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When I was in Mongolia, I met a group of American peacecorps who helped nomads with planning for winter, and taught them how to better manage their resources to

When I was in Mongolia, I met a group of American peacecorps who helped nomads with planning for winter, and taught them how to better manage their resources to avoid this exact scenario. As soon as they left, the locals reverted back to their old way of doing things.

hef19898 3y ago
As others pointed out already, Mongols are very polite and friendly to visitors. Even people who want to tell them how to live in their own steppes.
- sgift 3y ago
  "Want to tell how to live" - what a bullshit way to read the GP comment. People starved, others tried to help them not to starve. They didn't "tell them how to live". If Mongols want to live like before and starve, sure, that's their privilege, but then I'd say everyone else has done their part. It's not the job of the world to help someone who wants to suffer.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    No idea when OPs story happened, but from his use of "help prepare for winter", I concluded it was before the current disaster. Pretty hard to prepare for something when you are right in the middle of it. And yes, that is hubris. Also, your comment shows are very deep and troubling lack of empathy. On top of quite a large amount of ignorance.
    - godshatter 3y ago
      All this depends on whether the advice was actually objectively good advice or not. Is it hubris to give someone information you think may help them? This all hinges on whether or not they decided not to take the advice because it was crap advice or because they were set in their ways too much to make use of it.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Before you give advice, you ask questions and build the necessary basis that allows you to adopt your knowledge to the particular use case. If you do not do that, you fail. You even fail with good ideas, because you do not get buy in from the people. So yes, hubris is a rather good word for that kind of behaviour.
        godshatter 3y ago
        Sure, asking questions and building rapport helps... and we have no idea if they did that or not. We don't know how they came about giving their advice to those particular people, we don't know what that advice was, and we don't know why they refused to heed it. Even if I had the urge to judge them on whether or not they were showing hubris in that situation, I would have to conclude I don't have enough information to do so.
mmsimanga 3y ago
I think change is gradual not sudden. It tends to be incremental and also tends to be specific to one area. Often if you are involved in the change you don't notice it as much. My grandmother passed over 20 years ago. As a result of her passing away I didn't go to her village for close on 15 years. When I did go the changes I noticed were astonishing to me. 15 years back most of the houses were mud huts. Now most are brick building with mud huts being the exception. It took a while. Anyone who spends time spreading new and improved ways of doing things I urge you to firstly continue to do so and to also realise change is gradual. Humans
willismichael 3y ago
That makes me think of this excellent TED talk: https://youtu.be/chXsLtHqfdM?si=kTaxu3KCBEYYadGA https://youtu.be/chXsLtHqfdM?si=kTaxu3KCBEYYadGA (Spoiler) The TL;DW The presenter participated in a humanitarian group to establish an agricultural project in an African community. The effort was a disaster - hippos emerge from a river and devoured all of the produce. The presenter shares his insights about how to actually help locals by asking questions instead of telling them what to do.
tiler2915072 3y ago
I also met some nz government workers teaching ppl how to farm. They said most Mongolians weren’t interested in working with the dirt. Understandable given their long long history as nomads.
- dahart 3y ago
  > They said most Mongolians weren’t interested in working with the dirt. What a strange statement. Most people in most countries aren’t interested in “working with the dirt” as their full time occupation. Are they supposed to be interested in working with dirt more than other countries for some reason, and not aim for science, tech, education, finance, arts, etc? I just looked it up, and Mongolia’s economy is around 35% mining and agriculture, with 10% of their total GDP from agriculture, which is quite a bit higher than New Zealand, so their statement seems especially ironic. The US and European economies have an even lower fraction of mining and agriculture, and aspire to get away from manual labor, especially involving dirt. Also don’t forget it’s much easier to grow things in NZ than Mongolia: “the high altitude, extreme fluctuation in temperature, long winters, and low precipitation provides limited potential for agricultural development. The growing season is only 95 – 110 days. Because of Mongolia's harsh climate, it is unsuited to most cultivation.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolia#Agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolia#Agriculture
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    "Agriculture" as a category includes livestock and herding, which make up something like 80% of the Mongolian agricultural industry.
    - dahart 3y ago
      Yeah, correct, because it makes more economic sense to herd than farm, for reasons you and I have both given. It doesn’t make sense nor help anything for foreigners to waltz in and proclaim Mongolians aren’t interested, right?
  - robocat 3y ago
pradn 3y ago
The baseline international volunteers need to demonstrate is that they provided benefit higher than just giving away the cost of their flights to get there. IE: American volunteer groups going to poor countries to build them schools.
heisenzombie 3y ago
Perhaps there was more to it, but as told — that’s a story of incredible hubris! Truly amazing to fly across the world to tell Mongolians how to live on the steppe.
- RealityVoid 3y ago
  While I get where you're coming from, it's not unheard of cultures finding a local maxima that they are unwilling to leave. I guess it's hard to judge from the outside?
  - sct202 3y ago
    Peace Corps is especially notorious for sending inexperienced agriculture volunteers who's expertise is volunteering 2 months at a WWOOF organic farm, so I would not be surprised if they were just clueless new grads thinking they were saving the world.
- paulcole 3y ago
  Isn’t it hubris to think that someone who flew across the world to try to help you isn’t worth listening to? And afterall it’s the Mongolians who might starve. Any port in a storm.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Depends on when they showed up. The helpful Americans, that is, in relation to the killer winter. Judging from a lot of HN discussions so, Americans should really understand the rwluctance of anyone to listen to people from other countries explaining how things should be done. Exihibit A through Z: every single discussion about health care or city planning. Or gun control.
    - bcrosby95 3y ago
      But we're exceptional - they would never work here because there's no way we could manage those things without screwing it up.

hef19898 3y ago

As others pointed out already, Mongols are very polite and friendly to visitors. Even people who want to tell them how to live in their own steppes.

sgift 3y ago
"Want to tell how to live" - what a bullshit way to read the GP comment. People starved, others tried to help them not to starve. They didn't "tell them how to live". If Mongols want to live like before and starve, sure, that's their privilege, but then I'd say everyone else has done their part. It's not the job of the world to help someone who wants to suffer.
- hef19898 3y ago
  No idea when OPs story happened, but from his use of "help prepare for winter", I concluded it was before the current disaster. Pretty hard to prepare for something when you are right in the middle of it. And yes, that is hubris. Also, your comment shows are very deep and troubling lack of empathy. On top of quite a large amount of ignorance.
  - godshatter 3y ago
    All this depends on whether the advice was actually objectively good advice or not. Is it hubris to give someone information you think may help them? This all hinges on whether or not they decided not to take the advice because it was crap advice or because they were set in their ways too much to make use of it.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Before you give advice, you ask questions and build the necessary basis that allows you to adopt your knowledge to the particular use case. If you do not do that, you fail. You even fail with good ideas, because you do not get buy in from the people. So yes, hubris is a rather good word for that kind of behaviour.
      - godshatter 3y ago
        Sure, asking questions and building rapport helps... and we have no idea if they did that or not. We don't know how they came about giving their advice to those particular people, we don't know what that advice was, and we don't know why they refused to heed it. Even if I had the urge to judge them on whether or not they were showing hubris in that situation, I would have to conclude I don't have enough information to do so.

mmsimanga 3y ago

I think change is gradual not sudden. It tends to be incremental and also tends to be specific to one area. Often if you are involved in the change you don't notice it as much. My grandmother passed over 20 years ago. As a result of her passing away I didn't go to her village for close on 15 years. When I did go the changes I noticed were astonishing to me. 15 years back most of the houses were mud huts. Now most are brick building with mud huts being the exception. It took a while. Anyone who spends time spreading new and improved ways of doing things I urge you to firstly continue to do so and to also realise change is gradual. Humans

willismichael 3y ago

That makes me think of this excellent TED talk: https://youtu.be/chXsLtHqfdM?si=kTaxu3KCBEYYadGA https://youtu.be/chXsLtHqfdM?si=kTaxu3KCBEYYadGA (Spoiler) The TL;DW The presenter participated in a humanitarian group to establish an agricultural project in an African community. The effort was a disaster - hippos emerge from a river and devoured all of the produce. The presenter shares his insights about how to actually help locals by asking questions instead of telling them what to do.

tiler2915072 3y ago

I also met some nz government workers teaching ppl how to farm. They said most Mongolians weren’t interested in working with the dirt. Understandable given their long long history as nomads.

dahart 3y ago
> They said most Mongolians weren’t interested in working with the dirt. What a strange statement. Most people in most countries aren’t interested in “working with the dirt” as their full time occupation. Are they supposed to be interested in working with dirt more than other countries for some reason, and not aim for science, tech, education, finance, arts, etc? I just looked it up, and Mongolia’s economy is around 35% mining and agriculture, with 10% of their total GDP from agriculture, which is quite a bit higher than New Zealand, so their statement seems especially ironic. The US and European economies have an even lower fraction of mining and agriculture, and aspire to get away from manual labor, especially involving dirt. Also don’t forget it’s much easier to grow things in NZ than Mongolia: “the high altitude, extreme fluctuation in temperature, long winters, and low precipitation provides limited potential for agricultural development. The growing season is only 95 – 110 days. Because of Mongolia's harsh climate, it is unsuited to most cultivation.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolia#Agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolia#Agriculture
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  "Agriculture" as a category includes livestock and herding, which make up something like 80% of the Mongolian agricultural industry.
  - dahart 3y ago
    Yeah, correct, because it makes more economic sense to herd than farm, for reasons you and I have both given. It doesn’t make sense nor help anything for foreigners to waltz in and proclaim Mongolians aren’t interested, right?
- robocat 3y ago

pradn 3y ago

The baseline international volunteers need to demonstrate is that they provided benefit higher than just giving away the cost of their flights to get there. IE: American volunteer groups going to poor countries to build them schools.

heisenzombie 3y ago

Perhaps there was more to it, but as told — that’s a story of incredible hubris! Truly amazing to fly across the world to tell Mongolians how to live on the steppe.

RealityVoid 3y ago
While I get where you're coming from, it's not unheard of cultures finding a local maxima that they are unwilling to leave. I guess it's hard to judge from the outside?
- sct202 3y ago
  Peace Corps is especially notorious for sending inexperienced agriculture volunteers who's expertise is volunteering 2 months at a WWOOF organic farm, so I would not be surprised if they were just clueless new grads thinking they were saving the world.
paulcole 3y ago
Isn’t it hubris to think that someone who flew across the world to try to help you isn’t worth listening to? And afterall it’s the Mongolians who might starve. Any port in a storm.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Depends on when they showed up. The helpful Americans, that is, in relation to the killer winter. Judging from a lot of HN discussions so, Americans should really understand the rwluctance of anyone to listen to people from other countries explaining how things should be done. Exihibit A through Z: every single discussion about health care or city planning. Or gun control.
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    But we're exceptional - they would never work here because there's no way we could manage those things without screwing it up.