Uncertain Heroes
I find it interesting, the people who I see and know who are doing real good are so uncertain about the amount of good they are doing, and even their own motives. It’s strange, this somewhat reassures me in my life. I really hope I am not ever too comfortable or complacent, until I am in the next life. I am hoping that my current work which doesn’t really engage my central passions, is actually going to fund a really useful and good thesis. At least lots of my work is on a project aiming to improve public transport, which should fulfil a cardinal rule of aid and development of “first do no harm”. Though the amount of paper I am using on this job at the moment is slightly scary. Stupid drawings.
Anyway I think all I was saying here really was that I am feeling comforted by being uncertain in life. Since my India trip was cancelled I’ve been feeling a bit down, and a bit unpurposey and general uncertain. I’ve been trying to focus myself on my thesis and doing that well now, but even though I am currently doing it, it seems so far off. Also I’m trying to work out what I want to do after June next year. Too many options, sadly few of the ones I like are in Sydney.
The other thing that I think I need to do is focus more on God, but that is a whole other post.
October 21st, 2007 at 5:14 am
Be encouraged, David. You have done, are doing and will continue to do good things, because you care about people. It’s a bummer the India trip did not work out, though.
October 21st, 2007 at 9:50 am
I don’t think aid is as simple as medicine in terms of the whole “do no harm” objective. Even in medicine it’s not interpreted entirely literally. In most cases creation is going to involve some amount of destruction. I’m thinking of pretty much any infrastructure project.
I remember one of my development lecturers talking about the cultural destructiveness of one of this power plant upgrade projects. He said something like “despite the pain it caused the culture could not continue and had to change.” I was appalled but that conceptualisation, but probably most development projects involve an element of the same thing.
In some cases the creation is almost certainly worth the destruction - as is the case with a hospital. But there are other projects where the net benefits are marginal - roads, dams, business development and other industrialisation projects.
And then you’ve got the whole trouble of what a “net benefit” actually means because preferences aren’t even close to homogeneous. As with the big dams projects, which I’m not even sure were universally bad.