Jewelcrest of Wisdom, Quote 1: "Sickness is not cured by saying 'Medicine,' but by drinking it. So a man is not set free by the name of the Eternal without discerning the Eternal.”
This quote really stood out to me, because it addresses paying lip-service versus taking something in and believing in it. This applies to spirituality, obviously in this context, but it also applies to many other areas of life. It is easy to say you want something, or that you intend to do something, but to find real success, you have to take the idea into yourself fully.
Quote 2: "The knowledge of the real by the eye of clear insight is to be gained by one's own sight and not by the teacher's. / The moon's form must be seen by one's own eyes; it can never be known through the eyes of another.”
This is a great quote, especially as some of us are graduating soon… That’s not really the intent of the passage, but I think it’s especially fitting now that we’ve spent so much time being told what the world will hold for us in the future. As everyone packs up and heads into the world described by everyone (teachers, peers, friends) they will have to see the world and make decisions for themselves.
I originally thought that “Downward Mobility,” just based on the name, was going to be about the cycle people with few means find themselves in as they struggle to find their way out of hardship. Instead, Brackley suggests that people can become more Christ-like by separating themselves from “ladder climbing” upward, instead choosing to move downward. In moving downward, the people who have chosen this lifestyle (like the judge) have found a way to simplify their lives and find solidarity with those that live in obscurity.
I found his analysis of competition, as it harms people, very interesting, “The logic of the ladder fuels the kind of competition that undermines trust and community. From my slippery rung, I perceive the climber below me as a threat.” (p.5) This perspective is based on insecurity (which is covered earlier in the section), a feeling that I’m sure everyone has felt it at some point. Helping others, instead of fearing their ability to overtake your success, is the best way to move forward in any activity. What benefits the team will undoubtedly benefit the individual – unless you’re working with terrible people… and then I suggest not working with that kind of group anymore!
Rumi’s poems have a wonderful sing-song quality; they sound like someone dancing around while they talk. The subjects drift between love and life, among other topics, and when he talks about the proper way to live one’s life there are gems scattered throughout. Most pertinent to the subject covered in Downward Mobility are the lines, “Wanting wealth, power and more tasty food / have made you drunk. / When you can’t have what you want, you get headaches.” (p.13) As I have become aware of all the things I could have, I find myself wanting those things and wondering if I’ll ever have them. There was a simpler time in my life (when I knew about fewer material things) that I felt like I didn’t need as much to be happy. Now my mind wanders…
“The Story of Stuff” had a ton of information about consumer product supply chain and the impact a consumer society has on the environment and its people. One of the most interesting things that Annie Leonard said was American consumers no longer use or own 99% of their purchased products 6 months after purchase. This concept isn’t expanded further, but I’m fairly sure it has to include things like food packaging – even still, 99% of all purchased material is an alarming rate.
This was not the first time I’ve heard the terms “planned obsolescence” and “perceived obsolescence” but “The Story of Stuff” gave it a new perspective. The idea that planned obsolescence was a conscious decision, and that it correlates to the time when American unhappiness began to decline, says a lot about our value system. Even if we think we want stuff, we don’t need things, stuff doesn’t actually bring happiness. The visualization of the treadmill/cycle of tired from work, watch TV, TV tells us to buy, need to work to buy, return to work to make money, get tired from work… etc… illustrated this point perfectly.
I decided to watch “The Story of Change” after finishing “The Story of Stuff.” I loved the idea presented in this video that we can’t just encourage people to do the right thing, because it’s often hard to do the right thing. The right item to buy might be a lot more expensive, so people without the means will be stuck funding a product that damages people, or the environment, or themselves. Instead, the video suggest we have to change the economy so the right thing is the easy thing. When the right choice is easy for consumers to make, the easy to buy product becomes second nature.
Another concept I took from “The Story of Change” was the idea that people can use what they’re good at and apply it to being a “change maker.” Not everyone has time to stand around demonstrating, or the know-how to create a Fair Trade company, for example. Instead, people can take their own talents and apply them to creating the world they want to live in.
Luigino Bruni discusses the interrelated nature of economics, relationships and happiness in “The Wound and the Blessing.” This is an extremely dense excerpt, and I almost don’t know where to begin. I’ll start with a quote that stood out to me, “…solitude as the certain prescription for happiness without risk.” Bruni steps away from this idea, towards humanism, and later argues that there can be no real happiness without community and human interaction -- but when I first read it, I had to momentarily agree. What is it about the human experience that makes some people want to hide in the woods like Thoreau? In my case (I think about a cabin in the woods a little too frequently), it is witnessing the way people behave with and against one another. In order to be truly happy and fulfilled, it is important to be a part of someone else’s happiness, to give of one’s self, to have “skin in the game” as Jim said, but life has a way of taking the joy out of that pursuit. It is easy to become jaded and believe my impact is pointless.
The sentiment I am referring to, the self-serving behavior that drives people to being alone, is spelled out in long form in this excerpt, from Machiavelli, “One can say this of men in general; they are ungrateful, fickle, deceitful, and dissembling, cowardly and covetous for gain; as long as you do well for them they are wholly yours, offering you their blood, property, life, children…. When need is distant; but when it approaches, they turn against you.” This worldview is why people give up helping others. People will do whatever is needed to survive, but it is unfair to turn basic survivalism into a blanket statement against caring for one another. Maybe it is a naïve hope, but I do hope most people would try to be good before simply “turning against you.”
Later, this excerpt discusses the concept of community versus the individual. As people forget about each other and become more isolated, it becomes easy to tune out the bad things going on outside. When a community has to stand strong together, every affliction affects everyone. When people can isolate themselves in their own lives, the outside world has very little impact.
Tying this all back to fair trade, spirituality and justice, I think this excerpt is a reminder to remain aware and involved in the greater community, the world, and not become so intentionally isolated that we lose track of the things going on elsewhere. Fair trade is an opportunity to change the way we think about business interactions, it keeps people aware of the struggle elsewhere. Fair trade gives those of us lucky enough to be born into luxury (as compared to the rest of the world) a chance to take part in someone else’s happiness, it is a conscious decision to remember our neighbors and keep skin in the game.
It is difficult to even begin to comment on “Monsenor: the Last Days of Archbishop Romero” when I have never experienced anything like the oppression of the El Salvadorian people depicted in this movie. Early on in the movie, one of the women said in passing, “all we want is peace.” I have no frame of reference to understand this statement. Somehow I know that life must be at its absolute worst when every day people disappear, or end up dead on the streets at the hands of the so-called security there to “protect” its people. This movie was absolutely terrifying.
One of Archbishop Romero’s early homilies talks about the few people with all the control and money, and the people who toil and suffer with nothing. One of the interviewed men describes day-laborer income as “one colon for two days work.” That’s US $.002 every other day, not even one penny a day, or even half of that. We’ve spent a lot of time reviewing literature and movies so far this semester that have said $1.25/day is the line drawn by the World Bank – anything less than that is poverty. $.001/day is so much less than that, I am beyond appalled.
It’s really scary to know that a group like ORDEN could have ever existed in real life. Fictional books like Orwell’s 1984 are cited constantly out of fear that the government could have enough power to turn neighbors against neighbors. 1984 is fiction, but what happened in El Salvador was real; people reported their own neighbors to the government and ultimately had them killed for not accepting government rules against organizing.
Many nations have to go through extremely dark days to work out their own system of order. The fact that Archbishop Romero, dozens of clergy and thousands of El Salvadorians had to be brutally murdered to make change happen is terrible, and should not have been required for the people to achieve victory. It’s good to know that in the end, after a 12 year civil war, in 1992 El Salvador realized its vision of democracy. Everyone that died would have been proud to see an end to the suffering.
My mind did a backflip after reading that $9,000/year is the appropriate income so that I do not take income from someone else. I wanted to dismiss the figures in The Arithmetic of Compassion right then and there, but David Ulansey (author) warned me against saying “that’s impossible.” So I read on.
It’s frightening to believe that a European cow lives on $2.50/day while 75% of Africans live on less than $2/day. When the suggested maximum world income of $6-9,000 is put into that perspective, it starts to make a little more sense. If a quarter of the world’s population lives on $456/year, that starts to prove how every additional dollar in my pocket is one less dollar in the poorest pockets since there is only so much pie to divvy up.
The outrage in this article reminds me of the things I heard around the time of the 2007-2008 financial crises. Once Americans started realizing that bank executive bonuses were dozens of times the average American salary, people were indignant. Every news show started featuring stories on bank executives robbing retirement funds and stealing homes from the sick and elderly for their own financial gains, and we marveled at the sickening incomes that were not enough to satisfy people like Bernie Madoff. The average American salary is dozens of times higher than $456/year, so given this perspective, the outrage seems justified. When will we be satisfied?
There was one sentence in this article that I particularly liked, “…I like to remind myself that Eskimos live in houses made of ice, but their lives are filled with just as much love and beauty, and their children laugh and play with just as much joy--perhaps more!--as our own.” Lately I’ve been thinking about (and I know this is not in keeping with a $9,000/year income) owning a home. Everyone wants bigger and grander, but I think a bit of wisdom that can be immediately applied from this article is the idea of just finding or using enough of whatever one requires, rather than wanting it all. In my life, maybe that means looking for just enough space so others can have a little space, too. I can’t imagine waking up tomorrow in a world where The Arithmetic of Compassion is immediately applied, but everyone can downsize their requirements in the meantime.
I think I posted this in the wrong place last week... it looks like we all accidentally used the "blog" link at the top. I'm just pasting it in to keep the topics together:
Early on in "Using our Purchasing Power for Justice & Hope" the authors make the point that we, the consumers, vote with our dollars. This concept is the perfect counter-argument to the fiduciary duty that corporations hold to their shareholders - usually a large corporation would argue that they have to run the business as cheaply as possible in order to maximize shareholder wealth. What if, instead of keeping consumers in the dark about their pipelines, consumers were aware of where their products came from and demanded a living wage paid to the producers? Then, couldn't it become possible that consumers turn away from anything less, and the corporation would benefit (financially) from doing the right thing? A well informed consumer is a powerful tool for change.
I found it startling that producers of coffee, for example, generally receive 1-5% of a final sale price. There either must be a lot of middle-men, or a tremendous final sale margin. Either way, the fair trade practice of paying 20-30% seems a lot better. I couldn't imagine embarking on any project, or opening any company, if all I could ever hope to realize was 1-5% of final sale price. It would take tremendous sales volume to make any 1-5% endeavor worthwhile, far more than a farmer could ever produce.
I also found it startling that working harder often results in less return on investment, for a farmer. The more a farmer works the land, the harder it becomes for other crops to grow, and the land (along with their way of life) erodes away. That flies in the face of the typical "talking head" maxim that people can fix anything, including their living situation, just by "working harder."
One of the most important points from this selection was the concept of working with dignity. There is something that personally reverberates with me about a person being proud of what they do, the goods they produce, that it is sold in the U.S., that they are paid well for their work, etc. The need to do good and feel good about your work is universally understandable, not confined to a corporate job or American lifestyle.
Early on in "Using our Purchasing Power for Justice & Hope" the authors make the point that we, the consumers, vote with our dollars. This concept is the perfect counter-argument to the fiduciary duty that corporations hold to their shareholders - usually a large corporation would argue that they have to run the business as cheaply as possible in order to maximize shareholder wealth. What if, instead of keeping consumers in the dark about their pipelines, consumers were aware of where their products came from and demanded a living wage paid to the producers? Then, couldn't it become possible that consumers turn away from anything less, and the corporation would benefit (financially) from doing the right thing? A well informed consumer is a powerful tool for change.
I found it startling that producers of coffee, for example, generally receive 1-5% of a final sale price. There either must be a lot of middle-men, or a tremendous final sale margin. Either way, the fair trade practice of paying 20-30% seems a lot better. I couldn't imagine embarking on any project, or opening any company, if all I could ever hope to realize was 1-5% of final sale price. It would take tremendous sales volume to make any 1-5% endeavor worthwhile, far more than a farmer could ever produce.
I also found it startling that working harder often results in less return on investment, for a farmer. The more a farmer works the land, the harder it becomes for other crops to grow, and the land (along with their way of life) erodes away. That flies in the face of the typical "talking head" maxim that people can fix anything, including their living situation, just by "working harder."
One of the most important points from this selection was the concept of working with dignity. There is something that personally reverberates with me about a person being proud of what they do, the goods they produce, that it is sold in the U.S., that they are paid well for their work, etc. The need to do good and feel good about your work is universally understandable, not confined to a corporate job or American lifestyle.
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