any job. They take the jobs because they provide them and their families with a higher standard of living than they would otherwise be able to enjoy - without our jobs, even lowly paid ones, they would be far worse off.

Don't put advanced in asterisks. Our societies are advanced, and it is what most in the world yearn for.
Original post by Am I Really Here
I'd have to disagree with living standards in poor countries being due to exploitation by westerners. What do you think living standards in Africa would be like if we Europeans had never interacted with it? No science, no medicine, no engineering, few clothes, terrible housing, no contraceptives, no famine or drought relief. If Africa had been cut off, Africans would still be living in conditions similar to those of their ancestors thousands of years ago. Living standards, life expectancies, literacy and education have all rocketed up because of western involvement. Has our involvement and interactions with Africa and Africans always benefited them? No, certainly not, and we should do more to help them improve, but the access Africa has gained and continues to gain to western advances and discoveries have benefited them greatly, and hopefully in not too many decades they will begin to make similar great achievements of their own.

Don't blame us for Africa or other similar areas with low standards of living. Without westerners and our achievements they would still be dying at 40 or under, having far too many children and losing many of them too soon.


We? What did you do as an individual

You could easily say if not for Arabic sciences, Europe would be still medieval

But there is no evidence for that just like your claims
Original post by niceguy95
We? What did you do as an individual

You could easily say if not for Arabic sciences, Europe would be still medieval

But there is no evidence for that just like your claims


Don't be so asinine. I'm a European, both ethnically and culturally. I can therefore include myself in the European group. We built stonehenge. We put on the 2012 Olympics. We built the Tower of London. We discovered penicillin. We built the Titanic. We invented Cheddar Cheese. Did I contribute to any of these things personally? No. But my ancestors, and the people who lived in this country before me did, and I, and others since them are carrying on their efforts as a group.

There is plenty of evidence for my claims. Africa had not changed in any meaningful, positive way for a very very very long time before outside interaction. Interacting with those from outside the continent has not been wholly beneficial, but access to the fruits grown by Europe and other successful parts of the world over many hundreds of years has, and will ensure good standards of living in many African countries. in not too many decades.

You certainly could say without the early Arabic science Europe wouldn't be as advanced as it is today. Europeans took the early successes and Arabic ways of thinking and built the greatest civilisations and Empires and inventions the world had ever seen. These efforts have and will benefit Africans.

You seem to think I'm claiming that nobody did science before Europeans. I'm not and I never will because it's not true. What I am claiming is that most of the great work to improve standards of living since, say, 1500 were done in Europe and that the inventions people use and the lives billions of people live today were thanks to the efforts of Europeans. This is undeniable, and Africa will benefit.
Reply 26
Original post by Am I Really Here
We built stonehenge. We put on the 2012 Olympics. We built the Tower of London. We discovered penicillin. We built the Titanic. We invented Cheddar Cheese.

Oh dear. I was kind-of agreeing with you until the cheese thing. There is evidence that cheese actually WAS invented in Africa, while Europeans were still at the "ug" stage of development.

While I'm responding, Stonehenge cannot be equated with the Sphinx or pyramids as a showcase for achievement in civil engineering, or social organisation.

Original post by Am I Really Here
Interacting with those from outside the continent has not been wholly beneficial, but access to the fruits grown by Europe and other successful parts of the world over many hundreds of years has, and will ensure good standards of living in many African countries. in not too many decades.

I think since you are invoking 'hundred of years' then we need to look at supposed improvements in those same terms, too. Such as just what European 'advancements' will look like when there is no oil, an ozone layer so depleted that the sun is dangerous, western chemical medicines that can only just keep up with biological diseases mostly originating in the polluted west, etc.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm in the UK and happy to be so, in this age. But I am willing to extrapolate trends and see just how much we are abusing the planet and what the effects of that will be for future generations, on every continent.
Reply 27
Original post by Am I Really Here
To be sure, the Arabs had a good hand in starting it. You will agree though that the Arabs provided little more than the starting blocks and perhaps a way of thinking. If we only had their work, live wouldn't be very good. The meaningful work and discoveries were done in the west.

I'm not sure I DO agree.

Those 'starting blocks' are easy to disparage but without them we might not even be able to count large numbers. It was a Britons who used the social structure that existed to develop practicable steam engines but using that power was almost entirely reliant on technology that originated elsewhere, mostly the middle-east. Without that implementation of steam power, we probably wouldn't have moved on to the internal combustion engine and it is those two inventions which are responsible (or an enabler) for almost every major achievement in the western world (with the possible exception of antibiotics).

Of course, we can never know how Britain (and therefore the rest of the 'developed' world) would have gone without such fundamental principles of mathematics and science as was already provided on a platter. Some of it probably would have been invented/discovered/realised by now but in a totally different way and probably not in the quick way that would have given the western world such a large technological gap over the rest of the world. Who's to say that some people/person in another part of the world wouldn't have developed Heron's steam engine of the 1st century, or worked out how to use the starting points created by Gerbertus or da Vinci? But for a single inventive mind, the world could have looked very different.
Original post by Darien
Oh dear. I was kind-of agreeing with you until the cheese thing. There is evidence that cheese actually WAS invented in Africa, while Europeans were still at the "ug" stage of development.

While I'm responding, Stonehenge cannot be equated with the Sphinx or pyramids as a showcase for achievement in civil engineering, or social organisation.


I said cheddar cheese, not generic cheese. I chose cheddar cheese because it is now eaten all over the world in burgers.

The European achievements I chose weren't intended to prove Europeans are better than the rest of the world at everything - we're not. I was simply illustrating why I chose to use 'we' when describing European achievements. You've created a false competition from nowhere.

Original post by Darien
I think since you are invoking 'hundred of years' then we need to look at supposed improvements in those same terms, too. Such as just what European 'advancements' will look like when there is no oil, an ozone layer so depleted that the sun is dangerous, western chemical medicines that can only just keep up with biological diseases mostly originating in the polluted west, etc.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm in the UK and happy to be so, in this age. But I am willing to extrapolate trends and see just how much we are abusing the planet and what the effects of that will be for future generations, on every continent.


This is outside the scope of the discussion I was having. The post I responded to said that we Europeans were the cause of poverty in Africa. I disagree with this. If you wish to discuss this, I suggest you create your own thread.
Original post by Darien
I'm not sure I DO agree.

Those 'starting blocks' are easy to disparage but without them we might not even be able to count large numbers. It was a Britons who used the social structure that existed to develop practicable steam engines but using that power was almost entirely reliant on technology that originated elsewhere, mostly the middle-east. Without that implementation of steam power, we probably wouldn't have moved on to the internal combustion engine and it is those two inventions which are responsible (or an enabler) for almost every major achievement in the western world (with the possible exception of antibiotics).

Of course, we can never know how Britain (and therefore the rest of the 'developed' world) would have gone without such fundamental principles of mathematics and science as was already provided on a platter. Some of it probably would have been invented/discovered/realised by now but in a totally different way and probably not in the quick way that would have given the western world such a large technological gap over the rest of the world. Who's to say that some people/person in another part of the world wouldn't have developed Heron's steam engine of the 1st century, or worked out how to use the starting points created by Gerbertus or da Vinci? But for a single inventive mind, the world could have looked very different.


Pure speculation. Things may have been better, things may have been worse. Little point discussing it in this thread. One thing is certain, without Europeans, Africa wouldn't have access to the technology and living standards it will enjoy in the future. This is the issue I picked out. If you wish to credit the Arabs more than I do that's fine by me, I don't have any interest in discussing the matter further.

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