Baku: A City Rejuvenated By Oil

Until the late 19th century, Baku was a small medieval wall town on the western shores of the Caspian Sea, famous only as a home of ancient Zoroastrianism.

Then it discovered oil.

It quickly attracted the attention of Europe's well-heeled rich, and many local farmers had the luck to dig underground, strike oil and become millionaires in months. By the beginning of the 20th century, it produced half the world's oil (by contrast, Kuwait, one of the world's richest petrostates today, produces a mere 5 per cent). By the start of the First World War, Baku (as part of the Russian Empire) had long overgrown the old medieval walled town and was full of mansions, parks and boulevards to rival Europe's richest and most famous cities.

This all ended with the Bolshevik revolution. Although briefly independent (as the Bolsheviks were at first too distracted by the civil war), by 1920 it was part of the Soviet Union, and Baku disappeared off the maps of the world. Baku's first "Oil Boom" was over.

During the Soviet era, Baku as a city stagnated, still well-off and cosmopolitan compared to the rest of the USSR, but its oil industry became inefficient and horribly polluting on the local environment, as the Soviets lacked the money to invest in more mordern, cleaner methods of extraction. Baku and the surrounding region became a toxic mess.

After independence in 1992, Western investment was not long in returning. After the "deal of the century" in the late '90s, BP and other oil multinationals brought a second "Oil Boom". Ten years on from that, Baku, looks to have restored its place on the world stage.

From a personal point of view, the changes in Baku over the past couple of years have been fairly astonishing. First arriving to Baku at the beginning of 2009, Baku looked like a city going places: buildings from the first "Oil Boom" were starting to be properly restored, and there were signs that also iconic ultra-modern structures were starting to be added to the cityscape.

There were still much room for improvement, of course, socially-speaking. The spread of the oil wealth clearly had not touched some people, but that was natural, considering the circumstances. Also, Baku being part of socially-conservative, Muslim Azerbaijan, led to some confusing misconceptions to the foreigner: although people dressed in a fairly Western style of clothing, a Western sense of liberal morality did not always accompany that. Social mores were still rather conservative and traditional.

Recently returning to Baku, after a break of several months, the extent of the changes, both physically and socially, have been remarkable. After many months of work, the city centre has been restored to match the grandiosity of the days of the first "Oil Boom", albeit with 21st refinements. The parks and boulevards of downtown Baku match those, in terms of style and elegance, of the most famous European cities. The city centre may, to architectural snobs, look like a confection of European styles, but this was all built by those Europeans a century ago.

The old city (called "Icherishehir" in Azeri) has been restored and polished up, to the effect that, once you pass through the old town walls, you feel as though you have stepped back a few centuries in time, if you ignore the souvenir hawkers. The old town is a labyrinth of alleyways and passages, and what's more, totally silent.

Socially, too, the changes have been sudden and seemingly irreversable. Young people as well as familes and pensioners, now take advantage of the newly-restored parks and public spaces, hanging out till late. The nightlife scene, at one time somewhat limited in its scope, is rapidly opening up and diversifying.

Baku looks to have regained its due sense of civic pride with gusto, and is a pleasure to spend time in, provided you have the money of course. In other words, Baku is well and truly open for business.

Friendship in the 21st century

According to a definition I recently found through Wikipedia (the source all misinformation, say some), "Friendship" can be traditionally defined as having the following common characteristics:

• sympathy and empathy
• honesty
• mutual understanding and compassion
• trust in one another
• equal give and take

It´s commonly said by people these days (especially users of social networking sites) that they feel disconnected from others due to technology. What they mean, I guess, is that technology depersonalises all social interactions: people no longer have "friendships"; they have "networks", "colleagues", "acquaintances", and so on.
This is the ultimate irony of social interaction in the 21st century: anyone you "know" can be your "friend". I think it´s hilarious that, through Facebook, a complete stranger can see your photo then ask to be your "friend". The real-life equivalent would be a complete stranger walking up to you on the street and asking the same question. In other words, social networking, and the "distance" that technology creates, allows people to behave in a way that they would never consider in real life. The same for Twitter: people write things (insults in particular) on there that they would never tell somebody in the flesh - or not if they didn´t expect to get a good beating afterwards!
The nature of social networking is by nature schizophrenic: having more than a hundred "friends" is unrealistic in the real world; you would never have time to see them all enough to have "quality" relationships. So this means "relationships" become sanitised to the point of being cosmetic adornments. I think anyone who uses social networking on a regular basis can identify with this point.
What does this mean for real "friendship" then? Going back to the points listed at the beginning, there was a time before "social networking "existed when people had a number of close friends that they kept in regular touch with. These were not necessarily colleagues (usually they may have been school friends or neighbourhood friends). "Social networking" is a useful tool; but it should not be confused with physical "contact" friendship.
There are the other, more obvious, reasons why the traditional idea of "friendship" is dying a slow death, and it´s not because of social networking. Facebook and other networks are symptom of the social disconnect, not a cause of it.
The cause is the changing nature of society; through increased work hours; through increased demand for worker flexibility and movement; and so on. Friendships are no longer the result of years of bonding as they were before; they are "products", "connections", whatever buzz word you choose to call it. But having a "connection" to somebody is not the same as a real "relationship". The trap is thinking that they are the same thing.
This is due to lack of time due to the contraits of modern living; an intellectual way of saying that we longer have time for each other that we did before (i.e. before the 21st century). I can cite many personal examples of this; we all can, I'm sure. Like in my earlier posting about "Progress", the real meaning of "friendship" is becoming lost in the age of Facebook, Twitter and the like. These networking sites have become substitutes for the "real" friendships we have all lost due to the sheer pace of life. Am I as guilty as anyone of this? Of course. The face that I am sharing this with people through networking is a sign of that disconnection. But I am not judging; just observing.
Humanity is caught in the middle of all this: everything is in flux, and the the connections between people become all the more confused and fragmented. Society as a whole sees itself as a mass of lost individuals. No wonder, then, that we don´t know where this is leading.