Jim’s Blog

Jim December 7th, 2008

For a while now I’ve been pondering on matters concerning the suffering of our world. I’ve mentioned before that in the last several years I have traveled abroad and experienced up close and personal some of the most horrific injustices and human rights violations such as forced child prostitution and child slavery. I’ve spent time in Africa, Thailand, and India, among people of great poverty, disease, and despair. For years I served as Executive Director of a non-profit inner city agency in Nashville, which involved intervening in situations of child abandonment and abuse, drug addiction, crime, juvenile incarceration, etc. Currently I have become increasingly connected with people in Nashville who are homeless and hungry. Being “an adult survivor of child abuse,” I am sometimes invited to visit or speak with other such survivors.

For the past year or so now I have begun doubting if all the effort and energy focused on solving the problems of the world is really doing so. Increasingly it seems that too often we (at best) are alleviating symptoms instead of initiating the cure, and (at worst) exacerbating the problem, despite our well-intentioned efforts. It’s not something I am prone to talk about because far be it from me to sit in judgment upon people who give their lives to aid people around the world in dire need. Far be it from me to make some claim or accusation that all the effort and energy focused on alleviating suffering in the world is a waste or time or part of the problem. I don’t want to be viewed as some guy up on his soap box taking pot shots at people sacrificing much to help others. I have misgivings about raising the topic for fear it will be construed in this way.

What follows are some of the things that I’ve been wrestling with. As you will see, I’m not even sure how these below points are all connected or if they are at all.

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1. Technology and the media makes our world a “global village.” Screens everywhere shows us the conditions and crises unfolding in real-time in every corner of the planet. Dramatic images and stories of oppression, starvation, genocide, disease, and every shred of suffering in our world is edited and packaged up in 2-minute segments that fill our screens 24/7. It’s too much to absorb emotionally and practically, and so the massive blob becomes a menu of individual options or areas of interest that we pick and choose from. We pick something from the endless drop-down box, and make it “our issue.” My issue is the environment. I’m into global HIV/AIDS. My thing is animal rights. I’m a clean water kind of guy. I’m a human rights activist. I’m a social entrepreneur, and into micro-loans. 

2. We have not always been a “global village.” Until the technology and media came along, people knew very little about what was transpiring beyond the people they were immediately involved with. People were not aware of human crisis and suffering in other parts of the world from where they lived. What they did know came to them much slower (word of mouth/trade routes) and in less dramatic fashion (no images or video footage).

3. Jesus lived in a time as I just described above and not a global village created by technology and media. What this meant practically is that Jesus had very limited options. There was not a drop-down box with options of suffering from which Jesus choose one to be “his issue.” It appears Jesus simply lived his life as it happened and responded to people’s needs as he encountered them along the everyday path’s of life. You don’t find Jesus agonizing over hardship on the other side of the world or organizing efforts to aid distant peoples in desperate need.

4. So, we have this global village continuously invading our lives in dramatic 2-minute segments, each of us has a drop-down box to choose “our issue.” Sometimes, our choice is heavily influenced by how we want to project and manage our identity in the world. Let’s face it, these days being a “social justice” or “green” activist is cool, part of a persona we want to project. But with all the options, we have to package things up properly in order to differentiate between them all. This involves breaking down the specifics of each option into clear and manageable chunks. In doing so we have to create labels to identify groups of people in need (”homeless,” “HIV/AIDS,” “the poor,” etc) and clarify the roles of the people giving and the people receiving. Healthy people aiding diseased people, successful and financially well-off people aiding failed and poor people, educated and resourceful people aiding ignorant and incapable people). We create organizations to establish strategies and systems to efficiently aid people in need, which requires $, which requires telling dramatic and stereotypical stories over and over and over again.

5. Let me give you some examples of the problem. Binyavanga Wainaina wrote an Article entitled, “How to write about Africa.” Part of it reads, “Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book…be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed…Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermetic splendor. Or corrupt politicians…Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West…After celebrity activists and aid workers, conservationists are Africa’s most important people…Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.” I encourage you to read the entire article here.

Some similar ideas are expressed here and here.

6. What I’m wondering is this: Is our “global village” way of options (though it provides an identity outlet to have “our issue,” and makes “compassion” very user-friendly and comfortable, and alleviates symptoms) is it reinforcing and deepening the problem and therefore preventing the real solution? We exacerbate the problem as follows:

• We reinforce a false identify by labeling people based on what they lack (lack of shelter – “homeless”; lack of health – “HIV/AIDS”; lack of resources – “the poor”; lack of food – “the starving”; lack of equality, safety, dignity – “the oppressed”; etc). All these things are true circumstantially – homelessness, disease, poverty, hunger, oppression – but these DO NOT DEFINE WHO PEOPLE ARE. Generally a person is going to be/live whoever they think (are told) they are.
• We convey that people in need are separated from what is necessary to address their needs and problems. Here’s how the translation goes: 1) We say, “You lack food, water, shelter, safety, health, education, employment, etc…” The subtle but damning implication often heard is, “You lack what is necessary to resolve this on your own – you’re not smart enough, creative enough, resourceful enough, determined enough, strong enough, intelligent enough, civil enough, caring enough to do this. You need what we have.” Or as the article puts it, “We can save you from yourself. We can save ourselves from our terrible selves. Help us to Oxfam the whole black world, to make it a better place. We want to empower you. No, your mother cannot do this. Your government cannot do this. Time cannot do this. Evolution, it seems, cannot do this. Education cannot do this. Your IQ cannot do this. No one can empower you except us.” Meanwhile, “braindrain” continues happening in which too many people most skilled to solve their community’s problems abandon their country for the U.S.A.

7. What if every person in the world decided to reject the global village model and simply live life as it happened. In other words, a life without options. You live your life, you are presented with a need – you alleviate the symptom as you are capable and reinforce the cure by affirming Truth in the context of a friendship or relationship or community, which would be the normal thing to happen if we live life as it happened. What I mean by “affirming the Truth” is mutually encouraging one another in things like: a.) at the center of my being God and I are one; b.) i am never separated from abundant joy, peace, love, freedom, wisdom, courage, compassion, creativity, determination; c.) you and i are essentially one, and helping you is helping me – if God is my father than you are my brother and we will proceed together accordingly.

What if there were no more “homeless people,” but instead a person named Joe who we come across who is currently without shelter and employment. We discover Joe along the route of our daily lives, and because we have limited our options to pay attention to the Joe’s of our lives, we live out a., b., and c. from the above paragraph. Perhaps your response is, “Easy for you to say Jim. The starving people in Africa could never make it doing this.” My genuine question is, Why? And further, is it because we have thoroughly convinced them that they can’t?

Once again, please hear me heart on this. I am NOT saying that all the world aid efforts, initiatives, and organizations are a waste of time, unnecessary, or contributing to the problem. If I said such a thing, I would be the biggest hypocrite since I myself am involved in such organizations and initiatives. I also completely realize that the idea of everyone in the world living life as it happens, and therefore bonded together in this mutual and determined commitment to one another (which, for example ends “braindrain”) is exponentially idealistic based on the current state of things. Nor am I saying let’s roll back the clock and eliminate technology and media.

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So, what do we do? How do we start? How do we work though this big blob in baby steps? Or am I just frickin crazy?! Any ideas?

(photo by zoo gal)

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