Poor people are their own best resource in escaping poverty. They are very resourceful. They are already conquering problems every day that are many times greater than you or I ever have to face. That’s how resourceful they are. And they are surviving, and they have a life, and I respect them. I’m not going to be patronizing and say, “Here I am the 21st century of the white man’s burden coming in to save you,” which I think is the problem of people like Jeff Sacks and Bono. I want to be helpful, but I don’t want to be patronizing. Recorded On: 7/6/07
Discuss
Bogdan Belcea on October 23, 2008, 6:40 AM
Ups, somehow you forgot to specific that all that you sad applies to “good” as well.
Or better put, as William Shakespeare put it : “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
James C on December 6, 2008, 3:14 AM
This is my comment 1 of 2:
Milgram’s obedience experiment was more-or-less exactly aimed at determining what proportion of people would function as a rank-and-file Nazi. You can read the result for yourself, if you want to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
James C on December 6, 2008, 3:21 AM
It doesn’t answer BogdanBelcea’s question, but Don Cupitt has a nice taxonomy of theories of how people and their own evil interact, in a footnote in “After God”. There are three alternative positions:
– non-dualism:
– there are no well-defined “good” and “evil”; there are only events and people who respond to them
– secure in my ignorance, I am going to say that this is the orthodox Buddhist position
– external dualism:
– evil is a separate external thing that is imposed on people; it could be removed, and they (or perhaps all of the good ones) would be largely unchanged
– this is the orthodox Christian position
– internal dualism:
– the possibility of evil is something that people create for themselves; it is ‘the yeast in the dough’ that causes them to have practice in making moral decisions; without it, they would be completely different
– this is Don Cupitt’s position, and I find it persuasive
– on this account, remembering one’s heros is a recommended technique for practising making moral decisions
samuel adjei on January 5, 2009, 5:10 PM
i totally agree with you sir, am 18 years of age living in Africa. most of the problem that we face here is due to poverty,and is due to psychologically ignorant literacy metality.
and because we are Afrcans some of us living with poverty doesn’t seems to change their ways and progress, but for me what i think it should be done is to help their children with libraries and schools facilities to educate them so much so well that they will not fall into the trap of poverty and for the adult, we should create jobs extensively job so that everybody will get some work to do and get money to take care of them self.
gyasiman@gmail.com
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