On Sunday, I posted a brief essay in which I linked to a Nicholas
Kristof column detailing some of the extraordinary gains that have been made in
recent years in reducing starvation levels of poverty in the world, combating
age-old scourges like leprosy, and making clean water available to those
without it. I suggested that these gains
put into perspective the evils visited on us by the infantile narcissistic
bully in the White House. I was, I
confess, somewhat surprised by the response of LFC, seconded by local details
from S. Wallerstein. “Before
celebrating too much about the decline of extreme poverty,
some things should be noted,” LFC wrote, citing, among other things, the fact
that three-quarters of a billion [!] people remain in extreme poverty
world-wide. S. Wallerstein offered a few
details about just how little “$1.90 a day” will actually buy in Santiago,
Chile, where he lives.
As it happens, I agree with every single word both LFC and
S. Wallerstein wrote, but I wondered, Why did they feel it necessary to write
what they did? To whom were their comments
directed, and for what purpose? I
puzzled over this during my morning walk [to which I have returned after
several days spent rehabilitating my aching and aging back] and here is what I
have come up with.
There are two very different standpoints from which one can
view the world: as passive, though interested, observer, and as engaged activist. The observer and the activist have the same
information available to them [although the activist may have a wealth of particular
and intimate detail about one problem or region of the world that the observer
lacks], but their orientation to that information is quite different. Compare the point of view of an aid worker who
spends years in the field working to reduce the extreme poverty of the men,
women, and children in one village in Africa with the point of view of one of
us reading Kristof’s column. The aid
worker, we may suppose, spends ten or twelve hours a day helping the people in
the village to dig wells that yield clean water, teaching more productive ways
of using their desperately meagre resources to increase crop yields, calling in
assistance from a network of city lawyers to fight the exploitation of local landlords. She does this not for a week, or even for a month
but for years on end. A new well is a
victory, an expansion of the crop yields a triumph, one court victory against a
rapacious landlord, after a series of disheartening defeats, a cause for
celebration. She is perpetually aware of
how small her victories are when measured against the appalling misery and
poverty in the midst of which she lives and works. But she is a human being, not a balance
sheet, and she must take heart from every advance, no matter how small, if she
is to keep at her work and draw emotional sustenance from it. For her, the Kristof column is a reassurance
that she is not alone, that her work, along with that of so many others, is
having a measurable impact on the world’s poorest and most powerless people.
The observer contemplates the world equanimously and with
admirable balance, ever on the alert for false voices saying the crisis is
over, the worst is behind us, we may relax our efforts and pursue our
comfortable lives untroubled by the misery of others. To the observer, who is, after all, not
actually doing anything about
poverty, or leprosy, or unsafe water, save perhaps casting a vote every two
years and donating a bit of money now and again to Doctors Without Borders, the
moral high ground is seized by those whose condemnation of evil is unrelenting and
every positive report is rejected as a self-serving invitation to
inaction. Any celebration of progress is
viewed as a form of moral back-sliding, of that worst of all political sins,
moderation. To the observer, the Kristof
column sounds suspiciously like the self-satisfaction of a Clintonian.
Let me speak personally for a moment. I have done precious little in my life save
offer opinions, and thanks to certain oddities of the mid-Twentieth Century American
Academy, the more extreme the opinions I expressed, the more my salary went
up. But I did after all actually do something besides offer opinions – for twenty-five
years I raised bits of money to help poor Black young men and women to attend
historically Black universities in South Africa. The amounts were trivial -- $40,000 in a good
year – but thanks to the exchange rate, it was enough to enable fifty or sixty young
people each year to pay the portion of tuition due at registration, thereby
making them eligible for government funded loans. I was painfully aware that my bursary
recipients were so few in number that my efforts did not even cause a blip in
the South African university enrolment figures, but when I met the students on
my annual visits, I drew encouragement and strength in my effort from their
excitement, energy, and youthful enthusiasm.
I even received a cherished award after all those years in the form of
an honorary degree from the University of the Western Cape, conferred on me by
the titular Chancellor of the university, Archbishop Desmond Tutu himself!
Had someone sought to throw cold water on my excited reports
of my trips to South Africa, pointing out to me that my efforts had failed to
correct the deep-rooted educational inequities in South Africa, my response
would have been that the comment entirely missed the point. I needed any encouragement I could muster to
keep at the effort for a quarter of a century, long after the novelty had worn
off and the attention of lefties like myself had moved on to other inequities,
other needs, other peoples.
So I should like to suggest that we allow ourselves to
rejoice in Kristof’s statistics. The
magnitude of the improvement in human life summarized by those statistics is
enormous. Save the cavils and cautionary
reminders for those who take Kristof’s column as an excuse for inaction.
Well said and convincing.
ReplyDeleteThe thing, however, that went through my head while I read this was your question about Chris Hedges
awhile back. I don't think he would fit into the category of interested observer. He seems to be active, as
intellectuals go. But he does seem to embody some of characteristics of both camps.
Anyway, good point. It is easy to pontificate.
Well-said, Professor. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteExcellent analysis. Some see the glass as half full; others see it half empty. But if there was nothing in the glass to begin with, half full is progress. Likewise, those who say we are a totally racist society are making a big mistake. Much progress has been made in the last 50 years or so. But those who say the problem is over and that we live in a post-racial society are making an even bigger mistake. We have a long, long way to go.
ReplyDeleteI could write, and actually did write, a long and rather personal response to this post, but I've decided not to post it.
ReplyDeleteI'll restrict myself to saying that I take the point that recognition, even celebration, of progress may be necessary and/or desirable to, among other things, keep up the spirit of activists and others who are devoting their lives to working on these issues. It's the old conundrum of finding the right balance. Should, for instance, we emphasize that most of the UN's Millennium Development Goals were not met when they came due a couple of years ago, or should we emphasize how much progress was made toward meeting them, even though it fell short of most of the numerical goals? Maybe both.
For now at any rate, I'll leave it at that.
First of all, my solidarity with your aching back. I am a fellow sufferer.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do not sacrifice myself as an aid worker does, I am not an entirely passive observer of Chilean poverty. Given my age and back problems, I more or less confine myself at present to opining from internet and donating money. I recently donated a sum to a Trotskyite group. I'm not a Trotskyite myself, but their newspaper makes life uncomfortable for the Chilean equivalent of self-satisfied Clintonian liberals like Kristof.
I learned from you, by the way, (thanks) that leftwing politics is a long march or battle and that one should participate where one is comfortable and feels that one can make a contribution.
As for Kristof, I stopped reading his column several years ago when he was cheering on
the so-called "humanitarian intervention" (aka bombing) by the Western imperialist powers in Libya to get rid of Kaddafi. I recall one of his wonderful columns where he asked people to write in questions about Africa and that a great expert on Africa would answer them. Who was the great expert? An African sociologist? An African philosopher?
An African political or grassroots leader? No, Melissa Gates. Kristof is a fellow who knows which side his bread is buttered (I imagine that his spread of choice is a bit more expensive than butter) on.
I very much liked this post. I don't much like Kristof, partly for reasons similar to those s. wallerstein presents (though not exactly) but worry that there is a problem of "hating the messenger" here. I wanted to say something about this bit:
ReplyDelete"I was painfully aware that my bursary recipients were so few in number that my efforts did not even cause a blip in the South African university enrolment figures, but when I met the students on my annual visits, I drew encouragement and strength in my effort from their excitement, energy, and youthful enthusiasm."
I was in the Peace Corps from 1999-2001. My contributions to the country where I worked could not come close to this level. They literally could not be measured on any scale that a social scientist could use, as they were just too small. Yet still, they women's center I helped to get a few small grants, and the regional school teachers I helped get into an exchange program, and maybe even a few of the students I taught, did gain something, or so I'd tell myself. Perhaps as importantly, it made a change in me, teaching me some things that I would not have otherwise known, and maybe making myself a better person. Or so I like to think. To be cynical is itself very easy, and contains the bonus of allowing one to feel wise. It is even sometimes justified. Yet, it is also addictive and leads to no progress, even when small gains for individuals are still possible. It's a temptation that should be avoided.
nice post
ReplyDelete