On "Progress"

What, may I ask, is so bad about progress? When it's development in a first world country, such as reforming health care or having a systemized, international education program, people consider this "progress," and then you have the things like indigenous peoples in Africa and south america suddenly getting internet access, and people say that this is a tragedy. Is it? I think people have a way too romantic view of tribes and rural, indigenous peoples. People nowadays (Americans, at least) say things like that are "cute" and of course they shouldn't change, don't you think they're happy the way they are?! The Indians hated it when civilization was forced upon them, and look where they are now! Reservations! How would Americans do such petty imprisonment, just because they wanted land?! Christopher Columbus was such a jerk, and yet we name our capitals after him! We name countries after him! We name good New York universities after him!! This is such an outrage!

But how much of an outrage is it really? Do most indigenous peoples really want the real estate people and charities to leave them alone, and let them go on living their lives, or do they really want to have the same quality of life as the people in NYC? Is giving them things like electricity and running water helping them or hurting them? A lot of people also equate "progress" with "Westernization," which also represents a certain destabilization of unique cultures. Is globalization really as good as the hype suggests? Or does it erode the foundations of tradition and ancestry, by making everybody in the world more or less the same? What is it we celebrate today, ethnicity and variety and originality, or the things we have in common? Because on one hand, the more you have in common with somebody else, the more you can relate to them and tolerate them and understand where they are coming from, but on the other, too much of that makes for a very boring world.

On Colleges

What I don't understand is why we have such a disparity of colleges in the world. We have an unspeakable amount of public schools and good private schools, but the number of colleges that people apply to is remarkably few. Lets see, Ivy League, State school, the occasional foreign school, thats it. I've got a good 14 schools on my college list. Especially in this day and age when a good education is the key to success, when the college diploma is now the equivalent of a high school diploma 50 years ago. Why are there no new colleges being formed anymore? All the good ones were formed decades ago, if not centuries ago. You could argue that there aren't as many extremely rich people out there to start new colleges, and of the extremely rich people that do exist, not many of them are interested in forming colleges, but why is that? I mean of the people who do love the colleges they went to, they usually go back and become a teacher there or write the school into their will or something, but why don't they ever form new schools of their own? This is very confusing to me. especially when this is the time when we need new schools most, what with all these grandchildren of baby boomers...