The invisible blight of poverty

When you work in Queen Street, it's hard to avoid the homeless. It's just as hard to know what to do. Avert your eyes? Give a donation? Smile? Say hi? Or walk past, because you're busy.

It's uncomfortable seeing another human being in distress. Short-term distress would be okay, because you might be able to step in and "solve the problem". But generally the problems of the urban homeless are complex and deep-rooted.

Worse still is the kind of poverty you don't see - whether it's behind closed doors in the suburbs, or in some faraway country.

Today is Blog Action Day (it was yesterday in New Zealand; I'm playing catch up!). Bloggers were encouraged to spark conversation about the issue of poverty.

Sometimes poverty is pretty low on my agenda - just paying the bills and keeping up with deadlines captures my attention. But when something like this forces me to focus on poverty - what do I do? For a start, I'm bringing it to your attention. Maybe we can solve this together.

Here's a sampling of what other bloggers have been talking about:

Mama Lucy, a social entrepreneur from Tanzania, gives us the first-hand definition of poverty - and what it's not.

The UK's Paul Bradshaw shows us 88 ways to do something about poverty now.

Hitwise's Alan Long gives us an interesting view of poverty online.

In NZ, Annabel Youens muses on the effects of the recession on the world's poorest, and offers some thoughtful tips on giving well.

Robbie Mackay offers this quotable gem: "We’re so busy trying to ignore the problem, we forget that small contributions eventually add up…"

Ben Young talks about how marketing can help solve poverty.

Ilai Amir passionately puts forward that it is NOT OK that young children have NO OPTION but to go without.

And Stephen Knightly at Pursuit PR gives an overview of what Blog Action Day is, and what Pursuit PR is doing about it.

Lastly, Ilai shared an amazing set of images that show the faces of poverty around the world:

I'm a freaking Marxist!

GrouchoLisa
Originally uploaded by sandrino

I've started to realise I am becoming a closet lefty. It all started when I was watching Wheel of Fortune with Nofo, my father in law.

Nofo's not an intellectual. English is not his first language. His passions are gambling and gardening.

Nofo didn't see that the words on Wheel of Fortune were forming "The Roman Colloseum". In fact, I'm almost sure he doesn't know what the Roman Colloseum is.

Wouldn't it be great, I thought to myself, if Wheel of Fortune could be an educational programme. Just a little bit. I mean, just a photo of the Colloseum, so you know what it is. Where it is. What happened there.

But no, we just see appliance porn - lovingly crafted shots of fridges, washing machines and wide screen TVs.

All this is, I continued to think to myself, is a conditioning device. Conditioning people like Nofo and like me into knowing the right pieces of information - popular culture - in order to receive the right rewards - consumer appliances. It's all a plot by the capitalists to make us want their things.

Religion is not the opiate of the people. TV is.

I felt a bit better after dinner, but these thoughts kind of stay with you.

What next? Conga dancing in a public place? Or is it public? The security guard seemed pretty sure it was private property - no conga dancing allowed here. Interesting!

(PS: Maybe here's where it really started...)

What is the 21st Century's A-bomb?

From the 1945 through 1989, the biggest thing in world affairs was the atom bomb. Now, it's religion.

That's actually good news, because while many of us would struggle with nuclear physics, religion is arguably easier to understand. Or at least, we've had more exposure to religion than to radiation.

Like many readers of this blog, I've grown up in a western country, in the Christian tradition. But even as a member of the Bible-believing Open Brethren, I never learnt that much about the history of the Bible.

So it was very interesting to read Karen Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography. It's a whirlwind tour through all the versions of the Bible - the Torah, the Talmud, the New Testament, the Kabbalah... and so on!

Armstrong has done some serious homework here, and made the complex simple. Instead of delving too deeply into theology, Armstrong tells simple stories about people, and what they believed.

It's not an unbiased book. In fact, Armstrong is making a strong case against fundamentalism of all kinds, and a plea for understanding and love, ignoring the parts of the Bible that are negative or harsh, and meditating on the parts that are loving and kind - quoting many theologians, both Jewish and Christian, orthodox and otherwise, through the years, who have also advocated this approach.

I appreciate this book, but tentatively disagree with some of its conclusions. I say "tentatively", because I have no scholarship to base my disagreement on, just a tiny bit of subjective experience, and gut feeling.

And I say "some" of its conclusions because overall I believe Armstrong has written a rational, emotionally intelligent and respectful biography about a book that means so much to so many people, and it's an attitude I agree with.

I'd recommend The Bible: The Biography as a (somehow) very thorough yet very fast tour of one of the books that has shaped western civilisation, and continues to wield a lot of influence today.

I started this post by comparing religion to the atom bomb. Like nuclear power, religion can be a force for good or for evil. It's also the force that's driving world issues - yet unlike the atom bomb, which was a single, big thing, religion is a complex, fragmentary issue. We've got a lot of learning to do.

Want to learn about Islam? Read my review of The Q'uran: A Biography.

Need some other spiritual thoughts? See my posts tagged spirituality, or my old blog Oh God, I think I'm a fundamentalist.

Maybe Wilf Jarvis was right?

Art of chatting face to face dying | The Daily Telegraph

Quote:

Psychologist, Harvard Business School researcher and etiquette columnist Robin Abrahams says societies have become filled with shrinking violets.

"In the past, only about 40 per cent of people reported being shy in social situations,'' Ms Abrahams said.

"It's now a significant problem affecting about half.''

...

"Society is changing so rapidly it's becoming difficult to navigate. There's no longer a set of rules for appropriate behaviour,'' she said.

"At the same time, technology is enabling us to opt out of difficult situations and causing people to become more insular.

...

Ms Abrahams said the answer was in developing a new approach to teaching social skills.

"It can't be about the memorisation of customs as it was in the past, because there are too many potential situations and too much social change and cultural diversity.

"It needs to be more like chess, based on strategies and general principles.''

Ms Abrahams recommends two key strategies: communication and practice.

"Communicating with others about their expectations is a huge part of feeling comfortable socially,'' she said.

"And so is practice. Social interaction is like anything else: the more you do it the better you become.''

Reminds me of Wilf Jarvis' comments, and also of the need for diversity. Everything is connected.

Elderly baby-boomers take over America

Elderly baby-boomers take over America

Quote:

Mr Fell's company makes a living telling executives how to change their advertising to target the new elderly. He recently spoke to casino owners in Las Vegas. His message: out with the cheap bus tours, in with the razzmatazz and dazzle. Effectively, they should market to the elderly as they do to the young. "The extent that they have to change almost shocks them," he said.

Effectively, they should market to the elderly as they do to the young. This should make things a lot simpler!

Generation C, globalisation and exporting

Pew Research Center: A Portrait of "Generation Next"

Interesting facts here from Pew Research. Generation Next, aka Generation C, does believe that it is a unique and distinct generation (68% said they did, anyway).

Of course, this is just American research and doesn't necessarily reflect the rest of the world, but ... as they say, when America sneezes the world catches a cold, and that's even truer in this day of globalisation.

Of course, globalisation also means that a small country like New Zealand has the potential - potential, mind - to be a pretty powerful sneezer as well.

This week I'm at New Thinking Week, a series of events designed to help businesspeople think globally. So far the three speakers I've heard seem to be saying the same old thing, without making it as new or exciting as it actually is.

What are they saying? Export. New Zealand needs it for growth, your business needs it. Do it.

But they're saying it in the same old way, telling few stories and instead giving us lots of powerpoint slides and bullet points. Maybe I'm atypical of the business audience there, but I'm thinking there's got to be a better way to communicate just how exciting this concept is!

Christian virtual ghettoes - why?

Thanks to Russell Brown's Hard News, I've recently discovered two Christian web resources, GodTube.com and Conservapedia.

Conservapedia claims Wikipedia is biased, anti-American and anti-Christian; that's why they need to reinvent the wheel (while copying the design verbatim from Wikipedia).

While the site looks lame, I can understand the perceived need to set up your own game if - and that's a big if - the claims of bias are true, and if you have enough volunteer power to create something as extraordinary as wikipedia. Otherwise, just do an ordinary website, don't call it a wiki.

But GodTube - why?? As far as I know there's no rules against posting explicitly Christian material on YouTube. It's a very nice, slickly presented site, but it makes me think of what a mistake Christians make when they lose track of the mission - to love God and love your neighbour - and instead set about building a deeply irrelevant subculture.

I heard a brilliant sermon recently on the Emergent Podcast about "finding our God in the other". It asks, why are Christians uncomfortable participating in conversations we cannot control? It's an honestly asked question, partially answered in a respectful, challenging and thought provoking way.

Environmental awareness in consumers

This report from NBR shows the most wealthy consumers want their dollar to count for the environment, as well as for good quality products.

(Quite amazing for the "we don't believe in Global Warming" NBR!)

Great to see some good, ideologically neutral, bottom line info for businesses to start giving a damn. After all, whatever your worldview - whether we're all part of some glorious whole, or distinct individuals, or some combination of both - we're not independent of our environment. As the Palmolive ad used to say: you're soaking in it!

The Dawkins Confusion - Books & Culture

The Dawkins Confusion - Books & Culture

The parts I understand of this review are quite entertaining. Well done to Alvin Plantinga for demonstrating that Christians can have intelligence, humor, and grace.

More on Generations in the workplace

I'm really enjoying Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results. After posting the other day about Generation C, this paragraph in the book caught my attention.

It is no accident that quality of life - a second issue of the new era - is a key factor in how a mobile workforce of the 'best and brightest' chooses to live and work. As more and more baby boomers retire, there will be a period where the smaller Generation X population will not be big enough to fill all jobs. This will eventually subscide with the maturation of Generation Y, which is actually more numerous than the baby boomers. However, there will be major challenges filling key jobs in the interim, making the need to recruit and retain key talent more critical than ever.

Immigration: the conversation begins

Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog: Immigration in New Zealand: a fair and balanced look

I mentioned the other day that I hoped my Idealog article would start a conversation. It has, on Jack's blog. When you touch on immigration, you discover stories, sometimes sad ones, sometimes uplifting ones.

Come on New Zealand, let's make our story a great one.

Come to New Zealand if you're smart

It's out now: the article I worked on for three months.

New Zealand has an opportunity to passionately participate in the global economy - by seeking out and welcoming talented people from around the globe.

It's a story of stories. While there are many facts and figures out there that point to the value of diversity, I found more powerful the stories of creative individuals who used their outsiderness to help themselves and their new country.

Vincent Heeringa talks more about immigration (though, sadly, not my article!) in this week's Kiwi FM Idealog podcast.

Worldviews again

It's always a good time to be learning about worldviews - the ones we hold, sometimes unconsciously, and those of other people.

(I've written on this subject before here and here. Seth Godin's also mentioned it a lot too!)

Russell Brown's latest post talks in scathing terms about Dinesh D'Souza's latest book,The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11.

D'Souza is accusing the "cultural left" of creating a godless culture that offends "traditional societies" around the world. I suspect he's partly right. 50 Facts that Should Change the World tells me that America spends as much on porn as it does on foreign aid. (Although I guess that's calculated through different channels; I'm not aware of a US Government porn fund.)

I haven't read D'Souza's book, but if Russell Brown has interpreted it correctly, he's suggesting that if we all got a little more godly, the likes of Osama bin Laden would leave us alone.

I really suspect that's not an accurate summary of the book; the so-called Christian right has some of its strongest voices advocating a zero-tolerance approach to Muslim terrorists. Maybe D'Souza is talking about other muslims who are not terrorists, but still take their faith literally and seriously.

There's a lot of fear and ignorance out there on both sides. All three sides.

• Muslims in the middle east fear the imperialist crusaders, come to impose Christianity, Coca Cola and porn on them.
• "Blue-state" Americans fear the conservative Christians, come to impose Pat Robertson and Benny Hinn on them, and (mostly) to take away their freedom of thought and expression.
• "Red-state" Americans fear the liberal establishment, come to take away their freedom of expressing their faith in the public square.

I don't think many liberals understand this last point. This article by Rabbi Daniel Lapin comes across just a little alarmist (!) but he does make this interesting point:

Phase one in this war is to make Christianity, well, sort of socially unacceptable. Something only foolish, poor and ugly people could turn to.

That's probably the one thing I'd definitely agree with in his article. Normally I'd give my liberal fellow human beings the benefit of the doubt - after all, liberal means 'generous', doesn't it? - but just as I've come across Christians who have unthought-through stereotypes about other people, so I have come across educated, liberal people who have the same kind of stereotypes about Christians.

Because I'm trying to learn the art of being genuinely open-minded until I really know a thing, I'll end this on a series of questions:

• Why is it so hard to stay open-minded?
• Why do I find myself so tempted towards polarising language (on both sides, by the way) when writing about these issues?
• Why does literature place so much emphasis on Freudian and Marxist philosophy when the fields of psychology, economics and philosophy have so many other thinkers?
• Is Freudian/Marxist/liberal thought influential because it's all that's taught, or because it's the best reflector of reality?
  

Understanding Islam from its source text - and its people

I've just finished The Qur'an: A Biography, and I've only started to scratch the surface of the world's second-largest religion.

I was particularly struck by the story of Robert of Ketton, the first Westerner who attempted to translate the Qur'an into a Western language. He was, like me, a pen for hire, hired in this case by Peter the Venerable, a Christian Abbot who challenged the spirit of his times (the Crusades) by seeking to understand Muslims rather than slaying them.

From the book:

"In such a charged atmosphere, the effort to 'honour' the pseudo-prophet of Islam by translating his lies (the Qur'an) was itself an ecumenical act ... It may seem that most European Christians, including the Pope, had already made up their mind about the evil of Islam and the falsehood of the Qur'an. Peter suggests as much when he calls (in vain) for Islam to be approached, not 'as our people often do, by arms, but by words; not by force, but by reason; not in hatred, but in love.' "

(NB: The words "pseudo-prophet" and "lies" above refer to the mediaeval title of Robert of Ketton's work - "The Law of the Pseudo-Prophet Muhammad" - and don't reflect the views of the author of this book, Bruce Lawrence.)

I really respect this approach, particularly in the atmosphere of the crusades. He knew the difference between acceptance and agreement, a crucial difference that I learnt about in a discussion on improvisation.

More from the book:

"You may dislike someone or some idea, but still try to understand both the person and the concept that are alien to you. ... Though hostile to Islam, Robert was willing to trust Muslim scholars in trying to unravel what Muslims found believable in the 'false' prophecy of Muhammad."

As a follower of Christ (in training), I don't consider Muslims "the enemy". That's why it's downright embarrassing to read some of the nonsense that comes up in discussions like this one.

Thankfully, there are other, more thoughtful responses from the Christian community, like this one. Might be a good one to add to my reading list. (Sigh - it never stops!)

Even for non-Christians, I think it's important to understand - even respect - the book and the belief system that has shaped and continues to shape huge parts of the world. And while you're at it, it wouldn't hurt to understand - and even respect - the other book and the belief system that has shaped the Western world.

It can never hurt to truly understand.