Propagator

Being a student of economics, there’s an urgent need to bail the subject out of its cruel accusation of being dismal – okay, this topic seem pretty old. I could have gotten back to Geography but I think my pretty lengthy discourse is going to share similar nature has what I have done on Geography.

Unfortunate for the geographers who thinks only of problems and nothing else, and the environmentalists who argues how ungreen our world is – I am on the side of the economists. The subject, being extremely depressing on the systems, in which human interactions work upon, seem extremely optimistic about the way nature is played around and growing with humans. In other words, humans are interacting with nature better than with themselves. The views on resource balance that have long gotten out of date are still pretty much dwelled upon by the students taking Geography (like me) and therefore, there’s s great need for economist to correct the ideas involved. We have to clarify that the world has much more than it needs and the problem really lies not on the nature but the logistics involved and the distribution, which can be part of nature’s fault but looking on the bright side, humans should be able to resolve such problem if not for their nature (not abilities). As such, if we fix the context, and simply change a single variable and that is the burden to bear, we realise that there’s isn’t much problems to speak of.

Geography, because of its roots in natural sciences, in contrast, needs a more systematic way of describing everything, much like economics, while economics are heading towards a more mathematical viewpoint that involved studies of mathematical theoratical models. That would make things more balanced. Unlike the sciences, data and models in Geography are rarely updated because of their irrelevance in dispute. Unless new landscapes or natural compositions are found, it is hardly possible to postulate any theories on the behaviours of nature. It is such a circumstance that makes Geography unrealistic as compared to economics. For economics, it appears that things are logical in the sense that when we assume ceteris paribus, things can still apply in reality, but not that well for geography because of its apparent lack of control over the subject matter. As such, there’s a real need for geography, especially its human branch to merge with economics to study human interactions with themselves and nature in the process, and thus the effects on our environment and so on.

Things are just being studied in such isolated manner that I think the world would have been much less depressing if people can correct each other well enough before they present themselves. Disputes in the hybrid fields arises out of the over-reliance of traditional theories within individual subjects. If these traditional theories could be revised, fused and reviewed, we can get the universal equation tha Physics seek for, or at least get close to it. Making sense at first won’t be easy – but at least we try.

Rather than allow this blog to rot while I mug, I might as well comment on the stuff I am mugging. There’s a hell lot of stuff that I have pointed out to teachers and friends alike and I guess I would point them out in a more public scenario like erpz.net. That’s assuming that there’s any readers at all. Apparently many friends believes and understand that simplicity is very much dead. The fact is that the blog simply couldn’t catch up with my life – which is going a little too fast after I entered college.

In case no one knows, I take Geography and having obtained a considerably poor grade for Geography, I decided to write about some conventional problems with the study of Geography.

For once, we must all come to understand that Geography has gone through a long way to become what it is today. In fact, we may have to accept this fact that many students of Geography of the past will disagree with the kind of topics the falls under Geography today. Many fields of knowledge is such – no one would dispute that religion is not science in ancient Greece and so on. But the extent in which Geography evolved is so amazingly ridiculous that one should naturally be considered an all-rounder of the past to be considered a full-scale geographer.

A geographer of the past draws maps, map topography, and topograph landscapes. They study things that now falls under the branch of Physical Geography, independently devoted to very scientific field that was somewhat isolated from the others nowadays. In fact, Geography is the true ‘Natural Science’. Somehow, the subjects of study that used to be classified under macroeconomics became a part of Geography, mostly incorporated into what we now call ‘Human Geography’. The irony is that Geography has the tendency to avoid scientifically crude terms like ‘human’ and prefers terms like ‘anthropogenic’ – so one should naturally expect the branches of Geography to be termed ‘Corporeal Geography’ and ‘Anthropogenic Geography’. But it didn’t happen.

The fact that Geography evolved so much posed a considerable degree of inconvenience in the definition of things that are ‘Geographical’. We use the term only to refer to the old topics under Geography but not the new ones. We use ‘Geographical Factors’ to a nation’s success to refer to the how its location on the map benefits it. We can’t use ‘Geographical’ to refer to population factors, or development factors, because they are namely considered ‘Demographical’ and ‘Economic’. This makes me wonder what one can mean when we say ‘Geographical perspective’ to a scenario.

There’s a whole lot of other problems with Geography. I’ll probably leave them to later. In the meantime, mugging takes priority again after this moment of ‘Publish’.