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De Soto on Cities

The primary problem is the delay in recognizing that most of the disorder occurring outside the West is the result of a revolutionary movement that is more full of promise than of problems. Once the potential value of the movement is harnessed, many of its problems will be easier to resolve. Developing and former communist nations must choose to either create systems that allow their governments to adapt to the continual changes in the revolutionary division of labor or continue to live in extralegal confusion--and that really isn't much of a choice...

Extralegal zones in developing countries are characterized by modest homes cramped together on city perimeters, a myriad of workshops in their midst, armies of vendors hawking their wares on the streets, and countless crisscrossing minibus lines. All seem to have sprung out of nowhere. Steady streams of small crafts workers, tools under their arms, have expanded the range of activities carried out in the city. Ingenious local adaptations add to the production of essential goods and services, dramatically transforming certain areas of manufacturing, retail distribution, building, and transportation. The passive landscapes that once surrounded Third World cities have become the latest extensions of the metropolis, and cities modeled on the European style have yielded to more noisy, local personality blended with drab imitations of suburban America's commercial strip. (De Soto, The Mystery of Capital)

Tragic Beauty

For me, the word that best describes the novelist's view of the world is tragic. In Nietzsche's account of the "birth of tragedy," which remains pretty much unbeatable as a theory of why people enjoy sad narratives, an anarchic "Dionysian" insight into the darkness and unpredictability of life is wedded to an "Apollonian" clarity and beauty of form to produce an experience that's religious in its intensity. Even for people who don't believe in anything that they can't see with their own two eyes, the formal aesthetic rendering of the human plight can be (though I'm afraid we novelists are rightly mocked for overusing the word) redemptive...

I hope it's clear that by "tragic" I mean just about any fiction that raises more questions than it answers: anything in which conflict doesn't resolve into cant. (Indeed, the most reliable indicator of a tragic perspective in a work of fiction is comedy.) The point of calling serious fiction tragic is to highlight its distance from the rhetoric of optimism that so pervades our culture. The necessary lie of every successful regime, including the upbeat techno-corporatism under which we now live, is that the regime has made the world a better place. Tragic realism preserves the recognition that improvement always comes at a cost; that nothing lasts forever; that if the good in the world outweighs the bad, it's by the slimmest of margins. (Jonathan Franzen, "Why Bother?", How to Be Alone: Essays)

Framing Suffering

How is suffering, including that caused by sickness, best explained? How is it to be addressed? These questions are, of course, as old as humankind. We've had millennia in which to address--societally, in an organized fashion--the suffering that surrounds us. In looking at approaches to such problems, one can easily discern three main trends: charity, development, and social justice. (Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power, 153)

Relationship-Building

"So once again, an illiterate old Balti taught a Westerner how to best go about developing his 'backward' area," Mortenson says. "Ever since then, with all the schools I've built, I've remembered Haji Ali's advice and expanded slowly, from village to village and valley to valley, going where we'd already built relationships, instead of trying to hopscotch to places I had no contacts, like Waziristan." (Mortenson and Relin, Three Cups of Tea, 177)

DFW on the Redistribution of Wealth

Opinion: The mistake here lies in both sides' assumption that the real motives for redistributing wealth are charitable or unselfish. The conservatives' mistake (if it is a mistake) is wholly conceptual, but for the Left the assumption is also a serious tactical error. Progressive liberals seem incapable of stating the obvious truth: that we who are well off should be willing to share more of what we have with poor people not for the poor people's sake but for our own; i.e., we should share what we have in order to become less narrow and frightened and lonely and self-centered people. No one ever seems willing to acknowledge aloud the thoroughgoing self-interest that underlies all impulses toward economic equality--especially not US progressives, who seem so invested in an image of themselves as Uniquely Generous and Compassionate and Not Like Those Selfish Conservatives Over There that they allow the conservatives to frame the debate in terms of charity and utility, terms under which redistribution seems far less obviously a good thing. (David Foster Wallace, "Authority and American Usage", Consider the Lobster)

A Culture of Charity

In society, I’d like to see more value placed on social impact and success than on good intentions or effective marketing or the severity of the need you’re claiming to serve. I’d like to see a fundamental change in ethics or culture around that. We still have the lingering effect of a culture of charity, which honors people for their sacrifice—how much they give and the purity of their motives. The word charity comes from the word “caritas,” which is Latin for love or compassion. We’re rewarding people for demonstrating their love of humankind, but we’re not often looking to see whether it has the intended impact. So I’d love to see an ethics change, so that we honor people for the impact they’ve had directly, or indirectly in choosing to support programs and organizations and individuals that have had impact, not just for how much they give or how generous they are. (Greg Dees, "The Past, Present, and Future of Social Entrepreneurship")

Patience

You are so young, you have not even begun, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves, like closed rooms and like books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search now for the answers which cannot be given you because you could not live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer. Perhaps indeed you carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming, as a particularly pure and blessed kind of life; train yourself for it--but take what comes in complete trust, if only it comes from your will, from some inner need of yours, take it to yourself and do not hate anything. (Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet)

Strongly Stated, Loosely Held

In keeping with professional forecaster practice, my opinions are strongly stated and loosely held--strongly stated so that clients can get at them to conjure with, loosely held so that facts and the persuasive arguments of others can get at them to change them. My opinion is not important; it's just a tool. The client's evolving opinion is what's important. Your evolving opinion is what's important. If you're reading this book just to reinforce your present opinions, you've hired the wrong consultant. (Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline, 21)

Interrelationship

I believe it was two winters ago. I was in Taiwan having dinner with a friend and his parents. As we were finishing dinner, my friend and I were getting ready for our night's festivities. My friend's dad told us before we headed out, "Have a good time, but remember, your body is not your own. It was given to you by your parents." What a funny thing to say, I thought at the time. As I talk to my nephew on the phone, though, and hear his toddler voice, as I see my sister's features in his photos, I get this feeling that nothing could be more true. Your body, a gift from your mommy and daddy to be respected and cherished.

Buzz

The greatest thing to come from Google Buzz is the uptick in Google Reader sharing. That and the random connections that it brings. Somehow, I am following all of Chris Blattman's shared items and he's following mine. Ha.

She's So Pretty (Part Two)

She's So Pretty

Avatar's Crude Environmentalism

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but I think it's still timely as Avatar's buzz isn't going away anytime soon.

On the one hand, the movie has received a ton of praise for its groundbreaking technical prowess. On the other hand, the movie has been criticized for its rehashing of white liberal fantasy, the predictably colonial undertones that drive the narrative forward.

Discussion of the movie in these two regards is well-traversed territory. What I haven't seen much of is criticism of the movie's environmentalism. The environmentalist message is typically noted in passing and subsequently folded into the politics of colonial subjugation.

In its Manichean scheme, Avatar pits humans versus nature, as though one could conceive these two categories essentially and in isolation. Humans relate to the environment in purely corporate, extractive terms; meanwhile, the enviable Na'vi exist in perfect harmony with their natural surroundings. Clearly, the movie espouses a vindictive reproach of capitalist kowtowing to the Almighty Quarterly Earnings Statement. The threat embedded at the heart of the movie: we who in our consumer culture continue to be champions of industry are doomed to moral and economic depravity.

Let me step back from this plot line for a moment and channel Break Through, as I am apt to do:

"If 'the environment' includes humans, then everything is environmental and the concept has little use other than being a poor synonym for 'everything.' If it excludes humans, then it is scientifically specious, not to mention politically suicidal." (emphasis in original)

The movie wants us to buddy up with those lovable scientists who are oh-so-dedicated to protecting Mother Tree and "the environment." In turn we are expected to demonize the mechanical logic of corporate interests. But as the Break Through quote states, the categories of "industry" and "environment" or "humans" and "nature" are simply untenable. Why must economic growth be inherently parasitic and unsustainably extractive? Why is it impossible to imagine technological innovation that brings us towards greater resource efficiency rather than increased resource consumption?

The answer is pretty obvious. Fear sells. We are captivated by the prospect of civilization's eventual demise. But fear doesn't inspire action. I'd like to think that James Cameron aspires in his movies to more than simple-minded entertainment (why else produce an environmental allegory?). In fact, I'd like to think that James Cameron, by virtue of the popularity of his movies, has a responsibility to be thoughtful and critical of his movies' messages. But in this regard, Avatar demonstrates a frightening failure of the imagination.

I relish saying that last sentence.

I am a Public Transit Enthusiast

On Saturday, I rode the 38 Geary bus line from the Financial District to Outer Richmond. The trip took longer than I anticipated (45 minutes), but it was heartening as a reminder of the diversity and sense of community that can exist in San Francisco.

In cities of high population density, public transportation is used by everybody. San Francisco and New York City come to mind. Contrast this to Los Angeles, where public transit is used pretty exclusively by people who cannot afford cars. The 38 Geary line is used by hipsters and yuppie douchebags alike, families, students, professionals, bums, the young and the elderly, locals and tourists, people of all colors and stripes. Within this panoply of difference, there is an implicit sense of community trust. If the bus has to stop longer than usual for a wheelchair-user to board, nobody bitches about the wait. When an elderly person gets on, someone sitting will almost always volunteer his or her seat. When a tourist looks lost, a local will typically offer a guiding hand. In these simple acts of decency are important lessons for us all.

Being on a bus requires patience. No amount of rage will move the bus along its route any faster. When you board a public bus, you surrender yourself to a service largely outside your control. You implicitly accept the limits of your ability to manipulate time and space. You will arrive at your destination when the bus arrives, and you have to be okay with that. A dose of such humility would do us all well.

The exposure to diversity demands courtesy. In order to ride comfortably, you will have to address others with such phrases of respect as "Excuse me, sir," and "Thank you." Pushing and prodding might get you to where you want to go, but it is very obviously not the path of least resistance. You may well have to give up your seat for someone in greater need of sitting, but when you do, you will see your act not as personal loss but as social gain. In the setting of a bus, courtesy makes eminent sense.

For me, forty-five minutes on the bus really lifted my spirits. Decency between strangers is really great to behold.

Does it come as a surprise that a public bus served quite literally as a vehicle for social change during the civil rights movement in the United States?

More Sports, Less Gym

That's all.

MLK on Time

Take a look at a graphical representation of Moore's Law, and it's hard not to believe in the inevitability of technological progress. Or sneak a peak at the idea of learning-by-doing, and you cannot help but feel that productivity increases inexorably of its own accord. So we see human progress marching along with but the passage of time.

This is deceiving. A recent re-reading of MLK's letter from a Birmingham jail provides a very different perspective on the meaning of time:

"I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."

On Getting Down a Mountain

Went snowboarding in Lake Tahoe this weekend. The feeling:

Then suddenly everything was just like jazz: it happened in one insane second or so: I looked up and saw Japhy running down the mountain in huge twenty-foot leaps, running, leaping, landing with a great drive of his booted heels, bouncing five feet or so, running, then taking another long crazy yelling yodelaying sail down the sides of the world and in that flash I realized it's impossible to fall off mountains you fool and with a yodel of my own I suddenly got up and began running down the mountain after him doing exactly the same huge leaps, the same fantastic runs and jumps, and in the space of about five minutes I'd guess Japhy Ryder and I (in my sneakers, driving the heels of my sneakers right into sand, rock, boulders, I didn't care any more I was so anxious to get down out of there) came leaping and yelling like mountain goats or I'd say like Chinese lunatics of a thousand years ago, enough to raise the hair on the head of the meditating Morley by the lake, who said he looked up and saw us flying down and couldn't believe it. In fact with one of my greatest leaps and loudest screams of joy I came flying right down to the edge of the lake and dug my sneakered heels into the mud and just fell sitting there, glad. Japhy was already taking his shoes off and pouring sand and pebbles out. It was great. I took off my sneakers and poured out a couple of buckets of lava dust and said "Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain." (Kerouac, The Dharma Bums)

Why Learning to Write is Important

This caustic piece about the patronizing, self-congratulatory language of people writing about Africa reminds me of the importance of learning how to write. I'm not talking about how to put a sentence together. I'm talking about all those tools of literary analysis that you learn in English Literature that seem to have no direct relation to something like economic development--tone, style, imagery, metaphors, cultural theory and all that good stuff--and how to apply those tools to produce effective writing.

Learning how to write about another culture is neigh impossible. Maybe it is impossible. Chinua Achebe is familiar with the contradictions and difficulties. To me, it seems obvious that the difficulties of development are akin to the difficulties of writing about Africa or any less developed country/poor country/third world country/country of the economic south. How does one figure out the right tone/authorial stance? the right narrative structure? How, if one desires to persuade in development writing, does one overcome the difficulties of establishing ethos/speaker credibility? Surely, part of what is so offensive about Brooks' recent column about intrusive paternalism in Haiti is the fact of his unalterably being white, male and upper class.

Similarly, how do developed countries and aid organizations figure out their role in the development of other countries?

Jet Lagged

I am severely jet lagged at the moment and reading Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. I ordered the book off Amazon after a recent trip to Bangkok and exposure to the city's in-your-face sex tourism.

My decision to read the book was questionable at best. Its journalistic prose flows easily and doesn't induce the sleep I was seeking. Also, I am not quite sure I want to fall asleep thinking about the forced prostitution in Cambodia and India.

Anyway, the book provides an interesting perspective on the efficacy of aid work, which I found a refreshing respite from the economic analyses of Easterly and other development economists. In describing a Seattle private school community service project to help construct a school in Cambodia, the authors write:

In February 2003, the school construction was complete, and Grijalva led a delegation of nineteen students from Overlake School to Cambodia for the opening. A cynic might say that the money for the visit would have been better spent building another Cambodian school, but in fact that visit was an essential field trip and learning opportunity for those American students.

From personal experience, advising high school community service projects in Ecuador, the inspiration and broadening-of-perspective dividend to be had in helping others is non-negligible for sure. But few economic analyses of aid work take this factor into account.

Call me a romantic, but I'd like to not undervalue inspiration and goodwill.