What do we need Europe for?

[Novosedoff]

Hi all,

It's been a while since my last visit to this honorable website, and I see very little has changed here  :) The same topics are discussed over and over again with subtle differences. 

I know Europe is often regarded as the cradle of the modern civilization, where the history of the ancient Rome and Christianity take a very special role. With over 500 mln of population Europe is now no comparision to what it used to mean to the rest of the world in the 19th century. But it keeps spending its very limited resources on re-studying its worthless past which adds nothing to its future. What a waste of time and resouces, someone would say. But what else can it offer? what else does it produce, except for tons of waste paper? Any American would argue that in teens of years Europe has produced not a single unicorn IT company to make a new difference. What other things can we praise it for?

I don't want to sound like an ignorant barbarian. Although I was born in the Asian part of Russia, one can still find some "gracia" (as they say in Spanish)  of the European education, if you scratch really hard :)   

I thought this thread would be most appropriate for this part of the forum, given rather limited choice. 

[caldrail]

Seriously? Europe has five or six times the population of your homeland,.iI accounts for nearly a fifth of the world's GDP. It has its own space program, a major unification project, and most of its nation states belong to a dominant military alliance. One might more realistically argue why certain antipathic empires have any practical uses, especially given recent events.

[Elisa]

Why is Europe important? Why is the past so important to Europeans? (By the way, I would be very careful about calling Europe's past "worthless", just as I would be careful about calling worthless the history of every continent on planet Earth).

First of all, Europe is not about economic prowess at all costs. Europe is about values, about giving a fair start in life to anyone irrespective of their individual circumstances. This sometimes means not being as economically competitive as other countries/continents.

Europe leads the way worldwide in terms of the fight against climate change and has regulations in place in terms of food quality, environmental standards and citizens’ rights and protection. European countries are free and democratic, and that is something that in this day and age I would not take for granted.

Europeans had been waging war on each other for millennia but have enjoyed a period of 70+ years of peace, and that is a great achievement. Our motto (I say “we Europeans” because I am a European citizen) is “United in Diversity” and that is very telling as to why Europe matters. Europe is about mutual understanding, it is about building bridges.

Last but not least, the past is important to Europeans because it is only by knowing our past mistakes that we can avoid repeating them, and also because it is thanks to our past that we know who we really are and where we want to go in the future.
Sir Isaac Newton once said: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”  
If we are to see further than the generations who preceded us, we have no choice but to keep studying our past.

And now, let me "scratch really hard" to find something that I believe will explain in a more poetic way Europe's connection to its past and its importance. It is a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini and it is called "I am a force of the past".


I am a force of the past

I am a force of the Past.

My love lies only in tradition. 

I come from the ruins, the churches,

the altarpieces, the villages

abandoned in the Appennines or foothills

of the Alps where my brothers once lived.

I wander like a madman down the Tuscolana,

down the Appia like a dog without a master.

Or I see the twilight, the mornings

over Rome, the Ciociaria, the world,

as the first acts of Posthistory

to which I bear witness, for the privilege

of recording them from the outer edge

of some buried age.

Monstrous is the man

born of a dead woman’s womb.

And I, a foetus now grown, roam about

more modern than any modern man,

in search of brothers no longer alive.

[Novosedoff]

4 hours ago, Elisa said:

Europe leads the way worldwide in terms of the fight against climate change and has regulations in place in terms of food quality, environmental standards and citizens’ rights and protection.

I see now. So the world needs Europe because European values include food of good quality and because people of Europe are carbon-conscious. That makes Europe look very valuable indeed 🙂

Btw there was a Russian scientist, a member  of Russian academy of sciences (it's like the Roayl society in the UK), who argued with the fact that carbon dioxide may lead to the temperature increase and climate change (the very reason Europe has followed the discourse of the green economy). The guy's name is Sorokhtin, here is the link to his book (quite enjoyable reading, I have to say) 

https://books.google.ru/books/about/Evolution_of_Earth_and_its_Climate.html?id=QHbeAq8YeXoC&redir_esc=y   

On 5/13/2022 at 6:40 PM, caldrail said:

Seriously? Europe has five or six times the population of your homeland,.iI accounts for nearly a fifth of the world's GDP.

I guess it was the high appreciation of the European solidarity and common market what made your homeland vote for Brexit after all 😁 

[Elisa]

11 hours ago, Novosedoff said:

I see now. So the world needs Europe because European values include food of good quality and because people of Europe are carbon-conscious. That makes Europe look very valuable indeed 🙂

 

You have carefully avoided to quote the bits about peace, freedom and democracy. That looks VERY valuable to me, but that notwithstanding, food safety, soil conservation and biodiversity are absolutely paramount and to me, a continent that makes a point of making sure that its citizens have access to food that is safe to eat (again, not a given in this day and age) and to crops that are not harmful and do not devastate soils and soil biodiversity deserves respect (there are places that in the name of economic gains put at risk the health of their citizens and devastate soils and soil biodiversity with disastrous consequences for human health and the planet at large).

http:// https://theconversation.com/the-97-climate-consensus-is-over-now-its-well-above-99-and-the-evidence-is-even-stronger-than-that-170370

"US researchers examined the peer-reviewed literature and found more than 99% of climate scientists now endorse the evidence for human-induced climate change.”

With a 99% scientific consensus worldwide that climate change is a man-made disaster I don’t think I need to look at anything else.

 

Quote

I guess it was the high appreciation of the European solidarity and common market what made your homeland vote for Brexit after all 😁 

And one might wonder what someone who calls Europe’s past “worthless” is doing on a Roman History forum? Not so worthless after all?

 

[Novosedoff]

8 hours ago, Elisa said:

http:// https://theconversation.com/the-97-climate-consensus-is-over-now-its-well-above-99-and-the-evidence-is-even-stronger-than-that-170370

"US researchers examined the peer-reviewed literature and found more than 99% of climate scientists now endorse the evidence for human-induced climate change.”

With a 99% scientific consensus worldwide that climate change is a man-made disaster I don’t think I need to look at anything else

I never claimed to be a specialist in this. To me the whole subject seems superfluous. Just in case you didn't know, Russia is not the priority target of the green policy Europe tries to implement. The US (and China) will be more seriously affected, due to volume of the economy. That's the very reason why the US withdrew from the Kyoto protocol and changed their position on joining the Paris agreement.        

8 hours ago, Elisa said:

And one might wonder what someone who calls Europe’s past “worthless” is doing on a Roman History forum? Not so worthless after all?

Unfortunately, my visits to this part of the Internet become less frequent as time goes on  😊 I wish it was the opposite. I hope you'll bring some change to make it a more valuable resource for visits. 

8 hours ago, Elisa said:

You have carefully avoided to quote the bits about peace, freedom and democracy

What democracy are you talking about? Europe has the highest concentration of monarchies across the world (with the exception of Arab peninsula perhaps). Sponsoring a bunch of families of parasites gives a slightly distorted perspective on the democracy, don't you think? 

    

 

Edited May 15, 2022 by Novosedoff

[caldrail]

Monarchies? Most of those are countries run as republics whilst retaining a royal family. I hardly think that's an issue. As for being parasites, they're at least active as diplomats for the most part and corporate elites are sometimes more parasitical. 

[Novosedoff]

I suppose so, but if you want to believe in high diplomatic mission of the promiscuous Prince Andrew or corrupt Juan Carlos it's up to you
😁

[caldrail]

So they're human beings like the rest of us? (gasp) Shocking.