This is so well done.
What are we doing to our world?
When will we stop?
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
The greatest dichotomy...
It isn't black versus white.
It isn't good or evil.
It's the cavernous and almost endless stretch of pain, injustice, abuse, neglect and power that extends the distance between poverty and wealth.
Poor versus Rich.
Give versus Take.
Life versus Death.
It is no longer a catchy and kitschy theme for a Hollywood television show or comedy a la the rags to riches variety. It's a terrifying and ever worsening two-headed dragon that humanity has single-handedly created. It's a beast that has been fed with the blood, fear and lives of countless human beings. And it is a beast that is killing hundreds of millions of people around the world. Tens of thousands while you read this.
You know the headlines. You've seen the pictures. But it's worse than you think. It's worse than even I can imagine. The "causes" themselves are the new players in the game of wealth versus poverty. We believe that good people and organizations are doing their best to address the needs of those trapped in man-made poverty/war/starvation all over the world, but more than you can begin to imagine, we are led to believe something is happening (with, perhaps, our own money) but in reality, we're being lied to about what is really happening.
In this article in TIME, an employee who works for one international aid organization admits:
"Western aid agencies aren't reaching many of the starving. Some, incredibly, are pretending they are. Oxfam is one agency raising money for Somalia and claiming to be reaching hundreds of thousands when, as a spokesman admitted to TIME, it doesn't actually distribute food and has no staff in the famine area. Less disingenuous agencies will admit the emergency operation is not going well."
This, sadly, is one admission to the crimes being committed in the world by the very people we put our faith and home in to do the work we cannot do ourselves. Or can we?
It doesn't seem impossible once you begin to consider that the starving child in Somalia is your child. When you look at another human being as yourself, as your loved one, as your own child then everything in your heart changes. What you pay attention to changes. What you advocate for changes. What you can do grows bigger. You grow bigger. And it is in the growing bigger that you do within yourself where the change in the world begins to happen. Your single consciousness can ignite a fire powerful enough to spread across the globe - and change the hearts and minds of people you'll never know as it catches flame between you and your friends - to their friends and their friends' friends.
It's the pebble in the pond. It's one small change in your world that can make a change and bring balance to the dichotomy between extreme wealth and poverty-disease-starvation. It's your heart - and your informed mind - that can and must insist on fairness and equality in the world.
One day, we can and WILL live in a world where hundreds of thousands of human beings don't die of starvation mere miles from stockpiles of food.
It isn't good or evil.
It's the cavernous and almost endless stretch of pain, injustice, abuse, neglect and power that extends the distance between poverty and wealth.
Poor versus Rich.
Give versus Take.
Life versus Death.
It is no longer a catchy and kitschy theme for a Hollywood television show or comedy a la the rags to riches variety. It's a terrifying and ever worsening two-headed dragon that humanity has single-handedly created. It's a beast that has been fed with the blood, fear and lives of countless human beings. And it is a beast that is killing hundreds of millions of people around the world. Tens of thousands while you read this.
You know the headlines. You've seen the pictures. But it's worse than you think. It's worse than even I can imagine. The "causes" themselves are the new players in the game of wealth versus poverty. We believe that good people and organizations are doing their best to address the needs of those trapped in man-made poverty/war/starvation all over the world, but more than you can begin to imagine, we are led to believe something is happening (with, perhaps, our own money) but in reality, we're being lied to about what is really happening.
In this article in TIME, an employee who works for one international aid organization admits:
"Western aid agencies aren't reaching many of the starving. Some, incredibly, are pretending they are. Oxfam is one agency raising money for Somalia and claiming to be reaching hundreds of thousands when, as a spokesman admitted to TIME, it doesn't actually distribute food and has no staff in the famine area. Less disingenuous agencies will admit the emergency operation is not going well."
It doesn't seem impossible once you begin to consider that the starving child in Somalia is your child. When you look at another human being as yourself, as your loved one, as your own child then everything in your heart changes. What you pay attention to changes. What you advocate for changes. What you can do grows bigger. You grow bigger. And it is in the growing bigger that you do within yourself where the change in the world begins to happen. Your single consciousness can ignite a fire powerful enough to spread across the globe - and change the hearts and minds of people you'll never know as it catches flame between you and your friends - to their friends and their friends' friends.
It's the pebble in the pond. It's one small change in your world that can make a change and bring balance to the dichotomy between extreme wealth and poverty-disease-starvation. It's your heart - and your informed mind - that can and must insist on fairness and equality in the world.
One day, we can and WILL live in a world where hundreds of thousands of human beings don't die of starvation mere miles from stockpiles of food.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Heal the world... You can make it a better place.
There'd better be a good excuse for a blogger with a fair number of regular followers in all corners of the globe - from Demark to Hong Kong, Romania to Sri Lanka and Argentina to Israel - to disappear for six weeks, right? Well, I've certainly got a good reason -- and countless stories to tell.
I've spent six weeks in a part of the world with the greatest dichotomies I can imagine. I've seen the richest of the rich living fat and happily on one side of a concrete wall while the most poverty stricken human beings live on the other. That these extremes exist is heart-wrenching in and of itself - that they exist within a stone's throw of one another is unfathomable. That they live daily with the reality of each other is heartbreaking. That nothing is being done to change this is criminal.
I've seen poverty, slums, starvation, corruption, child prostitution, abuse of power, child neglect, beggars, crippled outcasts, blatant pollution, hard labor, bare feet on city streets, animals and children eating from dumps, trash in national parks, exploitation of natives, parading of culture for commercial consumption, exploitation of those doing good and false promises by those who should be doing good. I've seen it all, I've felt it all, I've been changed by it all.
There will be many stories to come but this is the opening of the box of souvenirs I brought home in my own heart - a collection of vile and screaming injustices that must be changed in the world. I ask you to join me, if only in your heart. Open up, ask yourself to give your attention and compassion to any of these stories and you will have made the first step.
I'll see you there - where we are changing the world, one step at a time.
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