A solitary view… life in isolation
As a democratic nation, we cannot push ourselves away from others. We should be able to watch over our people as well as ones in surrounding nations. We can see, by looking at this source that they are against isolationism; they are correct that we shouldn’t forget about others, and that we should be looking after one another. To keep balance in the world, we must work together as one. We should embrace the perspective given, just enough so that we aren’t too involved with everyone else, but we aren’t cloaking ourselves from the rest of the world. Isolationism is never a suitable solution, it causes problems all around. It causes many nations to fall behind in many aspects, this could cause great difficulties when the countries eventually come out of isolation. Isolationism cause there to be disputes inside a nation, causing this to go wrong. Isolationism also can bring problems from other nations.
Today, knowledge and technology is power. It controls access to opportunity and advancements. When a country puts themselves in isolation, they are blocking off the rest of the world. They aren’t being influenced by the modern advancements; they aren’t seeing the everyday pressures, and some pressures can lead to great achievements. North Korea has closed themselves off from pretty much everyone. Only a selected few can go in and out of the country. They are barely interacting with the rest of the world, in our eyes they have almost completely vanished. They have very little means of communicating with others; they do have a small system of desktop computers, which they use for mainly email. They are falling behind the rest of the world because they have no connections to it. They don’t have anyone to brainstorm ideas with, no one to help them. They really have no idea if they are making computers correctly, and I’m sure that they don’t know the full extent that computers have. They also closed their minds, by closing their borders. Bhutan has done similar; they as well have been closed off for a long time. Their capital, Thimphu, doesn’t have any stop lights and only one movie theater. Their roads are tiny, being able to barely fit one car. If Bhutan is ever going to come out of isolationism they will be crushed by the sheer pressure of the modern world. Many of the things that we use every day to direct our lives, they will have issues to comprehend. Isolation is the enemy of improvement, it causes us to shrink and close our powerful minds.
Some people create their own storms, then get upset when it rains. When a country puts themselves into isolation, they are provoking problems to surface. United States of America dragged themselves into the great depression. They were sinking into isolation due to the devastation that World War one caused. As they moved away from everyone, the banks couldn’t support the people, making them close. The great depression was so bad that it caused them to push further into the isolationism policy. They couldn’t ask for help, they couldn’t get support, by pushing themselves into isolationism. If they were not in isolation than they could have asked the League of Nations for a little aid. They would have been able to import and export items so that they could gather money. They excluded themselves from the cycle allowing them to be alone. The Great Depression caused a lot of problems for most of the people. Practically everyone was on their hands and knees searching for food. When stress and bad days hit we are designed to reach out for the help we need, but our natural tendency is to withdraw. We shut down, hole up, and limit ourselves to our own little worlds. Japan practically ripped their country in half due to isolationism. They did not want to be influenced by the western ways. When they closed their borders this stopped the Christian missionaries from converting people since they couldn’t enter the country. The Christians inside the country found this unfair, believing that this wasn’t allowing their ways, this split the country. They would have been able to avoid all of this conflict by keeping their borders open. They were scared that they were going to lose their traditions that by trying to protect them, it drove people away from each other. There was very little trust left between the people. You are defined by the walls you build yourself.