SPIRITUALITY, FAIR TRADE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
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06	November 2013

Downward Mobility

Text 1: "While on a retreat after returning home, Geske made a list of the reasons why she should remain on the Supreme Court. The list included money and power. "Those things are not what I want to live my life," she decided. Geske opted for downward mobility, the contemporary translation of the standard of Christ: poverty, contempt, humility."

Response 1: I thought this was an amazing thing, almost and accomplishment, to do because in modern day society everyone is so concerned with making money and having a comfortable lifestyle. Geske was a Supreme Court Justice and making a very good living but she gave it up and I have to give her credit for doing something the majority of people would never think to do. Props to her and her family in supporting her in this. She was one of the few that realized that money wasn't everything and there are better things in life that are not materialistic. I also liked her realization that maybe the simple-life is better over a comfortable life.

Text 2: "The solution to our global social crisis is not that the poor become rich, which is neither feasible nor desirable, but that the rich join with the poor. The only solution is communities of equals, resisting pyramids of inequity (see Luke 22:25-26)."

Response 2: There are far more poor people in the world than rich and the likelihood that the two will ever be in equilibrium or the elimination of poor people is impossible. I think if more people do what Geske did, then a change can be made. Right now, poor people think that the rich care about themselves and don't care about those who do need help, which is completely true. However, if the rich were to stoop to the level of the poor, they can get the message of equality across and that the pyramid doesn't matter. Whoever is at the top of the food chain and whoever is at the bottom are all the same.