They were a fictional affluent African-American family who starred in The Cosby Show.  The sitcom debuted in 1984 – the decade of “Greed is good”.   Although it has been described as revolutionary (black, American AND rich) – I didn’t really get that bit.

I thought all Americans lived in lavish mansions and had astonishing amounts of material possessions.

Those were the kind of people I saw on TV.  Even a small house seemed to have 5 bedrooms, two stories, and 3 bathrooms and a menagerie of animals that never pooed inside.  There were 2 or more massive cars parked in the garage, and a new set of clothes for every occasion.

No-one told me about the underclass – about the huge numbers of homeless people, or about entire communities living in (relative) poverty in the US.

After a bit of study I’m now aware of two realities about the world we inhabit:

Reality One: The world is a much darker, unfair, and unjust place than I ever realised.

Reality Two: Fixing poverty and inequity is far more complex and difficult than I ever realised.

UNFAIR

Pick up a newspaper and you will see individuals ripping each other off.  Dig deeper into the geopolitical realities  of the world and you see systems that rip entire people groups off.

FIXING THE WORLD

Despite 50+ years of so-called ‘development’ – poor countries are still poor and people still die from bad water.  There are a vast array of opinions on aid – from the sterling work of Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty) who believes that enough aid can fix the world and eliminate poverty in a generation to William Easterly (White Man’s Burden) who claims that Aid is part of the problem.

This is a gross over-simplification but you get the picture.  Well-intentioned assistance and aid can have unintended consequences.

So Where To?

A simple note to self: Practice justice, mercy, and humility rather than cynicism, arrogance and judgmentalism.

Simple does not = easy. But there is hope… hope that stems from every single small act of kindness.

Fair call – especially when you’re paying serious money to hear music. However at least someone is using their celebrity status to draw attention to issues rather than for endless self-indulgence. What you do with your millions if you were a celeb?

Recent history shows we have individuals who have changed the world. William Wilberforce taking a stand on slavery. Rev. Martin Luther King taking a stand on civil rights and racism. These individuals catalysed entire movements that resulted in real and powerful societal change.

Nowadays we have big campaigns to Make Poverty History, or end 3rd world debt. We have massive initiatives like the Global Poverty Project that claim to “catalyse the movement to end extreme poverty”. These initiatives are exciting and inspiring. They lead people to think about the reality of the world outside our walls.

Can We Really Save the World?

The first rule of understanding aid and development is that is extremely complex. Like environmental interventions, the law of unintended consequences plays out over and over.

Could it be that we are a little bit… arrogant?

We in the West like to fix things. In much the same way as European colonisers thought they could save people in the rest of the world from themselves, we believe we can solve the worlds problems if we just have enough money.

We know best. We’ve got musicians and bands. We’ve got TV campaigns and the Internet. We’ve got power point.

Mea culpa. I want to change the world too. Maybe if I start buying fair trade chocolate I can end extreme poverty.

But then when I look into my own heart I realise I struggle to even stop doing things or having attitudes that I don’t like.

I can’t even save myself.

I watch my children fighting over a new toy. I didn’t teach them to do that – but they always want what the other one has.  I can’t even save my kids from their greed.

That doesn’t mean I don’t stop caring, or being moved by compassion to help those in need… but end the injustice and greed in the world when I find the same things in my own heart?  Maybe I just need to try harder.

Let’s do what we can, but let’s also get over ourselves.

Our enlightened civilizations in the West are also dogged by depression and suicide. Child abuse and wife-beating. Our enlightenment hasn’t seemed to have stopped us from endless self-medication in the form of drugs (US alone spends an estimated $57 billion to $91 billion per year on illicit drugs) and alcohol. Our money-laden countries are filled with lonely people.

We might have ended extreme poverty (in the OECD) — but we have not managed to create a utopia.

Are you sick of people who want to save the world?

- Photo cred: flickr/nimboo

Every one of life’s ills can apparently be solved in a 5 point bulleted blog post. I should know. I’ve probably written some of them.  Self-help is popular. Who wouldn’t be attracted by an article called “6 Simple Ways to Overcome Every One of Life’s Problems and Get Rich While Doing Nothing At All*”

*A fictional article.

Self-made self-help celebrities abound. Is it just me, or do most of them seem to be young, white, American, and mostly male? Positive thinking is powerful. People have transformed their lives. They’ve “got more done”, made some money, and then written a book informing adoring followers how easy it is.

I admire these people. Their energy, optimism and dedication is inspiring – and positivity is something we absolutely need more of in this world we have made for ourselves.

In the West we have something called choice. We also have the freedom to exercise that choice. It’s something we take for granted almost every day. Nobel Prizewinner Amartya Sen realised this in his book Development as Freedom. People in developing countries live with ‘unfreedoms’ – they lack the opportunities to live as they wish. Perhaps they need to read ‘The Secret” (note: tongue-placed-firmly-in-cheek).

Our positive pragmatism seems to skim the surface of reality. It’s attractive and seems practical – so much that practitioners seem to build a semi-cult following. In our countries of opportunity we have the scope to apply such principles – and live our “best life” (whatever that is) – yet in many cultures, many circumstances – opportunity is rare.

Here are some realities:

• In among achieving financial success and personal happiness your child can contract terminal cancer.
• After building your best life now, your wife leaves you.
• You’ve networked with hundreds of people, with connections to hundreds more. You Facebook, Twitter, and will be an early adopter of the next-best-thing. But. You. Still. Feel. Lonely.
• You lost 20lbs in 30 days or even gained 20lbs of raw muscle on 6 weeks, and then had an accident and lost the use of one leg. To add insult to injury you will get old, frail, and wrinkly. And one day sooner or later – you’ll die.

Too morbid? Too negative? No wonder we prefer 6 Ways to Better Sex.

Unfortunately we’re living in delusion.

Take your eyes off of the self-made self-help hero and you’ll notice that he is surrounded by 10,000 others who tried to be like him – but never made it. The answer they’ll keep getting: Try Harder.

Maybe life is too messy to be solved in 10 bullet-points. Maybe the world is too big and to complex to assume that everyone else is a young white American. 921,159,399 people in Africa don’t even access the Internet. Could it be that our positive pragmatism is solely based on the microcosm that is the WorldofMe™ – and maybe it doesn’t bear scrutiny when extrapolated out across the tide of humanity…

While consuming your next item of positive pragmatism – ask yourself this question: Am I investing my happiness in something I can lose?