Watching a TV show on reporters where they usually display a documentary about some important global issues, they mentioned that tomorrow is an International Human Rights Day so I thought it's worth a mention.

The documentary shown today was quite shocking.. I suppose we need a reminder every now and then about these kinds of issues. It was about famine in Ethiopia, shedding some historic perspective on the problem. Most shocking things are things like the fact that while thousands of people were dieing in Ethiopia every day out of famine, in 1984 European Community actually had a surplus, too much food waiting stored in silos and not being used.

Is the western world really so ignorant towards the rest of the world? It could be said we're merely lucky to be born in a place where climate and land are good to us, but also responsible for sharing the surpluses of these conditions to areas of the world where such conditions aren't existent, but people (humans, like us) live there (or at least try to).

We could blame them for settling there in desert lands in the first place, or their stupid wars which aren't helping. Sure, but the tragedy is still just too big for the western world to ignore like this. If we're passing by the trouble we don't ask how did the trouble begin and then decide whether we want to help or not. If we can help, we just do so. When someone has too much wealth, it should be a logical and expected thing to share it. And as most successful entrepreneurs do, capitalizing on that wealth in order to expanding further is not wrong, but if that leads to further expansions in your wealth and success, it should lead to even further sharing, or any kind of use that is good for humanity.

I mean, what's the purpose of it anyway, otherwise? You're going to die in less than 100 years, likely. What is your wealth going to do you then? The real meaning of life is in what you leave behind, and if it's just a pile of money no-one made good use of (and buying a few cars and houses for your luxury aren't "good" uses I'm talking about) you basically did nothing, left nothing, you're nothing.

It comes down to that old yet new "network" realization, that every human individual is merely a piece of a puzzle, a node in a network. Your signals matter. If people in Ethiopia die out of hunger while Europeans don't know what to do with food, there's obviously some sort of a network malfunction in progress. We need to fix it.

How is Free Culture and Free Software related? Oh it is very related. Proprietary software encourages the kind of control which stifles innovation which could have helped find solutions to problems sooner. Oh and don't forget the immense technological help Free Software is providing under-developed countries simply because of low price and freedom it grants. This technology is what these countries need to get out of their situation.

With the right development method, intelligence and technology, even Ethiopians can beat the desert and make green lands out of it.

Anyway. I really didn't know this post is going to turn this long. Oh well.