Читать книгу Cast Away : For These Reasons - Lambert Timothy James - Страница 11

"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is I know nothing."– Socrates

A few years back, while I was walking down a cluttered and depressing street of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, the sight of a frail teenage mother and a sleeping filthy child wrapped on her back with a little piece of cloth instantly transported my mind back to my intellectual "Waterloo" defeat at Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. It was then that it hit me - Eureka! Still, on that day, I was far from years of an investigative roller coaster ride to articulate a cure for social classes' decomposition tormenting every society.

After that, I invested time, money, and energy to get a real sense of the problems people face around the globe. To that end, Tara and I traveled as much as we could afford, read abundantly, and glued ourselves for hours to the television screen watching documentaries. One of my crusades took us across the Sub-Saharan and Eastern region of Africa (SSEA), and we were astonished by the region's many challenges, which transcend geographical boundaries. The overriding feature of the SSEA is an exotic mamba with two heads: corruption and repression. You can blame the region's dysfunctional governments, which are essentially being used as an apparatus to consolidate power and wealth within a few ruling families. In short, public services across this region are a disastrous joke.

There are many fingers to be pointed at the SSEA's organized chaos; these abysmal management practices are either of the SSEA nations' design or imposed on them from the outside, as I suspect, to impede both internal and regional development. While touring different cities in the western hemisphere, I noted the same gangrene as I find in African or Latin American countries. Seriously, you would think that the state of Illinois was in Nigeria when the former Governor Rod Blagojevich was sent behind bars for trying to sell the forty-fourth President of United States, Barack Obama, his former senatorial seat. The BRIC reported scandals are of epic proportion. I am not a big fan of fútbol, but I expected Brazilian contractors to make a mockery of the 2014 soccer World Cup, with overpriced stadiums and bridges that crumbled before and during the sacred festivity. What to say about the scandal in China's southern city of Hengyang that triggered the resignation of almost the entire city's People's Congress leaders? The prevalence of resource mismanagement and leaders' self-indulgence have resulted in globally unprecedented levels of financial waste.

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith doesn't prove anything."– Wilhelm Nietzsche

On my tour du poor monde, I met dedicated westerner students who were on or getting ready for, mission trips to spice up their resumes or to boost up their chances to be admitted in a prestigious higher learning institution. I have caught myself glazing over by beautiful pictures of A-listed celebrities, or a charity spokesperson, who profoundly wanted to "save the people" (though sometimes the animals more than the people). The madness is nothing compared to graduate classes on public engagement or economic development that I have taken on the better side of the globe, where I found naïve characters who see themselves as miracle laborers and benefactors of third world countries. As talented as these individuals might be, the flaws in their conceptual approach is the bigoted view of less developed nations' challenges and needs. They base their models of development on the deep-rooted passion for Capitalism and sense of cultural superiority. This mindset reminded me of the aphorism "if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail."

What is more hazardous to poor nations than smart ass westerners? Immigrants from god forgotten countries; self-enslaved and adoring conformists, with the little access to modern amenities and western taste that they have acquired, who dare vocalize that living on a dollar a day is "just how it is" in their home countries. I have found a high concentration of these stupid individuals in England, where Engel's account of the living conditions only a century ago sent chills down my spine.

In the United States, which was not too long ago a shit hole with a putrid stench of racism, sexism, and bigotry (the stench still lingers in the air). Lastly, if you are one of those monkeys from a repressive authoritarian regime which is walking down lit up streets in the west, delighted from the addictive sense of protection and freedom and yet has a firm conviction that developing nations need a "strong man" for peace and development. Before you read the rest of the book, repent.

It has to be noted that, throughout time, a dominant society has always knighted itself the prestigious "exceptionalism" status. I would applaud this gut and bravura if their economists took on the leadership responsibilities of dissecting the world around accurately and, accordingly, prescribe effective interventions that would lift us all up.

The intent of both socialist and capitalist nations has been to globalize its influence and inclusive reach. Socialism in the political militaristic fashion, while Capitalism choose to do it through business hegemony. Globalization has no more benefitted the socialist enterprise than the capitalist endeavor. For the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics neighborhoods received their first sewer systems and running water, 100 years after the great socialist victory in St. Petersburg. In shocking similarity large areas of capitalist nations in the western hemispheres both north and south have large populations in not so dissimilar situation. This while St. Petersburg and Moscow enjoy gold encrusted bathroom fixtures to be rivaled only by those in Paris, London, New York and Los Angeles.

While socialist athletes enjoy all the benefits of stardom and wealth their western counter parts do, the western athletes rising up from shoeless beginnings bed themselves in palaces that pale those of African, Asian, and Caribbean national palaces.

What do we have right now? A total fuming global mess where Cost-effectiveness and Gross Domestic Product (an insane way to gauge citizens' life betterment) are at the center of leading initiatives. I have to underline the overused excuse, "globalization," since it has added elements of scope and speed into the mix. What to say about humankind when, time and time again, leading nations turn a blind eye to the imposition of inhumane practices, which was slavery in past centuries and now Self-deprecating is added to the load, as long as it benefits them?

I get angry when westerners are surprised that development programs, which are shoved down the throats of problematic countries, do not lead to prophesied outcomes. I become angrier when solutions for inhabitants' needs can be addressed in an integrated way. Instead, from their desks in Washington, DC, economic druids clean the data up and develop simplified models, which abstract from the complexity of observable reality.

Time and time again, critical studies conducted by no other than the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank insiders have poured out evidence of the leading international financial institutions' programs effectiveness¹. These guilty consciences decry how a country economically faint is treated as a coma, rushed into an international organization emergency room, locked into unplugged financial incubators, and knocked out by an addictive overdose of aid, is then molested and gangbanged by frantic necrophiliacs and is used as a testing ground for irrational experimental reform programs. God forbid, a vegetated nation shows any sign of life after these unnecessary open-heart surgeries as what the Argentine Republic did; it will be at the mercy of ferocious vultures who would try to pull its eyeballs and intestines out.