A child's heart

Teach your children well ...

It's been awhile since we talked in the public forum about teaching character to our children. Recent decades are marked by the absence of critical focus on the issue.

Character development has perhaps not been adequately addressed at the family and community levels for more than a generation, with attendant outcomes including a progressive tendency to violence at the fringes and dishonesty in the marketplace. The nuclear family and inter-connected community have declined in cultural relevance.

New in our culture, many schools, school districts, and even states are now requiring that character education be addressed in the classroom.  Some are stipulating the traits to be taught.  Is their list a good one?

Government has again stepped in to pick up what the community has been unable or perhaps inadequately aware to address. It's a beginning, I suppose. Government does a number of large-scale things well. Is this one that government should handle on our behalf?

What might be the differences be if this is done by family, by community, or by government? Can government serve as an extension of community?

Interestingly, there are variations among nations and communities when it comes to the character of their children. The wealthiest aren't the most gracious, the most hospitable, or the most generous. Or the most noble. Not by an extraordinary margin.

Perhaps there's a lesson here for the current generation of parents.  And churches.  As busy as life is these days, this is just a small step below breathing in terms of importance.  It shapes the future for our child and what kind of person they might become.

Decisions based on evidence

Government serves the rich.  Not exclusively, but primarily. 

Business serves its own interests, the bottom line.  It does whatever is necessary to accomplish the goal.

The rich and their corporate counterparts exercise their not insignificant influence in favor of their continued success, of course.  All at the expense of the working class.

We've been told that reducing tax rates on the wealthiest would encourage the economy, but the evidence is otherwise.

Historical evidence demonstrates the United States has had some of its strongest periods of economic growth while taxes were high. As the graph shows, some of our most robust periods of growth in gross domestic product (GDP) actually occurred while taxes were very high:

During the 1950s the USA experienced some of the sharpest periods of economic growth with the top marginal tax rates for the richest Americans above 90 percent! Marginal tax rates were adjusted upward in the 1990s, again with strong economic growth.

If tax cuts worked, Bush should have had a great economic record.  The tax cuts never trickled down.

It was not a plan.  It was a play for the advantage of wealth.  It worked quite well; the gap between rich and poor in America has widened impressively.

That's the productivity of individuals being converted into wealth for the few.  The working individuals received none of the benefit, and in fact, lost ground financially.

have been disenfranchised by the wealthy, by the corporate, by the political; at least the evidence suggests that to be the case.  What decisions remain to us?

The touch ...

It's a simple world for many folks.  

We did that. 

Without a second thought, Wall Street plunged the world into the Great Recession, and along with the ethanol industry, pushed people across the line to starvation the following year.  The U.S. and U.K are complicit as is the E.U. in activities with similar unmitigated risk and impact.

This is globalization.  We didn't mean to, but we've connected this father in Africa and billions more to the world marketplace.  When our Wall Street marketplace hiccups, prices respond around the world sometimes, and our African friends suffer.  For them, the fluctuating price of a commodity like corn meal can have a significant impact.  They spend perhaps half of their budget on corn meal.  If the price changes, they have little capacity to adjust.

For an actual case example, a family with 6 members has an aggregate income of about $95 per month; $45 is dedicated to corn meal, the staple for everyone here.  When the price rises as it did, they can't afford to eat.  The dilemma leaves the family undernourished for more than a year before they can adjust.  They cannot afford school fees, so the children lose another year. 

In the lowest quintile for income, they were coping; they were balanced however precariously on the good side of the survival line.  Then the developed world reached over and touched their community ever so slightly, and people went hungry and began to die.  The economic recovery for the poor in their part of the world will take perhaps a decade, but you don't recover the years lost.

Now, in the west, we're not terribly afraid of such things, of what the economy will do; annoyed, perhaps, but not afraid.  Perhaps we didn't really want to retire anyway.

Similarly, we're not overly fearful of climate change, government upheaval, political flailing, ...

Westerners are not particularly afraid because they live up in the rarefied atmosphere of the developed world where they're insulated from the worst of such things.  Not that they deserved having it easier than others might, and certainly not that there was any superior worth in their lineage while another fell short.  They're fortunate, extraordinarily blessed.  And protected from minor changes.

Our friends in Africa have no such protection, no such defense.  They're more wary than I of big government, big marketplaces, of big countries with good intentions.  Their experience so far is mixed.

Welcome to the 21st century and the reality of globalization.   Either we'll refine the way we'll do things globally or "bull in a china shop" will take on a whole new meaning.

While many aspects of the global market are beneficial, it's still a moderately risky and volatile process.  Much of the world has benefited from globalization with notable reductions in area poverty, but sub-Saharan Africa has not.  International discussions with such concerns in mind are barely begun.  Theories abound but for the moment, facts remain scant, and everything we touch carries a measure of risk for others.

A Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility Index

The Global Village: Connect World Drives Economic Shift

The World Bank: Data and Research



Meanwhile, dozens of organizations try to fill in the gaps.

World Vision is at the top of my list.

Things I like about government ...

Good government isn't automatic.  

• It's a science and task for dedicated folks.  There are skills needed along with vision and character to do it well.  True?   
• Of course, recreational complaining is included for us armchair quarterbacks.   
• From the list I've collected below, note the ones you like.  There don't seem to be many that I'd like to do without, really.  
• And I'm begrudgingly thankful for those who have dedicated their skills and careers to doing these things well.  Even Obama.  Romney, not so much.  Or Coolidge.
• God bless them each one.  Even this pig-headed, polarized, and seemingly foolish Congress.

Complaining can be both sincere and recreational.  Things in general or something in particular, our government needs to hear about it when they're off the mark.  And we should enjoy participating in the processes. It is, after all, our government.

Government is what 'we' do in this country to get along.  At least, that was the original intent.

Supreme Citizenry

The world changed on January 21, 2010, three years ago today.   With little fanfare, corporations became people. 

On that date the Supreme Court of the United States decided that corporations, be they American or foreign, are afforded the same rights as a single individual when it comes to contributing money to a political cause or candidate.

For about a hundred years, the sanctity of a citizen's vote and participation in the government was protected by law.  One citizen, one vote, one voice.  The supreme court changed that by giving corporations unlimited freedom to buy the support of candidates and to influence the process of law.  It's done now, and there's little we can do about it.

We should note that the Wall Street crimes leading up to the Great Recession of recent memory weren't actually illegal.  They had been legalized a few years prior.  The Wall Street play on derivatives was classified as gambling and illegal until the federal government changed the law at the request of ... Wall Street.  The world-wide crash that followed was paid for by everybody except the perpetrators.  The recovery for all but the wealthy will take another decade or more at best.  Neither the financial industry nor the federal government acknowledge their culpability in the matter. 

Now that corporations have been given unrestricted freedom to influence the process of government, we can expect other such interesting occasions.  Government now serves the rich almost exclusively, and by extension, they serve the business interests who sponsor legislation and prophesy prosperity. The two major parties are equally owned and influenced by their wealthy constituents now.

How might a corporation wield their influence?  In favor of legislation that restricts their business or imposes on their profitability?  Hardly.  Even when the risk is borne by the consumer and otherwise unmitigated, corporations have historically chosen their bottom line over the good of the consumers.  The Ford Pinto's explosive tendencies come to mind as neither the first nor last such amoral activity in the business world.  Businesses work from and for the bottom line; little if any altruism intrudes; morals and ethics are more matters of regulatory compliance than of desire to do rightly.  It's a result of the rules that govern the marketplace in which they must participate to exist. 

Our individual vote is no longer the tool of influence that was originally hoped.  So what's next?

How might we, in good conscience, express our concerns with the direction the nation has taken?  Should we?

PERFECT!

Ever considered what your life might mean?  When you get to the end, what would be good and memorable and worth the 70 or 80 years you spent doing it?  The following article by A. W. Towser offers some interesting insight.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LATELY CARRIED an interesting if somewhat depressing story out of London about a certain British peer who had died just a few days short of his eighty-ninth birthday.

Having been a man of means and position, it had presumably not been necessary for him to work for a living like the rest of us, so at the time of his death he had had about seventy adult years in which he was free to do whatever he wanted to do, to pursue any calling he wished or to work at anything he felt worthy of his considerable abilities.

He devoted his entire adult life to
breeding the 'perfect spotted mouse'.

And what had he chosen to do? Well, according to the story, he had "devoted his life to trying to breed the perfect spotted mouse."

Now, I grant every man the right to breed spotted mice if he wants to and can get the cooperation of the mice, and I freely admit that it is his business and not mine. Not being a mouse lover (nor a mouse hater for that matter; I am just neutral about mice), I do not know but that a spotted mouse might be more useful and make a more affectionate pet than a common colored mouse. But still I am troubled.

The mouse breeder in question was a lord, and I was born on a farm in the hill country of Pennsylvania, but since a cat can look at a king I suppose a farm boy can look at a lord, even look at him with disapproval if the circumstances warrant. Anyway, a man's a man for a' that, and I feel a certain kinship for every man born of woman; so I cannot but grieve for my brother beyond the seas.

Made in the image of God, equipped with awesome powers of mind and soul, called to dream immortal dreams and to think the long thoughts of eternity, he chooses the breeding of a spotted mouse as his reason for existing. Invited to walk with God on earth and to dwell at last with the saints and angels in the world above; called to serve his generation by the will of God, to press with holy vigor toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, he dedicates his life to the spotted mouse not just evenings or holidays, mind you, but his entire life. Surely this is tragedy worthy of the mind of an Aeschylus or a Shakespeare.

Let us hope that the story is not true or that the news boys got it mixed up as they sometimes do; but even if the whole thing should prove to be a hoax, still it points up a stark human tragedy that is being enacted before our eyes daily, not by makebelieve play actors, but by real men and women who are the characters they portray. These should be concerned with sin and righteousness and judgment; they should be getting ready to die and to live again; but instead they spend their days breeding spotted mice.

If the spiritual view of the world is the correct one, as Christianity boldly asserts that it is, then for every one of us heaven is more important than earth and eternity more important than time. If Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be; if He is what the glorious company of the apostles and the noble army of martyrs declared that He is; if the faith which the holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge is the true faith of God, then no man has any right to dedicate his life to anything that can burn or rust or rot or die. No man has any right to give himself completely to anyone but Christ nor to anything but prayer.

The man who does not know where he is is lost; the man who does not know why he was born is worse lost; the man who cannot find an object worthy of his true devotion is lost utterly; and by this description the human race is lost, and it is a part of our lostness that we do not know how lost we are. So we use up the few precious years allotted to us breeding spotted mice. Not the kind that scurry and squeak, maybe; but viewed in the light of eternity, are not most of our little human activities almost as meaningless?

One of the glories of the Christian gospel is its ability not only to deliver a man from sin but to orient him, to place him on a peak from which he can see yesterday and today in their relation to tomorrow. The truth cleanses his mind so that he can recognize things that matter and see time and space and kings and cabbages in their true perspective. The Spirit-illuminated Christian cannot be cheated. He knows the values of things; he will not bid on a rainbow nor make a down payment on a mirage; he will not, in short, devote his life to spotted mice.

Back of every wasted life is a bad philosophy, an erroneous conception of life's worth and purpose. The man who believes that he was born to get all he can will spend his life trying to get it; and whatever he gets will be but a cage of spotted mice. The man who believes he was created to enjoy fleshly pleasures will devote himself to pleasure seeking; and if by a combination of favorable circumstances he manages to get a lot of fun out of life, his pleasures will all turn to ashes in his mouth at the last. He will find out too late that God made him too noble to be satisfied with those tawdry pleasures he had devoted his life to here under the sun.
~ A. W. Toser

Wendy Williams in context

The Wendy Williams Show

Wendy Williams is a riot!  Her show, which I stumbled onto while someone else was watching, is continuously humorous and full of celebrity trivia.  I didn't know Tom Cruise and Katy Holmes had parted company!


Her show, in a gossip filled way, satisfies our casual interest in the rich and famous, the elite society of the entertainment world.  Fashion and flops, juicy tidbits about private matters, wardrobe failures and foolish public behavior.  
 
Of one celebrity mother and young daughter, "She's not your baby girl, girl, she's grown; you don't need to be picking her up like that!"

And from a guest, "If you want to protect your daughter from the paparazzi, then get her some (sun glasses) like you wear."  Hahaha!  Right, they'll never see her if she wears sunglasses!

In context.  So if memory serves, the first time I saw the show was shortly after returning home from Africa.  My friends there live in huts made of stone and clay with roofs of palm fronds.  They work from sunrise to sunset with their little gardens, those who have them, and at whatever trade they might find.  Kids may go to school, but only if mom and dad can afford the small fees.  The kids get a meal at school, usually; it's the only food some of them get for days or weeks at a time.

So as I watched the show, I couldn't understand it.  

I didn't get why they were talking about purses and shoes.  It wasn't intelligible that somebody wore the same dress as somebody else.  I couldn't make my mind join that world; it just wouldn't make the leap.

At the moment, it seems those on the show perhaps have nothing at all in their lives or even crossing their minds in common with the real world.  Odd, isn't it?  Moving beyond the entertainment and celebrity world to Americans in general,  there's another 80% of the world that is similarly unknown to us and rarely in our thoughts.  There's little overlap between our worlds in the things that we face and do each day.  So different is it in fact that if you had to live a few of their days, you'd be undone, I would imagine.

The experience of folks who've gone to see for themselves, who've stayed long enough to begin to care about the people they meet; it is pretty much uniform.  It's a worldview changer. 

Oh, and Wendy Williams is entertaining, I suppose, and perhaps a nice, serious-minded person under the persona.  Perhaps she has well-formed values and priorities beyond the fluff; I hope for her sake that she has a life.

Some of the world's finest folks live quite different lives with little in common with us.  Go see.  They'll welcome you to their world.


"Make a career of humanity... 

    You will make a greater person of yourself, 

       a greater nation of your country, and a finer

          world to live in."

                   ~Martin Luther King, Jr. (18 April 1959, Washington, DC)

A lot of money!

... how much is 'a lot' anyway?

Americans live on about $50K per year per household.  That's the median; half have more, half have less.  More education means more.  Less education means less, generally speaking.  It works out to around $50 per day per individual, counting all workers, all kids, all singles and marrieds.  Just a ballpark figure for understanding.

$50 per person per day is middle/median America.

Most of the world (80%) lives on about $10 per person per day or less. Think about what that might be like.

The cost of common things like food and fuel and building materials are roughly the same around the world in these figures.

That $10/day figure for most of the world is much lower than the threshold for poverty in America (2012).  Much of the world lives well below that level.

Kenya, this is normal.

If there were just a hundred of us in the world and in just one town, 80 would be poor, and maybe 40+ would be poor enough to be at risk for survival.  Perhaps 18 or so would be struggling or middle-class, and the last 2 would be rich.  Most of the kids at school would be really poor.  Most of the folks on the street would be really in need.  Most folks would die early; children before age 5 and adults before 60 because of a lack of food and health care.  Most folks would live on land they didn't own and in simple huts they made from materials they could find.

Upper Middle Lower

It implies a class distinction, doesn't it. 

 

Rich folks, poor folks, and then the really poor.  It's as though some were really smart and worthy, and the rest weren't smart or worthy or maybe they didn't study hard enough or work hard enough.


True?  Yes.  Valid?  No.

And governments seem to favor the wealthy.  There always remains a percentage of citizens who are effectively disenfranchised; forgotten by the nation and its rulers.

True?  Yes.  That's how government tends over time.

Carrying water home from the river; this is normal.

Generally speaking, those hovering near the brink of survival work harder and longer than others.  If they're still alive, it's because they bounce back and try again, over and over and over.  Their communities tend to be real rather than just crowded areas of folks who don't know or care much about each other.

Generosity?  The poor are often more willing to share sacrificially, perhaps because they understand being in need.




Hospitality?  The homes of the poor are often full of extended family and friends and even strangers like you and me.




Grace, faith?  The poor are blessed.  Their faith is real when they pray, "give us this day, bread."  They can know God for real, and they can tell you about it in real terms.  The ones I've met gather for worship if they can, and they pretty much live it for real every day.  They aren't similar to rich people in any aspect.

The family garden; a source of pride ... and survival.

Most of the world lives in a manner that has almost nothing in common with the wealthy and privileged.  Almost nothing at all!

Perhaps it really is harder for a camel to get stuffed through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to have a place where he fits in the real world.

You have to wonder if there's something in all of that, something we might need to know and do.

Objectivity is rare ...

... perhaps because there's more than one side to any subject and our sources fail to provide them.

Has there ever been a time when news reporting was objective and truthful?  In trying to see the last half-century clearly, I haven't been able to find a time free from media bias and carefully constructed propaganda.

I remember when 'propaganda' was what the communists did, but we had freedom of the press!  Nothing but the truth; they can't put anything in the news that's not true.  It's been hard to look back and see the actual events.  The Vietnam era was poorly served by the news of the time, and our government was less than truthful.  Things today are perhaps not improved.

From another, more optimistic viewpoint, we're now rather well connected via social media and international communications.  It's a bit volatile, but the capabilities have served us well in spreading the word.  The Arab Spring, the death of Bin Laden, and Whitney Houston's death were occasions where social media circled the globe before the news agencies could catch up.  The public debate on gun control and assault weapons is splattered over every media.  Congressional inaction is widely criticized.

We do have to exercise a bit of caution; a percentage of 'breaking news' stories on Twitter and other media are nonsense or lies. Still, we're connected worldwide, and it's more difficult for major media and governments to get away with flagrant misrepresentation.  It could be spectacularly good for humanity.  We'll see.

Being well informed is perhaps more achievable than ever before.  We might, with a little work,  actually approach objectivity.

Power Play

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person…”                     
Mother Theresa

Young love ...

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times  Rafi Mohammed, 17, is held in a juvenile prison
in Herat for trying to run off with his girlfriend, Halima Mohammedi.

In Afghanistan, Rage at Young Lovers

By JACK HEALY in the New York Times Published: July 30, 2011

HERAT, Afghanistan — The two teenagers met inside an ice cream factory through darting glances before roll call, murmured hellos as supervisors looked away and, finally, a phone number folded up and tossed discreetly onto the workroom floor.

It was the beginning of an Afghan love story that flouted dominant traditions of arranged marriages and close family scrutiny, a romance between two teenagers of different ethnicities that tested a village’s tolerance for more modern whims of the heart. The results were delivered with brutal speed.

The girl's father, Kher Mohammed, with his head in his hand,
wants the government to kill her and her boyfriend.

A car burned by a crowd during a riot that took place
after the police rescued two teenagers from a group of
men who had demanded that they be hanged or stoned
for their relationship.

This month, a group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, yanked them into the road and began to interrogate the boy and girl. Why were they together? What right had they? An angry crowd of 300 surged around them, calling them adulterers and demanding that they be stoned to death or hanged.

Read the New York Times article. It's stunning.

Understanding a culture different from your own is a challenge. As the young lady says, “We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?” It's a fair question.