David Brooks wrote this column for the New York Times recently:
On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.
This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It's a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: "You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten." If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He's going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.
The first of those truths is that we don't know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
In the recent anthology "What Works in Development?," a group of economists try to sort out what we've learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn't seem to produce the expected results.
The chastened tone of these essays is captured by the economist Abhijit Banerjee: "It is not clear to us that the best way to get growth is to do growth policy of any form. Perhaps making growth happen is ultimately beyond our control."
The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord's work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.
Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth -- with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.
As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book "The Central Liberal Truth," Haiti, like most of the world's poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
We're all supposed to politely respect each other's cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.
Fourth, it's time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.
These programs, like the Harlem Children's Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don't understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don't care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement -- involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.
It's time to take that approach abroad, too. It's time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people -- maybe just in a neighborhood or a school -- with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.
The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old.
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Mr. Brooks's article doesn't describe perfectly what we're facing here in Zambia, but most of it is spot on. And, the timing of this couldn't be more supportive for those of us here as we prepare to address these exact issues with our friends in Kantolomba.
Yesterday we met with the cooperative to introduce Mukonda, explain her role in the project, learn specific needs they have for her skills, and make a plan to move forward with bringing her health education and health care expertise to the community. We hit a brick wall.
"Who is she?" "Why are you bringing someone in from the outside?" "She will spy on us and tell lies about us." Followed quickly by, "We don't have enough money. We want more money."
We have a tendency as conditioned humans to project our reality onto others. We assume people have, or should have, the same information, orientation, beliefs and assumptions, expectations and values we have. From that erroneous and very shaky perch, we attempt to make sense of the behaviors of others. If those we're in company with share a good percentage of our social conditioning, we can navigate fairly well by simply ignoring or overlooking their obvious foibles. (I don't know what goes on with Bill about that, but I do know he's a good guy.) If those we're with have a completely unfamiliar conditioning, we tend to flounder, making up a reality that matches our perceptions of them with projections of who or what we would be if we were behaving in that way. (I don't really trust her. I think she's sneaky.) Keep in mind just about all of this happens below the level of conscious awareness.
So, let's see if we can apply this theory to our work here in Kantolomba. Why, given the level of their poverty, don't the people of Kantolomba jump at the possibility of starting their own business? Why won't they come up with ideas for generating income? Why won't they work with us to create ways for them to be financially independent and prosperous? Why does every conversation begin and end with, "we need more money; give us more money"?
Let's come up with some answers that might arise in the mind of a person oriented from birth to education, competency, opportunity, possibility, and empowerment:
They are lazy.
They are stupid.
They are just looking for handouts.
They do not want to take responsibility for their lives.
They are freeloaders.
They would rather someone else work and just give them what they want.
And, guess what? It certainly does look that way when a person is seeing through that privileged lens. There is ample evidence to back up each of those perceptions: lazy, stupid, freeloaders. After all, no matter what is suggested to them, they don't change! They just stay in the same place doing the same thing!
Perhaps this would be a good moment to take a quick look at ourselves--never popular, always helpful.
Stop for a moment, please, and consider something you don't do--that you know would be good for you to do--because you're afraid or don't know how or feel too vulnerable or you hear voices that say you can't or it's too hard or ...?
Everybody got something?
Good. I think we just answered the question "what is wrong with 'those' people?"
They are just like us!
When we are confronted with something new, with change, conditioned mind flies into opposition. "No. That's too hard, you can't do that, you're going to make a fool of yourself." Or more subtly, as it speaks for 'me,' saying quite authoritatively that "I don't want to, I don't feel like it, I'm not that kind of person."
And the bad news for us is we don't have to. My next meal or rent or mortgage or car payment is not riding on me going to that retreat or doing that public talk or sending a letter to my friends and family asking them to support my favorite charity.
For years I've been trying to get our Sangha to engage in fundraising. Why? Because I want the money? No. (Though that is a good idea!) I want people to engage in fundraising because:
--Supporting what supports the heart is about the best thing we can do for ourselves.
--It pushes conditioning's buttons something fierce.
--It puts us in close contact with Sangha and practice.
--It interferes with self-hate's ability to make us believe we're wrong, bad, and selfish.
But how many people do it? The answer is not many. Why? For all the reasons listed above. Conditioned mind calls it scary, threatening, too hard; points out how "you're not good at that," or people will think you're crazy, foolish, whatever. And we are people with all the opportunity the world has to offer!
If this is what it's like for those of us who live in privilege and opportunity, what must it be like for those born into poverty, with no education, no access to a world beyond the four square kilometers of a mud-hut squatter's slum?
They don't have a vast amount of information, that we simply take for granted, that it is nearly impossible to grasp. They don't have the basic survival skills that we never had to learn because they're built into the world we were born into. No one ever taught them...much of anything. No one ever mentored them or encouraged them or told them they're capable and can do it. No one. In fact, quite the opposite: They've been told constantly, through messages overt and covert, that they can't--because they are worthless, useless, and utterly without value. They are poor. They are poor and poor is bad and it is, in some way no one wants to explore too closely, their fault.
So, yes, we hit a brick wall. We talked and explained and counseled and cajoled and got precious little back. A hundred times we asked, "Do you see?" "Do you understand?" Silence. And, we ask ourselves, "What do I need when I feel afraid, overwhelmed, or confused?" The answer we got was, "I need support, reassurance, encouragement, patience, acceptance." Good. We can give that to our friends in Kantolomba as they begin to face and make their way through a lifetime of cruel, negative social conditioning.
Over tea after our meeting, we muzungus reflected that in this practice we really enjoy PeaceStorming. This is PeaceStorming!