Does anyone know how to post photos on blogger? I can't seem to remember how!
This poem is for all the crazies out there. By crazy I mean HELLO, "alive."
Trust
It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.
The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.
The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.
And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.
-Thomas R. Smith, from Waking before Dawn.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
3 blogs in 2 days!!!
I cried in my Poverty and Inequality class again today. Just teared right up. On the one hand, I’m embarrassed by what a reactive and bleeding heart I have.
On the other hand, I’m glad I’m still bowled over by needless suffering in the world, by the ignorance that drives us to hurt each other and ourselves. It’s like clockwork; Julian puts up a powerpoint slide with statistics on the divergence between the rich and poor--tick--and something in my heart just goes tock--no, no nono.
As a little girl, I cried when things didn’t make sense, when my inherent expectation of fairness had been disappointed. I remember when Katie and I fought, I’d lament the unfairness of it all and Dad would say “life’s not fair, Anna. Just ignore your sister.” Life has certainly shown me that Dad was right--it’s not fair.
Now, Katie and I are upset by the same things that upset Dad; war, poverty, inequality, racism, sexism, violence, hatred, etc. And none of us can ignore them. Perhaps we could all use a good talking to, a good “life’s not fair” reminder. But I don’t think it would help. I don’t think it would stop us from being bowled over afresh each time our inherent expectation of rightness is disappointed. There are many possible explanations for this, and I’ll give the two with which I’ve recently battled: 1) We are stupid and have yet to internalize the lesson that shit happens in this godforsaken and/or godless existence or 2) God has created us with some inalienable sense of what's right at our core.
I’ll flesh out these thoughts in reverse order, but before I do, I must qualify them as thoughts, ideas..attempts to make sense of things I know I will never grasp, hence why they keep bowling me over:
2) There is some vision in us that just won’t quit. No matter how many times we encounter the “reality” that there is no sense or method or truth guiding us to the promised land--that all is absurd and meaningless and we should just stop expecting and trying for something different and to hell with it all!--no matter how familiar we should be with the territory, we can’t stop crying. People haven’t stopped being angry. Our hearts go right on bleeding and shouting and saying HEY, WHAT’s GOING ON? Yah know. Do you know what I mean? Prophets and Apostles and our own dreams keep revealing that something different is possible.
1) Yes, children get inexplicably, terminally ill, “good” things happen to “bad” people, cyclones tear through swingsets and dogs get run over. There’s a lot of suffering we can’t do anything about and will NEVER BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT. But--B. U. T.--the “shit happens” explanation doesn’t account for all the terrible, unnecessary suffering in the world which we create. With our blind desire and greediness and fear, we expand that chasm between what should be and what is every single day. We can’t blame suffering on the universe. We are partly to blame. And so of course we want to put right what we’ve made wrong. Of course we keep striving after justice and peace.
I believe the Lord’s prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” There must be something vital inside me which brought on those tears, something which informs my sense of what should be happening here on earth. There’s a balance to find here between 1) being disturbed by the chasm between what is and what should be 2) learning as much as one possibly can about the causes of that chasm and 3) finding some particular way to build some bridges across, or at least to do one’s best at keeping it from expanding.
This is where Jesus steps into the picture for me today (He steps in at different places depending on my mood and the biggest current question in my heart ): God created us in God’s image. And so we hunger after this vision. It’s inalienable. However, God also gave us the freedom to choose the vision that we follow; ours or God’s? Clearly, it’s a lot easier to follow our own vision of the good life (i.e. nice things and comfort and sometimes even blissful wine-induced ignorance) vs God’s vision which--besides holding some immoveable place in the dark reaches of our hearts--is SO DAMN HARD TO DISCERN and to follow...I’ll get to Jesus in a minute...God gave us the capacity to choose our vision over God’s, and in doing so, gave us the capacity to go too far in our pursuit of that vision. Bottom line, God gave us the capacity to create abominable suffering. To sin.
Enter Jesus who gives us a good talking-to, and it’s not that life isn’t fair. Rather, it’s that life is fair, on some level, after all: Humans can kill God and God will still love us cause God knew we were going to do it in the first place. How can God do anything but forgive us for our poor choices if God created us with the capacity to choose so poorly. That might be blasphemous, but a Priest whom I love once reminded me that God loves us even through our blasphemy. I mean, come on, look at how rude and presumptuous the Psalmist is!
This good news of forgiveness would work out nicely and comfortably for us if that other part--that vision of what’s right part--weren’t so woven into our very being. So we keep crying and bleeding and messing up and asking forgiveness and recommitting ourselves to loving each other better.
On the other hand, I’m glad I’m still bowled over by needless suffering in the world, by the ignorance that drives us to hurt each other and ourselves. It’s like clockwork; Julian puts up a powerpoint slide with statistics on the divergence between the rich and poor--tick--and something in my heart just goes tock--no, no nono.
As a little girl, I cried when things didn’t make sense, when my inherent expectation of fairness had been disappointed. I remember when Katie and I fought, I’d lament the unfairness of it all and Dad would say “life’s not fair, Anna. Just ignore your sister.” Life has certainly shown me that Dad was right--it’s not fair.
Now, Katie and I are upset by the same things that upset Dad; war, poverty, inequality, racism, sexism, violence, hatred, etc. And none of us can ignore them. Perhaps we could all use a good talking to, a good “life’s not fair” reminder. But I don’t think it would help. I don’t think it would stop us from being bowled over afresh each time our inherent expectation of rightness is disappointed. There are many possible explanations for this, and I’ll give the two with which I’ve recently battled: 1) We are stupid and have yet to internalize the lesson that shit happens in this godforsaken and/or godless existence or 2) God has created us with some inalienable sense of what's right at our core.
I’ll flesh out these thoughts in reverse order, but before I do, I must qualify them as thoughts, ideas..attempts to make sense of things I know I will never grasp, hence why they keep bowling me over:
2) There is some vision in us that just won’t quit. No matter how many times we encounter the “reality” that there is no sense or method or truth guiding us to the promised land--that all is absurd and meaningless and we should just stop expecting and trying for something different and to hell with it all!--no matter how familiar we should be with the territory, we can’t stop crying. People haven’t stopped being angry. Our hearts go right on bleeding and shouting and saying HEY, WHAT’s GOING ON? Yah know. Do you know what I mean? Prophets and Apostles and our own dreams keep revealing that something different is possible.
1) Yes, children get inexplicably, terminally ill, “good” things happen to “bad” people, cyclones tear through swingsets and dogs get run over. There’s a lot of suffering we can’t do anything about and will NEVER BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT. But--B. U. T.--the “shit happens” explanation doesn’t account for all the terrible, unnecessary suffering in the world which we create. With our blind desire and greediness and fear, we expand that chasm between what should be and what is every single day. We can’t blame suffering on the universe. We are partly to blame. And so of course we want to put right what we’ve made wrong. Of course we keep striving after justice and peace.
I believe the Lord’s prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” There must be something vital inside me which brought on those tears, something which informs my sense of what should be happening here on earth. There’s a balance to find here between 1) being disturbed by the chasm between what is and what should be 2) learning as much as one possibly can about the causes of that chasm and 3) finding some particular way to build some bridges across, or at least to do one’s best at keeping it from expanding.
This is where Jesus steps into the picture for me today (He steps in at different places depending on my mood and the biggest current question in my heart ): God created us in God’s image. And so we hunger after this vision. It’s inalienable. However, God also gave us the freedom to choose the vision that we follow; ours or God’s? Clearly, it’s a lot easier to follow our own vision of the good life (i.e. nice things and comfort and sometimes even blissful wine-induced ignorance) vs God’s vision which--besides holding some immoveable place in the dark reaches of our hearts--is SO DAMN HARD TO DISCERN and to follow...I’ll get to Jesus in a minute...God gave us the capacity to choose our vision over God’s, and in doing so, gave us the capacity to go too far in our pursuit of that vision. Bottom line, God gave us the capacity to create abominable suffering. To sin.
Enter Jesus who gives us a good talking-to, and it’s not that life isn’t fair. Rather, it’s that life is fair, on some level, after all: Humans can kill God and God will still love us cause God knew we were going to do it in the first place. How can God do anything but forgive us for our poor choices if God created us with the capacity to choose so poorly. That might be blasphemous, but a Priest whom I love once reminded me that God loves us even through our blasphemy. I mean, come on, look at how rude and presumptuous the Psalmist is!
This good news of forgiveness would work out nicely and comfortably for us if that other part--that vision of what’s right part--weren’t so woven into our very being. So we keep crying and bleeding and messing up and asking forgiveness and recommitting ourselves to loving each other better.
Definitions Matter
This is the assignment I referred to in my last blog.
Introduction and Conceptualization
Imagine that a student from outer space is “studying abroad” in Durban to learn about humanity and has an assignment to prepare dinner for a group of ten earthlings. Because our visitor has never eaten before, it logs onto Google to conceptualize dinner--but lo and behold! There are millions of stories, images, recipes, nutritional guidelines, religious texts, ethnic menus, anxious “Overeater’s Anonymous” blogs, an online version of “Where the Wild Things Are” (where Max goes without his dinner), and pictures of starving children who go without on a regular basis. The alien is overwhelmed by dinner’s dynamism; is it a late daily meal providing energy and nutrients, a social phenomenon where the host shares culinary skill and generosity with guests whose bodies and souls are nourished, or is it a family outing to McDonalds? Should there be just enough or an abundance? What is enough? Who will be dining, and what do they (need to) eat? Faced with so much complexity, the alien settles on what it considers to be an essential, utilitarian definition of dinner and its corresponding mathematical application: it divides the daily number of recommended calories (according to umpteen websites) by three (representing meals per/day) and multiplies by ten (total guests). Then, it buys a bag of maize meal from Pick’n’pay, solves for x cups, prepares a cauldron-full, and adds a dash of salt for palatability and iodine sufficiency--taste and nutrition are important, the alien has learned, so the extra effort will surely earn a high mark!
But any professor worth her salt, so to speak, will give an average or lower mark; while the alien did base its definition of dinner and therefore its preparation on the solid foundation of energy provisions using a local commodity, it was too easily seduced by a neat1 mathematical equation and short list of add-ons--it too readily overlooked the dynamic messiness of social, geographic, demographic, economic dinner quandaries and their implications--to achieve great success. Turns out that all ten guests were orphaned babies, still too young to eat cereal. Therefore, the alien’s restricted definition of dinner precipitated its limited capacity to feed the babies.
Over-Simplified Concepts, Underutilized Capacity
Convoluted as my example may be, it illustrates a significant impediment to fulfilling human needs, humanity’s most basic yet dynamic assignment. In the context of persistent under-fulfillment, perceptions of poverty too often forsake relevance in the tension of multiple definitions for conceptual ease. Perhaps the best example is the definition of poverty commonly identified with the Millennium Development Goal to halve global poverty by 2015, a sort of international group project. The World Bank’s definition, held to be capable of coordinating international anti-poverty efforts is: living on less than US $1 per/day. Informed by this definition which allegedly accounts for deprivation from the most essential food and non-food needs vis-a-vis the poverty line, the World Bank’s policy approach to poverty consists of economic growth, access to human capital through health and education, and safety nets for those otherwise excluded (Lok-Dessallien 2001: 15). However, as Hulme and Shepherd argue, “the conceptualization of the poor as a single homogenous group whose prime problem is low monetary income [leads] policy-makers...to search for ‘the policy’ that increases the income of ‘the poor’” at the cost of other non-income-increasing policies (2003: 403). In other words, a restricted, money-metric, “dollar a day” definition de-emphasizes policies which address human capabilities, safety nets, and other critical aspects of poverty (Lok-Dessallien 2001: 15).
Further problems with the mono-definition arise: Boltvinik argues that where poverty is widely conceived of in money-metric terms, yet social indicators figure into policy, “a sort of social schizophrenia prevails” (2001: 5); Reddy and Pogge contend the concept skews poverty measurement in that it relies on a rigid and “arbitrary international poverty line not adequately anchored in any specification of the real requirements of human beings,” uses a “concept of purchasing power equivalence” which does not translate across time and space, and “extrapolates incorrectly from limited data” (4); and so on.
In his assessment of holes in the current global consensus on poverty reduction, Michael Lipton includes similar money-metric criticisms: the Food Energy and Purchasing Power Parity methods (FEM and PPP) of deriving the poverty line are troublesome in that FEM fails to capture needs which vary according to physical characteristics, lifestyle, heredity etc, and PPP lacks a suitable index (1997: 1004). However, he holds that absolute Private Consumption Per Person (PCP) “is indeed the most useful definition of poverty” because it helps us “understand material deprivation and evaluate progress and policies against it” (ibid).
Arguing for further definitional restriction, Lipton echoes Boltvinik’s “social schizophrenia” diagnosis that muddling money-metric concepts and human capability indicators “obscures their interactions.” Rather, he contends capabilities “deserve a separate measurement and analysis” (ibid). In fact, Lipton gives “Human capital” its own section and heading, distinct from the “Definition” of poverty. Likewise, he suggests that inequality is better left out of poverty definitions, better given its own, separate conceptual space; “‘relative poverty’ remains an uneasy and arbitrary amalgam of absolute poverty and low-end inequality, arbitrarily weighed” (ibid).
Although Lipton’s proposed definition of poverty is by degrees more nuanced and complex than “a dollar a day,” his attempt to fill the holes of the alleged poverty consensus (all within the space of a neat five-page document) falls into the same conceptual hole; if definitions inform the way we perceive and struggle against poverty--if indeed our perceptions become reality--then shouldn’t inequality and low human capabilities figure into the “definition” of poverty? By compartmentalizing, by omitting essential factors from what he deems the meaning of poverty, does Lipton not emphasize a static notion of poverty and de-emphasize reduction strategies which more readily address poverty’s dynamism? 2 Since “higher inequality leads to more political instability, more uncertainty, less investment, and lower growth”--nasty conditions for poverty reduction--it’s crucial to assign inequality conceptual weight. (Stewart 2000: 8)
In his defense, Lipton does what one must to complete any assignment: narrow one’s scope from the infinite number of conceptual possibilities down to a functional framework. Certainly, there is a general and, I believe, correct consensus that an absolute definition of poverty is necessary to identify and redress certain kinds of deprivation. However, is it necessary to limit ourselves to one definition? Can we, mustn't we give ourselves room to account for the more complex nature of deprivation? If ten orphans grow up relatively impoverished--perhaps not starving but hungry for nourishing dinners with functional families--will not their sense of themselves as poor, as incapable of living valuable lives precipitate certain realities? What if they decide they’ve never been given a fair chance, steal the difference, and end up dead not from malnourishment but from gun shot wounds? By no means does Lipton argue that we should ignore such possibilities, but he does undermine the attention we give said possibilities by overly narrowing his conceptual framework to exclude inequality from his “Definition” of poverty.
The debate over inequality’s relevance to poverty is not new. In fact, it is part of a long-standing, deep-rooted, either/or argument about whether poverty is best conceived of as absolute or relative, objective or subjective, uni-dimensional or multidimensional, and universal or particular. The arguments generally look like this: Are human needs absolute and universal or socially and historically constructed? Can any conceptualization of poverty be scientific and objective, or are all definitions influenced by the experiences and beliefs of those who create them? Should poverty indicators be restricted to material satisfiers like calories and clothes, “or include social, cultural and political” satisfiers like access to education and political power? (Laderchi, Saith, and Stewart 2003: 244). Furthermore, who should determine the level of deprivation which constitutes poverty (Boltvinik 2001: 3); an expert from academia or an expert from the urban slum?
Nobel prize winning poverty theorist Amartya Sen gets at the heart of the absolute/relative question: “Should poverty be estimated with a cut-off line that reflects a level below which people are-in some sense-‘absoluetly impoverished’ of a level that reflects (minimum) standards of living ‘common to that country’ in particular?” (1984 in Boltvinik 2001: 9). Peter Townsend thinks not: “any rigorous conceptualization of the social determination of need dissolves the idea of absolute need...the necessities of life are not fixed. They are continuously being adapted and augmented as changes take place in society and in its products” (1979 in ibid).
The debate has created a proliferation of approaches to poverty. Sen’s “Capabilities” approach gives an ends-based definition of well-being as the ability for people “to enjoy long, healthy lives, to be literate and to participate freely in their society” (Lok-Dessallien 2001: 11). Criticism of the “Capabilities” and “Monetary” approaches as paternalistic have engendered a “Participatory” approach which involves the poor themselves in defining poverty (ibid). The Social Exclusion approach--defined by the European Union as “the process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded form full participation in the society in which they live”--lends to a greater emphasis on inequality in its application (Laderchi, Saith, and Stewart 2003: 257).
Conclusion and Consensus
Imagine that our alien is given a new assignment to write a short essay on the current global approach to poverty. Going back to Google, it decides that hunger is the absolute core of poverty, from whence poverty lines, profiles, and policies should come--after all, those pictures of starving children always mention “poverty” in the captions. Imagine the alien’s consternation when it stumbles across a “Swaminomics” blog that explores an Indian national sample survey which “put 26% of people below the poverty line,” but counted only 3% as having described themselves as “hungry sometime in the year” (2003).
The source of that blog, an article from the Economic Times called “It’s not just calories, stupid,” gives me a mind to say to Lipton and anyone else seeking one consensual definition of poverty, “It’s not either/or, stupid!” Rather, as O. Altimir shows, “the poverty standard (threshold or line) has two components: the absolute core (universal) and the relative one (specific to each society)” (Boltvinik 2001: 10; my italics). There are holes even in this concept, for there is insurmountable, irreconcilable tension between absoluteness and relativity no matter the subject at hand. Indeed, it’s hard to hold multiple, paradoxical realities in tension. In a word, it’s dynamic. But poverty is dynamic, so any attempt to ignore this reality will result in serious consequences. Just as our alien was unable to feed babies pap, neither can we successfully address poverty when our concepts are inflexible. Hulme and Shepherd insist: we must “move beyond the study of poverty trends to the study of poverty dynamics.” (2003: 420). Lest we get too liberal, it’s helpful to remember that relativists get lost in the google clouds just as fast as reductionists get stuck in the barren mud. Thus, Lok-Desallien encourages “a middle path” to identify “different types of poverty and different policy proposals for dealing with it” (2001: 17).
Ultimately, the concept(s) we choose will depend on the assignment we’re given. For instance, I’ve narrowed the scope of this essay to the definition of poverty, leaving out measurement and policy almost altogether. I’ve forsaken breadth for depth in an attempt to make my alloted 2000 words meaningful. The point of this qualification is significant: by stating my limitations, I clarify my participation in an ongoing dialogue in which countless others have countless contributions to make, both where my own contributions are limited, and where they are erroneous. Since halving global poverty by 2015 requires daily contributions from billions of people all over the world, we best stay mindful of the dialogue’s dynamism. Perhaps only one consensus is essential: life is precious and it is our human responsibility and privilege to fulfill human needs.
Introduction and Conceptualization
Imagine that a student from outer space is “studying abroad” in Durban to learn about humanity and has an assignment to prepare dinner for a group of ten earthlings. Because our visitor has never eaten before, it logs onto Google to conceptualize dinner--but lo and behold! There are millions of stories, images, recipes, nutritional guidelines, religious texts, ethnic menus, anxious “Overeater’s Anonymous” blogs, an online version of “Where the Wild Things Are” (where Max goes without his dinner), and pictures of starving children who go without on a regular basis. The alien is overwhelmed by dinner’s dynamism; is it a late daily meal providing energy and nutrients, a social phenomenon where the host shares culinary skill and generosity with guests whose bodies and souls are nourished, or is it a family outing to McDonalds? Should there be just enough or an abundance? What is enough? Who will be dining, and what do they (need to) eat? Faced with so much complexity, the alien settles on what it considers to be an essential, utilitarian definition of dinner and its corresponding mathematical application: it divides the daily number of recommended calories (according to umpteen websites) by three (representing meals per/day) and multiplies by ten (total guests). Then, it buys a bag of maize meal from Pick’n’pay, solves for x cups, prepares a cauldron-full, and adds a dash of salt for palatability and iodine sufficiency--taste and nutrition are important, the alien has learned, so the extra effort will surely earn a high mark!
But any professor worth her salt, so to speak, will give an average or lower mark; while the alien did base its definition of dinner and therefore its preparation on the solid foundation of energy provisions using a local commodity, it was too easily seduced by a neat1 mathematical equation and short list of add-ons--it too readily overlooked the dynamic messiness of social, geographic, demographic, economic dinner quandaries and their implications--to achieve great success. Turns out that all ten guests were orphaned babies, still too young to eat cereal. Therefore, the alien’s restricted definition of dinner precipitated its limited capacity to feed the babies.
Over-Simplified Concepts, Underutilized Capacity
Convoluted as my example may be, it illustrates a significant impediment to fulfilling human needs, humanity’s most basic yet dynamic assignment. In the context of persistent under-fulfillment, perceptions of poverty too often forsake relevance in the tension of multiple definitions for conceptual ease. Perhaps the best example is the definition of poverty commonly identified with the Millennium Development Goal to halve global poverty by 2015, a sort of international group project. The World Bank’s definition, held to be capable of coordinating international anti-poverty efforts is: living on less than US $1 per/day. Informed by this definition which allegedly accounts for deprivation from the most essential food and non-food needs vis-a-vis the poverty line, the World Bank’s policy approach to poverty consists of economic growth, access to human capital through health and education, and safety nets for those otherwise excluded (Lok-Dessallien 2001: 15). However, as Hulme and Shepherd argue, “the conceptualization of the poor as a single homogenous group whose prime problem is low monetary income [leads] policy-makers...to search for ‘the policy’ that increases the income of ‘the poor’” at the cost of other non-income-increasing policies (2003: 403). In other words, a restricted, money-metric, “dollar a day” definition de-emphasizes policies which address human capabilities, safety nets, and other critical aspects of poverty (Lok-Dessallien 2001: 15).
Further problems with the mono-definition arise: Boltvinik argues that where poverty is widely conceived of in money-metric terms, yet social indicators figure into policy, “a sort of social schizophrenia prevails” (2001: 5); Reddy and Pogge contend the concept skews poverty measurement in that it relies on a rigid and “arbitrary international poverty line not adequately anchored in any specification of the real requirements of human beings,” uses a “concept of purchasing power equivalence” which does not translate across time and space, and “extrapolates incorrectly from limited data” (4); and so on.
In his assessment of holes in the current global consensus on poverty reduction, Michael Lipton includes similar money-metric criticisms: the Food Energy and Purchasing Power Parity methods (FEM and PPP) of deriving the poverty line are troublesome in that FEM fails to capture needs which vary according to physical characteristics, lifestyle, heredity etc, and PPP lacks a suitable index (1997: 1004). However, he holds that absolute Private Consumption Per Person (PCP) “is indeed the most useful definition of poverty” because it helps us “understand material deprivation and evaluate progress and policies against it” (ibid).
Arguing for further definitional restriction, Lipton echoes Boltvinik’s “social schizophrenia” diagnosis that muddling money-metric concepts and human capability indicators “obscures their interactions.” Rather, he contends capabilities “deserve a separate measurement and analysis” (ibid). In fact, Lipton gives “Human capital” its own section and heading, distinct from the “Definition” of poverty. Likewise, he suggests that inequality is better left out of poverty definitions, better given its own, separate conceptual space; “‘relative poverty’ remains an uneasy and arbitrary amalgam of absolute poverty and low-end inequality, arbitrarily weighed” (ibid).
Although Lipton’s proposed definition of poverty is by degrees more nuanced and complex than “a dollar a day,” his attempt to fill the holes of the alleged poverty consensus (all within the space of a neat five-page document) falls into the same conceptual hole; if definitions inform the way we perceive and struggle against poverty--if indeed our perceptions become reality--then shouldn’t inequality and low human capabilities figure into the “definition” of poverty? By compartmentalizing, by omitting essential factors from what he deems the meaning of poverty, does Lipton not emphasize a static notion of poverty and de-emphasize reduction strategies which more readily address poverty’s dynamism? 2 Since “higher inequality leads to more political instability, more uncertainty, less investment, and lower growth”--nasty conditions for poverty reduction--it’s crucial to assign inequality conceptual weight. (Stewart 2000: 8)
In his defense, Lipton does what one must to complete any assignment: narrow one’s scope from the infinite number of conceptual possibilities down to a functional framework. Certainly, there is a general and, I believe, correct consensus that an absolute definition of poverty is necessary to identify and redress certain kinds of deprivation. However, is it necessary to limit ourselves to one definition? Can we, mustn't we give ourselves room to account for the more complex nature of deprivation? If ten orphans grow up relatively impoverished--perhaps not starving but hungry for nourishing dinners with functional families--will not their sense of themselves as poor, as incapable of living valuable lives precipitate certain realities? What if they decide they’ve never been given a fair chance, steal the difference, and end up dead not from malnourishment but from gun shot wounds? By no means does Lipton argue that we should ignore such possibilities, but he does undermine the attention we give said possibilities by overly narrowing his conceptual framework to exclude inequality from his “Definition” of poverty.
The debate over inequality’s relevance to poverty is not new. In fact, it is part of a long-standing, deep-rooted, either/or argument about whether poverty is best conceived of as absolute or relative, objective or subjective, uni-dimensional or multidimensional, and universal or particular. The arguments generally look like this: Are human needs absolute and universal or socially and historically constructed? Can any conceptualization of poverty be scientific and objective, or are all definitions influenced by the experiences and beliefs of those who create them? Should poverty indicators be restricted to material satisfiers like calories and clothes, “or include social, cultural and political” satisfiers like access to education and political power? (Laderchi, Saith, and Stewart 2003: 244). Furthermore, who should determine the level of deprivation which constitutes poverty (Boltvinik 2001: 3); an expert from academia or an expert from the urban slum?
Nobel prize winning poverty theorist Amartya Sen gets at the heart of the absolute/relative question: “Should poverty be estimated with a cut-off line that reflects a level below which people are-in some sense-‘absoluetly impoverished’ of a level that reflects (minimum) standards of living ‘common to that country’ in particular?” (1984 in Boltvinik 2001: 9). Peter Townsend thinks not: “any rigorous conceptualization of the social determination of need dissolves the idea of absolute need...the necessities of life are not fixed. They are continuously being adapted and augmented as changes take place in society and in its products” (1979 in ibid).
The debate has created a proliferation of approaches to poverty. Sen’s “Capabilities” approach gives an ends-based definition of well-being as the ability for people “to enjoy long, healthy lives, to be literate and to participate freely in their society” (Lok-Dessallien 2001: 11). Criticism of the “Capabilities” and “Monetary” approaches as paternalistic have engendered a “Participatory” approach which involves the poor themselves in defining poverty (ibid). The Social Exclusion approach--defined by the European Union as “the process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded form full participation in the society in which they live”--lends to a greater emphasis on inequality in its application (Laderchi, Saith, and Stewart 2003: 257).
Conclusion and Consensus
Imagine that our alien is given a new assignment to write a short essay on the current global approach to poverty. Going back to Google, it decides that hunger is the absolute core of poverty, from whence poverty lines, profiles, and policies should come--after all, those pictures of starving children always mention “poverty” in the captions. Imagine the alien’s consternation when it stumbles across a “Swaminomics” blog that explores an Indian national sample survey which “put 26% of people below the poverty line,” but counted only 3% as having described themselves as “hungry sometime in the year” (2003).
The source of that blog, an article from the Economic Times called “It’s not just calories, stupid,” gives me a mind to say to Lipton and anyone else seeking one consensual definition of poverty, “It’s not either/or, stupid!” Rather, as O. Altimir shows, “the poverty standard (threshold or line) has two components: the absolute core (universal) and the relative one (specific to each society)” (Boltvinik 2001: 10; my italics). There are holes even in this concept, for there is insurmountable, irreconcilable tension between absoluteness and relativity no matter the subject at hand. Indeed, it’s hard to hold multiple, paradoxical realities in tension. In a word, it’s dynamic. But poverty is dynamic, so any attempt to ignore this reality will result in serious consequences. Just as our alien was unable to feed babies pap, neither can we successfully address poverty when our concepts are inflexible. Hulme and Shepherd insist: we must “move beyond the study of poverty trends to the study of poverty dynamics.” (2003: 420). Lest we get too liberal, it’s helpful to remember that relativists get lost in the google clouds just as fast as reductionists get stuck in the barren mud. Thus, Lok-Desallien encourages “a middle path” to identify “different types of poverty and different policy proposals for dealing with it” (2001: 17).
Ultimately, the concept(s) we choose will depend on the assignment we’re given. For instance, I’ve narrowed the scope of this essay to the definition of poverty, leaving out measurement and policy almost altogether. I’ve forsaken breadth for depth in an attempt to make my alloted 2000 words meaningful. The point of this qualification is significant: by stating my limitations, I clarify my participation in an ongoing dialogue in which countless others have countless contributions to make, both where my own contributions are limited, and where they are erroneous. Since halving global poverty by 2015 requires daily contributions from billions of people all over the world, we best stay mindful of the dialogue’s dynamism. Perhaps only one consensus is essential: life is precious and it is our human responsibility and privilege to fulfill human needs.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Monthly bla bla blog.
Yesterday morning, I got up at 4 am to go to my friend Tasmi's dojo where friends and family were invited for an introduction to Katori, an ancient martial art of the sword. It was amazing. I was amazed at my own cheerful capacity to sit cross-legged on the floor with a straight back for two hours. Ei, Yah, Toh! Yoh, my arms hurt today.
Afterward, we had a lovely breakfast of fruit salad, greek yogurt, muesli, and sushi, yes, sushi. We ate outside the dojo, in a garden full of native South African plants, in the company of some mighty fine singing birds. It was chilly outside and we were bright eyed!
I spent the afternoon back at home in sweats, cooking black eyed peas and finishing a paper on the definition of poverty. If you want a copy of the paper, which has the answers to everything you've ever wondered about, just let me know. But if you read it, all you'll do is shake your head and say, yeah, I already knew that.
At 4, I went to a fellow Rotary scholar's digs for a Soul Food Party (hence the peas), ate some fried chicken, baked mac'n'cheese and apple cobbler. It's stuff we hardly eat at home, you know, but here it opened up that whole soul dynamic in revolutionary ways. I talked about the south to anyone who would listen. If I'da had some beer, they'da been in trouble. I might have started talking music. Well anyways, they all said the fried chicken was way better than KFC (there's one on every corner here in South Africa), which fulfilled Valerie's (the hostesses's) ambition.
This morning, after arriving home from passing out energy drinks and water to 2000 cyclists at a Rotary sponsored bike-race (woke up again at 5), I played ultimate frisbee with some folk I met at the dojo. Two more hours in the zone! My legs are already sore. We had such a good time, we went out afterwards to a Middle eastern place for tea, honey and halva smoothies, and a piece of apple-date cake. The conversation was music, development, meaning, God, books, life. People are so amazing. It's such a privilege to see people, to be seen, to listen and be heard. A conversation is enough, just in itself. A Sunday evening conversation. We're playing again next weekend, and might go skiing in Lesotho sometime soon.
Now I am home and I have lots of reading to do for class tomorrow, but all I can do is listen to music on my computer and write this blog. I don't have much to say, just that I am in the thick of life here, experiencing so many new and different things. Internal, external, all at the same time, and I can't make much sense of any of it just yet. Like this evening's conversation over tea and cake: I encountered some hugely new ideas...big new spiritual ones that made me excited and uncomfortable. Almost everything inspires some level of discomfort. It's hard work to stay grounded when it feels like the earth is shifting underfoot. All humans know this. You don't have to go to another continent, but it definitely heightens one's awareness. Yebo.
So this is my monthly blog. Not all that interesting, I'm afraid. I just wanted to check in and say, Hi, Hello, to any of you readers out there. I love you.
Afterward, we had a lovely breakfast of fruit salad, greek yogurt, muesli, and sushi, yes, sushi. We ate outside the dojo, in a garden full of native South African plants, in the company of some mighty fine singing birds. It was chilly outside and we were bright eyed!
I spent the afternoon back at home in sweats, cooking black eyed peas and finishing a paper on the definition of poverty. If you want a copy of the paper, which has the answers to everything you've ever wondered about, just let me know. But if you read it, all you'll do is shake your head and say, yeah, I already knew that.
At 4, I went to a fellow Rotary scholar's digs for a Soul Food Party (hence the peas), ate some fried chicken, baked mac'n'cheese and apple cobbler. It's stuff we hardly eat at home, you know, but here it opened up that whole soul dynamic in revolutionary ways. I talked about the south to anyone who would listen. If I'da had some beer, they'da been in trouble. I might have started talking music. Well anyways, they all said the fried chicken was way better than KFC (there's one on every corner here in South Africa), which fulfilled Valerie's (the hostesses's) ambition.
This morning, after arriving home from passing out energy drinks and water to 2000 cyclists at a Rotary sponsored bike-race (woke up again at 5), I played ultimate frisbee with some folk I met at the dojo. Two more hours in the zone! My legs are already sore. We had such a good time, we went out afterwards to a Middle eastern place for tea, honey and halva smoothies, and a piece of apple-date cake. The conversation was music, development, meaning, God, books, life. People are so amazing. It's such a privilege to see people, to be seen, to listen and be heard. A conversation is enough, just in itself. A Sunday evening conversation. We're playing again next weekend, and might go skiing in Lesotho sometime soon.
Now I am home and I have lots of reading to do for class tomorrow, but all I can do is listen to music on my computer and write this blog. I don't have much to say, just that I am in the thick of life here, experiencing so many new and different things. Internal, external, all at the same time, and I can't make much sense of any of it just yet. Like this evening's conversation over tea and cake: I encountered some hugely new ideas...big new spiritual ones that made me excited and uncomfortable. Almost everything inspires some level of discomfort. It's hard work to stay grounded when it feels like the earth is shifting underfoot. All humans know this. You don't have to go to another continent, but it definitely heightens one's awareness. Yebo.
So this is my monthly blog. Not all that interesting, I'm afraid. I just wanted to check in and say, Hi, Hello, to any of you readers out there. I love you.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Think Piece
I'm posting my favorite "think piece" I've written for Comparitive Development Policies and Problems. I left out the sources for easier reading, but if you want them, comment below and I will post. Also, email me, Katie and Jean, if you don't agree with my family assessment. It's long, but I thought you might like to skim through some of what I'm learning...
My father’s father studied business at Yale, flew a bomber jet over Japan during WWII, and returned home a “hero” to marry my beautiful grandmother, raise four kids, and find great success as a businessman. For my Papa, the Golden Age was just that: golden. Having grown up during the depression, he believed that progress had been made (for good) and that it was replicable the world over. He had seen the shift and was certain that if people worked as hard and subscribed to the same values as he did, then they could achieve the gold/good life.
In his continuing disillusionment--prompted over the years not only by evening news reports of global poverty and strife, but also by my Dad and his siblings who each thought their way, via rebellion or religion, into different ideology--Papa usually decries the immorality of modern people; it’s our fault things haven’t gone well. But some days, when he’s willing to admit his disappointment with his Republican Party’s “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” argument and its contradictory policies that effectively prohibit some people from affording anything but flip-flops, Papa will listen to his family’s sharp and often nihilistic assessment of the world and then he will ask, “I hear what you are against, but what are you FOR?” The rest of us roll our eyes, partly because he hasn’t necessarily conceded the validity of our criticisms, but also because we’re not up for the challenge he has set before us: deconstruct all you want, but sooner or later, you’ve got to get creative.
Many “Development Theorists” today might not like being called as such, precisely because they are against most of what Development (Hart’s big “D”) stands for, past and present. The idea that “things are getting better all the time” has been replaced by post-structuralism’s tenet that “the ability to make things better is the main way of achieving power” by the power hungry. Although critical assessment of development--the “trenchant critique of eurocentrism and power relations implicit in mainstream development discourse” as Aram Aiai puts it--is important, we must guard against what Hart calls the “the nihilism of post-development;” since the world has gone pretty far down the path of eurocentric design, it’s hard to imagine an alternative, easier to throw one’s hands up in exasperation. As we question development in general, we must also renounce “reactionary populism” and any other ideology that ignores the complexity and even the necessity of development--little and big “D”--in the past, present, and future. After all is said and done in the name of critique, you’ve got to get creative.
The authors of this week’s readings rise to the challenge. Rejecting hopelessness and aimlessness in this post-enlightenment, post-structuralist, post-modernist, post-Marxist, post-Washington consensus, post-everything world where “many consider development dead,” they lay bare their criticisms and then ask: well, what now? They use a similar vernacular to describe the direction that takes us from old and destructive to new and potentially constructive ways of life: Liberation! Emancipation! Renewal! (more specifically, emancipation from Development, liberation from the eurocentric model, renewal of pluralistic concepts of development, Liberation Ecology and Freedom-based Development). The terms are almost religious: our Development predecessors and we have done wrong...let us be contrite, let us amend our ways, and let us know liberty! Indeed, freedom from the old ways of living and freedom to live more justly and peacefully require repentance and reform of the old system which has led to more suffering than progress. Christopher Herbert succinctly identifies the grounds for repentance particularly relevant to 1st world developers and their ideologues throughout the world: we must make a better effort at reconciling “the tensions between the desire for unfettered accumulation...and unregulated desire as the origin of misery and vice.” Liberation from the idol of mass consumption is necessary.
There are many things we’ve been liberated from this past century: colonial rule and other forms of political tyranny, economic regulation across interstate and international lines, communication barriers, etc. But as each of these freedoms has proved limited by an all-encompassing subjection to the linear, ethnocentric, modernizing, capitalist definition of development, some wonder if we need liberation from the concept of development itself. While development theorists do pine after a little liberation themselves, the good ones know that repentance is not a rejection of the past, but an application of it. Loathing history demands that we loathe where we are now (and where does that leave us but hell?), so the better option is to study the past, learn from mistakes and successes, accept the present, and move more mindfully forward.
How do our authors suggest that we move forward? Now that we’ve established that from which we need liberation, what are we searching for the freedom to do?
Peet and Watts argue for a Liberation Ecology. Since the global crisis is fundamentally tied to global economic inequality--the same “surplus extraction” machine which has made the rich richer and the poor poorer by wresting capital from cheap labor has also wrung dry ecosystems all over the world--liberation from poverty depends at its roots on liberation from environmental exploitation. Gone are the days that the third world is blamed for desperate, careless use of natural resources, gone is the idea that modernization and development will therefore alleviate poor peoples’ destruction of the land, now is the time to hold the global capitalist system accountable for its’ role, now is the time to reform.
There are many ways to repent and reform: Liberation Ecologists use eco-feminism as a lens to analyze patriarchal power structures (of penetration) and to prescribe more egalitarian, ecologically weighted policy. Environmental historians study indigenous agricultural knowledge--forgotten traditions usually seen as backward--to direct land management and stewardship of resources. Rather than looking for utopian stability in the relationship between supply and demand, theorists cite the “ecology of chaos” apparent in nature’s “disequilibria”-- its fluctuating and unstable seasons, cycles, and flukes--to inform their evaluation of economic conditions. Instead of applying abstract universals to economic and land management policy, ecologists liberate local communities to determine which policies will most benefit their particular eco-system.
What all these strategies have at their core is 1) the proliferation and “liberation of aspirations” from conventional prescriptions for development and 2) a focus on capacity building to increase the number of agents and the power they have to effect change:
"Development can only occur when the people it affects participate in the design of the proposed studies, and the model which is implemented thereby corresponds to the local people’s aspirations...the indigenous people of the amazon have always lived there; the Amazon is our home. We know its secrets, both what it can offer us, and what its limits are"
In his discussion of development as a set of freedoms, Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen echoes the sentiment: the aim is not to speak for “sub-altern” people, but to uncover and disseminate existing “discourses of resistance” and encourage creation of new paradigms. Nor are people to be seen as beneficiaries of development strategies imposed from outside, but as agents who determine their own community’s well-being from within. In more general terms, Sen’s theory is that development is best measured by the degree to which people are free to live to their full potential in community with others. Implicit are a set of freedoms from sources of suffering like hunger, poverty, intolerance, tyranny, as well as a set of freedoms to engage in economic, social, and other activities. An individual’s freedom is kept from encroaching on others’ by communal values which are “in turn influenced by public discussions and social interactions, which are themselves influenced by participatory freedoms.”
Freedom here not only influences freedom there, but increases it: for example, freedom from poverty leads to freedom to learn which in turn leads to freedom to participate in the economy. Sen uses this argument to support his contention that human development is not “a luxury that countries can only aspire to once they’ve achieved other measures of success.” On the contrary, by providing supportive policy for basic freedoms like access to education and healthcare now, citizens acquire agency to cultivate greater capabilities in the future. His call for “constructive impatience” is reminiscent of Dr. Martin Luther Kings Jr’s cry from the Birmingham jail for civil liberties today! Furthermore, liberty now demands that the means to freedom are just as vital as the end.
Freedom to engage in economic activity implies the freedom not to participate, as well (all are shades of grey). If a monastic chooses to pray 10 times a day and to live a life of poverty, she should be free to do so. Likewise, if a single father of four in South Africa wants to send his children to university, he should be free to cultivate his own personal agency through education, employment, investment, etc, to make that happen!
As Arturo Escobar contends, it is time that we liberate our development discourse to allow for more a pluralistic “re-imagining of the ‘third world’ and a post-development era.” I would add the first world needs a lot of imagination, too.
My father’s father studied business at Yale, flew a bomber jet over Japan during WWII, and returned home a “hero” to marry my beautiful grandmother, raise four kids, and find great success as a businessman. For my Papa, the Golden Age was just that: golden. Having grown up during the depression, he believed that progress had been made (for good) and that it was replicable the world over. He had seen the shift and was certain that if people worked as hard and subscribed to the same values as he did, then they could achieve the gold/good life.
In his continuing disillusionment--prompted over the years not only by evening news reports of global poverty and strife, but also by my Dad and his siblings who each thought their way, via rebellion or religion, into different ideology--Papa usually decries the immorality of modern people; it’s our fault things haven’t gone well. But some days, when he’s willing to admit his disappointment with his Republican Party’s “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” argument and its contradictory policies that effectively prohibit some people from affording anything but flip-flops, Papa will listen to his family’s sharp and often nihilistic assessment of the world and then he will ask, “I hear what you are against, but what are you FOR?” The rest of us roll our eyes, partly because he hasn’t necessarily conceded the validity of our criticisms, but also because we’re not up for the challenge he has set before us: deconstruct all you want, but sooner or later, you’ve got to get creative.
Many “Development Theorists” today might not like being called as such, precisely because they are against most of what Development (Hart’s big “D”) stands for, past and present. The idea that “things are getting better all the time” has been replaced by post-structuralism’s tenet that “the ability to make things better is the main way of achieving power” by the power hungry. Although critical assessment of development--the “trenchant critique of eurocentrism and power relations implicit in mainstream development discourse” as Aram Aiai puts it--is important, we must guard against what Hart calls the “the nihilism of post-development;” since the world has gone pretty far down the path of eurocentric design, it’s hard to imagine an alternative, easier to throw one’s hands up in exasperation. As we question development in general, we must also renounce “reactionary populism” and any other ideology that ignores the complexity and even the necessity of development--little and big “D”--in the past, present, and future. After all is said and done in the name of critique, you’ve got to get creative.
The authors of this week’s readings rise to the challenge. Rejecting hopelessness and aimlessness in this post-enlightenment, post-structuralist, post-modernist, post-Marxist, post-Washington consensus, post-everything world where “many consider development dead,” they lay bare their criticisms and then ask: well, what now? They use a similar vernacular to describe the direction that takes us from old and destructive to new and potentially constructive ways of life: Liberation! Emancipation! Renewal! (more specifically, emancipation from Development, liberation from the eurocentric model, renewal of pluralistic concepts of development, Liberation Ecology and Freedom-based Development). The terms are almost religious: our Development predecessors and we have done wrong...let us be contrite, let us amend our ways, and let us know liberty! Indeed, freedom from the old ways of living and freedom to live more justly and peacefully require repentance and reform of the old system which has led to more suffering than progress. Christopher Herbert succinctly identifies the grounds for repentance particularly relevant to 1st world developers and their ideologues throughout the world: we must make a better effort at reconciling “the tensions between the desire for unfettered accumulation...and unregulated desire as the origin of misery and vice.” Liberation from the idol of mass consumption is necessary.
There are many things we’ve been liberated from this past century: colonial rule and other forms of political tyranny, economic regulation across interstate and international lines, communication barriers, etc. But as each of these freedoms has proved limited by an all-encompassing subjection to the linear, ethnocentric, modernizing, capitalist definition of development, some wonder if we need liberation from the concept of development itself. While development theorists do pine after a little liberation themselves, the good ones know that repentance is not a rejection of the past, but an application of it. Loathing history demands that we loathe where we are now (and where does that leave us but hell?), so the better option is to study the past, learn from mistakes and successes, accept the present, and move more mindfully forward.
How do our authors suggest that we move forward? Now that we’ve established that from which we need liberation, what are we searching for the freedom to do?
Peet and Watts argue for a Liberation Ecology. Since the global crisis is fundamentally tied to global economic inequality--the same “surplus extraction” machine which has made the rich richer and the poor poorer by wresting capital from cheap labor has also wrung dry ecosystems all over the world--liberation from poverty depends at its roots on liberation from environmental exploitation. Gone are the days that the third world is blamed for desperate, careless use of natural resources, gone is the idea that modernization and development will therefore alleviate poor peoples’ destruction of the land, now is the time to hold the global capitalist system accountable for its’ role, now is the time to reform.
There are many ways to repent and reform: Liberation Ecologists use eco-feminism as a lens to analyze patriarchal power structures (of penetration) and to prescribe more egalitarian, ecologically weighted policy. Environmental historians study indigenous agricultural knowledge--forgotten traditions usually seen as backward--to direct land management and stewardship of resources. Rather than looking for utopian stability in the relationship between supply and demand, theorists cite the “ecology of chaos” apparent in nature’s “disequilibria”-- its fluctuating and unstable seasons, cycles, and flukes--to inform their evaluation of economic conditions. Instead of applying abstract universals to economic and land management policy, ecologists liberate local communities to determine which policies will most benefit their particular eco-system.
What all these strategies have at their core is 1) the proliferation and “liberation of aspirations” from conventional prescriptions for development and 2) a focus on capacity building to increase the number of agents and the power they have to effect change:
"Development can only occur when the people it affects participate in the design of the proposed studies, and the model which is implemented thereby corresponds to the local people’s aspirations...the indigenous people of the amazon have always lived there; the Amazon is our home. We know its secrets, both what it can offer us, and what its limits are"
In his discussion of development as a set of freedoms, Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen echoes the sentiment: the aim is not to speak for “sub-altern” people, but to uncover and disseminate existing “discourses of resistance” and encourage creation of new paradigms. Nor are people to be seen as beneficiaries of development strategies imposed from outside, but as agents who determine their own community’s well-being from within. In more general terms, Sen’s theory is that development is best measured by the degree to which people are free to live to their full potential in community with others. Implicit are a set of freedoms from sources of suffering like hunger, poverty, intolerance, tyranny, as well as a set of freedoms to engage in economic, social, and other activities. An individual’s freedom is kept from encroaching on others’ by communal values which are “in turn influenced by public discussions and social interactions, which are themselves influenced by participatory freedoms.”
Freedom here not only influences freedom there, but increases it: for example, freedom from poverty leads to freedom to learn which in turn leads to freedom to participate in the economy. Sen uses this argument to support his contention that human development is not “a luxury that countries can only aspire to once they’ve achieved other measures of success.” On the contrary, by providing supportive policy for basic freedoms like access to education and healthcare now, citizens acquire agency to cultivate greater capabilities in the future. His call for “constructive impatience” is reminiscent of Dr. Martin Luther Kings Jr’s cry from the Birmingham jail for civil liberties today! Furthermore, liberty now demands that the means to freedom are just as vital as the end.
Freedom to engage in economic activity implies the freedom not to participate, as well (all are shades of grey). If a monastic chooses to pray 10 times a day and to live a life of poverty, she should be free to do so. Likewise, if a single father of four in South Africa wants to send his children to university, he should be free to cultivate his own personal agency through education, employment, investment, etc, to make that happen!
As Arturo Escobar contends, it is time that we liberate our development discourse to allow for more a pluralistic “re-imagining of the ‘third world’ and a post-development era.” I would add the first world needs a lot of imagination, too.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Easter
Thursday, after I did a whole bunch of sweaty-making sun salutations with my roommate, Sarah, and our guest from Grahamstown (originally from Chicago), Alicia, we lay in corpse pose for a good long while. I prayed. School had been overwhelming; I was too much in my head, tense and tired. Too many big questions. Not enough being with the people around me! I couldn't imagine enjoying Easter so far from home. Waaah waah wahh.
After a few minutes of stumbling prayer--God will you do this, God will you do that (ie fix the world), God why is this hard, God, this stinks and I stink (literally and figuratively)--I remembered that Holy Week was hard last year, too. In fact, life was hard last year. Why did I expect it to be any different? And why was I blaming the difficulty on my geographic location? My prayer and mood changed then--when I remembered my faith--and I just said something like, "Hey, I'm trusting you. I don't have to engineer new life. I can't. I'll let you do your thing. Oh and I trust you to show us our part in all of it." I was a bit cheeky, almost testing, but a Priest has told me God can take anything.
Then Sarah and I walked to school for our last Econ class on the ins and outs of pro-poor growth. Is it possible? Does it necessarily require redistributive policy? It's all much more complicated than I used to think, of course. No one has a prescription for engineering equitable growth the world over. That's another cause for prayer. Big time prayer. And then lots of hard hard work.
Friday, Human Rights Day, the three of us got up at 4:30 am and went to an interdenominational Good Friday service at the Durban Convention Center. About 1500 people prayed, sang, listened, and then walked in silence in the cold rain to the Civic Center, where we flowered a cross and rededicated ourselves to loving and serving our neighbor. It was uncomfortable and lovely.
Yesterday was not difficult at all. Easter Sunday was a gift. I'll tell you a little bit, but the pictures say it better. About 15 of my new friends gathered for a "bring and share." The food was amazing, the conversation and love flowed, and I was at home. At one point in the evening, Jean from Serbia said that everywhere he goes, the conversation is about what we struggle with and all that we love--war, the ocean, starvation, anorexia, our pets, global warming, food...and then Nombulelo from South Africa said the Easter message is there in that. We finished all our wine, ate more dessert, and kissed and hugged 5 times over when it was time to go.
After a few minutes of stumbling prayer--God will you do this, God will you do that (ie fix the world), God why is this hard, God, this stinks and I stink (literally and figuratively)--I remembered that Holy Week was hard last year, too. In fact, life was hard last year. Why did I expect it to be any different? And why was I blaming the difficulty on my geographic location? My prayer and mood changed then--when I remembered my faith--and I just said something like, "Hey, I'm trusting you. I don't have to engineer new life. I can't. I'll let you do your thing. Oh and I trust you to show us our part in all of it." I was a bit cheeky, almost testing, but a Priest has told me God can take anything.
Then Sarah and I walked to school for our last Econ class on the ins and outs of pro-poor growth. Is it possible? Does it necessarily require redistributive policy? It's all much more complicated than I used to think, of course. No one has a prescription for engineering equitable growth the world over. That's another cause for prayer. Big time prayer. And then lots of hard hard work.
Friday, Human Rights Day, the three of us got up at 4:30 am and went to an interdenominational Good Friday service at the Durban Convention Center. About 1500 people prayed, sang, listened, and then walked in silence in the cold rain to the Civic Center, where we flowered a cross and rededicated ourselves to loving and serving our neighbor. It was uncomfortable and lovely. Yesterday was not difficult at all. Easter Sunday was a gift. I'll tell you a little bit, but the pictures say it better. About 15 of my new friends gathered for a "bring and share." The food was amazing, the conversation and love flowed, and I was at home. At one point in the evening, Jean from Serbia said that everywhere he goes, the conversation is about what we struggle with and all that we love--war, the ocean, starvation, anorexia, our pets, global warming, food...and then Nombulelo from South Africa said the Easter message is there in that. We finished all our wine, ate more dessert, and kissed and hugged 5 times over when it was time to go.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Measuring up.
You wake up Saturday morning and listen to the news; it’s going to be sunny, 75 F, with a gentle breeze. You lace up your trainers and go for a run. 5 solid miles and then some stretching before you hop on the scale to see that you have stayed inside your ideal 6 pound range. You shower. You eat your favorite breakfast of yogurt, granola, and fruit, which contains approximately 500 calories, 16 grams of fiber, 14 grams of protein, and a 100% of a bunch of daily vitamins to boot. Later in the afternoon, you go to the movies with a friend and buy a matinee ticket for $7, popcorn and coke for $6 (you usually don’t splurge on the expensive snacks, but you’re treating yourself today cause yesterday, your professor (or boss) gave you a 95% mark on some recent accomplishment), and you watch George Clooney be handsome for a couple hours.
Switch gears. You wake up Saturday in South Africa. It’s going to be a sunny 35 C. You gear up and run 5 hilly kilometers. The bathroom scale reads in kilos. Your favorite breakfast with muesli has 1,060 kJ per 100 grams. The yoghurt has pimarcin in it: you don’t know what that means, and you can’t decipher the daily values. At the movies, you spend R90 and watch George Clooney who is handsome as all get out. The snacks seem a bit overpriced, but you're not sure, and you can’t justify the splurge with the %70 mark you got the day before, cause you are not sure what the grade means.
Which day is better? Can you tell? Is there a measure?
I realized soon after arriving in South Africa that if I was to evaluate life the way I habitually do, then I’d need to learn all the new measures first. It was kind of annoying not to know the nutritional breakdown of every bite of food. Not to know whether the day’s high temperature exceeded the equivalent of my personal death-heat limit, 95 F. Not to know whether my grades in class were poor, average or excellent (refer to last blog). Plus, when you don’t know whether something fits your preconceived notion of good or bad, you can’t very easily categorize it as such. Nice day, awful day? Good Anna, Bad Anna?
After sitting with the irritating discomfort a few times, I felt something else--something a bit edgy, challenging. If you can’t objectively measure things up, you’ve gotta rely on something entirely different to direct your thoughts and actions. Presence, maybe?
If I’m feeling too hot to study, for example, but don’t know whether the actual temperature has surpassed my personal limit (thereby allowing me to take a break), then I’ve gotta pay attention to and trust my sensations, perceptions, and the world around me that informs them. More often than I’m accustomed to, I end up letting myself nap.
I decided about a month ago--in spite of my judgmental, perfectionist tendencies--to intentionally ignore the unessential conversion formulas for as long as possible. This is a good challenge for me, this not being able to measure myself and my surroundings against some standard of merit or demerit. I still don’t know much about my grades, the weather, or the nutritional density of my food. Well, besides that I’m working hard in my classes, I sweat a whole lot and drink gallons (glugs and glugs) of water, and that I’ve been eatin’ good.
I learned a long time ago not to step on a scale. For my own sanity, I look the other way at the Doctor’s office. Instead of relying on a number to tell me how to feel about myself, I’d rather feel how I feel and be with that. What that is teaching me (what all this teaches) is that there’s only one standard which holds up. One thing to which everything else is relative. All the ups, downs, goods, bads, hots, colds, yes’s, no’s, 100%’s .001%’s, etc are held in equanimity by this:
You know what I’m getting at.
You know where I’m headed.
Love.
There’s a poem in one of my favorite religious mystic collections that says something like: “Look what happens when love holds the scale. The scale stops working.”
Surely you’ve heard me quote this poem before. I forget and remember it as I forget and relearn--often by way of frustration, sadness, disappointment--to let love hold me and presence guide me.
It’s beautiful here. A verdant veritable tropic haven. The haw-de-daw birds are big and loud. The sun is oppressive. Beach-goers are back inside by 9 am.
I have a test this week, lots of reading, and couple big papers coming up (one on Bolivia, one on basic economics). I’ve spoken with the academic coordinator for Development Studies and he says that since I’m focusing on the 1st world for my thesis, it makes sense that I do the research and writing at home next winter (which means I might be able to complete a masters after all!).
If you want to send me something, send me traditional medicinals teas, letters, and your prayers. I love you.
Switch gears. You wake up Saturday in South Africa. It’s going to be a sunny 35 C. You gear up and run 5 hilly kilometers. The bathroom scale reads in kilos. Your favorite breakfast with muesli has 1,060 kJ per 100 grams. The yoghurt has pimarcin in it: you don’t know what that means, and you can’t decipher the daily values. At the movies, you spend R90 and watch George Clooney who is handsome as all get out. The snacks seem a bit overpriced, but you're not sure, and you can’t justify the splurge with the %70 mark you got the day before, cause you are not sure what the grade means.
Which day is better? Can you tell? Is there a measure?
I realized soon after arriving in South Africa that if I was to evaluate life the way I habitually do, then I’d need to learn all the new measures first. It was kind of annoying not to know the nutritional breakdown of every bite of food. Not to know whether the day’s high temperature exceeded the equivalent of my personal death-heat limit, 95 F. Not to know whether my grades in class were poor, average or excellent (refer to last blog). Plus, when you don’t know whether something fits your preconceived notion of good or bad, you can’t very easily categorize it as such. Nice day, awful day? Good Anna, Bad Anna?
After sitting with the irritating discomfort a few times, I felt something else--something a bit edgy, challenging. If you can’t objectively measure things up, you’ve gotta rely on something entirely different to direct your thoughts and actions. Presence, maybe?
If I’m feeling too hot to study, for example, but don’t know whether the actual temperature has surpassed my personal limit (thereby allowing me to take a break), then I’ve gotta pay attention to and trust my sensations, perceptions, and the world around me that informs them. More often than I’m accustomed to, I end up letting myself nap.
I decided about a month ago--in spite of my judgmental, perfectionist tendencies--to intentionally ignore the unessential conversion formulas for as long as possible. This is a good challenge for me, this not being able to measure myself and my surroundings against some standard of merit or demerit. I still don’t know much about my grades, the weather, or the nutritional density of my food. Well, besides that I’m working hard in my classes, I sweat a whole lot and drink gallons (glugs and glugs) of water, and that I’ve been eatin’ good.
I learned a long time ago not to step on a scale. For my own sanity, I look the other way at the Doctor’s office. Instead of relying on a number to tell me how to feel about myself, I’d rather feel how I feel and be with that. What that is teaching me (what all this teaches) is that there’s only one standard which holds up. One thing to which everything else is relative. All the ups, downs, goods, bads, hots, colds, yes’s, no’s, 100%’s .001%’s, etc are held in equanimity by this:
You know what I’m getting at.
You know where I’m headed.
Love.
There’s a poem in one of my favorite religious mystic collections that says something like: “Look what happens when love holds the scale. The scale stops working.”
Surely you’ve heard me quote this poem before. I forget and remember it as I forget and relearn--often by way of frustration, sadness, disappointment--to let love hold me and presence guide me.
It’s beautiful here. A verdant veritable tropic haven. The haw-de-daw birds are big and loud. The sun is oppressive. Beach-goers are back inside by 9 am.
I have a test this week, lots of reading, and couple big papers coming up (one on Bolivia, one on basic economics). I’ve spoken with the academic coordinator for Development Studies and he says that since I’m focusing on the 1st world for my thesis, it makes sense that I do the research and writing at home next winter (which means I might be able to complete a masters after all!).
If you want to send me something, send me traditional medicinals teas, letters, and your prayers. I love you.
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