Headline, August01, 2013

'''THE WRETCHED -''TEARING 

DICTATES''​- OF POVERTY'''

Ernst Mayr -one of the greatest figures of contemporary biology, speculated that the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that  ''it is better to be smart than be stupid,'' at least judging by biological success : beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the rather somber observation that ''the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years.''

In his classic book on economic theory, Mathematical Psychics, the remarkable economist Francis Edgeworth, perhaps the leading economic theorist at the end of nineteenth century, talked about an interesting dichotomy between the assumption of human behavior on which his economic analysis was based  -in common with the tradition of the ongoing economics-  and his own belief about the actual nature of individual behavior.

Edgeworth noted that the 'first principle of economics is that every agent is actuated only by self-interest. He was not going to depart from that, at least in his formal theory, even though he did believe that the contemporary human being is 'for the most part an impure egoist, a mixed utilitarian. If we are a little bothered by the fact that so great an economist would spend so much of his life and analytical power in developing a line inquiry the first principle of which he believed to be false.

The economic theory in the century to follow has made us rather more used to this particular dissonance between belief and assumption. The assumption of the completely egoistic human being has come to dominate much of mainstream economic theory, while many of the great practitioners of the discipline have also expressed their serious doubts about the veracity of that assumption.

This dichotomy has not, however, always been present in economics. The early authors in economic matters, such as Aristotle, as well as medieval practitioners -including Aquinas. Ockham, Maimonides and others- took ethics as an important part of understanding human behavior; they gave ethical principles important roles in behavioral relations in society. This applied also to the economists of the early modern age -William Perry, George King and others- who were all much concerned, in various ways, with ethical analysis.

Come 21st century and we still battling imperfect knowledge. A lot of people believe that that the only way for a country to get rich, stay rich, and get richer is to burn more carbon fuel. If that's factually accurate, some people think, that even if global warming is a problem, we won't address it before there's a calamity because people are not going to agree to make themselves poorer. So can you then ask people who can't even survive on day to day basis to make a contribution?

The rich countries problem is rigidity, and the poor countries problem is capacity. Then we all share a problem that was best articulated by the philosopher Ken Wilber. He got this theory that there are basically 10 levels of consciousness......-the way we view ourselves and the way we view others........-and that's it almost impossible for people to keep up with what circumstances require. So if you live in an interdependent world, what then are the starting premises?

Just have the honor and look at Rawanda. look at what Rawandan President Paul Kagame has done. Yes, they have done a great job in getting foreign investments, and they are the best users of NGOs. But the most important thing they have done is to build a genocide memorial, which grippingly chronicles what happened. It's on top of the most massive crypt in the world; it has the bones of 300,000 of those who were killed. Kagame said. ''We are going to do all this. We are going to tell the truth and face the truth, and that's all we are going to do. And then we are going to let it go.''

And so he creates these reconciliation villages. You get a free plot of land for the house, but you have to agree to live next to someone of the opposite ethnic group. And they run all these co-ops where women from different ethnic groups. Every person  -without regard to their ethnic group-  every adult male goes out and spends one whole day once a month on a Saturday cleaning the streets, from the richest to the poorest, and it's all designed to say, ''Hey, this happened to us and it was horrible, and the only way for it not to happen again is let it go, and focus on what we have in common.''

The poor of the world are growing in number and so is their poverty. These very people and their growing numbers are freedom loving and technology adapting people and they are paid a small fraction of what the workers earn in the west. They are likely to drive you and all the world towards new realities of modern existence. This is one root cause everywhere: Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan. And on and on! 

Mark my words, the world will have to come up with many many metaphors for what the world has to do to fight poverty and helplessness and even hopelessness.

With most respectful dedication to the poor of the world. In this most Interdependent age in human history, join up the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless : The Pathfinder.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless