One Geek

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.

I am still waiting to talk to a pollie, but I am having fun.. Today I got to watch question time, I must say I wish labour would have a little more backbone and spend more of there time supporting there positions rather then attacking the government. The Liberal party seem so so much better at using question time to there advantage. Tonight I went to a climate change forum, which was quite interesting. I got the feeling that Peter Garrett wanted to offer more then he could as a Labour member. The Democrat’s and Green’s were very aware and good on the issue and the Liberal’s were entirely absent from the forum on Climate Change, which was not very suprising to anyone.

Tonight Micah Challenge put on a great cocktail evening which unfortunately few of the politician’s stayed long enough at to here a very inspirational figure from Rwanda speech about the Millennium Development Goal’s poverty, transparency and reconciliation speech. It certainly reminded me that my work on poverty reduction ain’t over.

Why is it so hard to embrace both diversity and equality?

Class, race, gender, sexual preference, intelligence, charisma, health, compliance with social norms and so many other things are used to try and define and determine the value of people.

Why do people do it?

Why do I find myself sometimes thinking the same way?

whenever we exercise power we are attempting to influence the course of the world, of humanity and we are thereby playing God. Most parents, teachers, leaders - most of us who exercise power - have no cognizance of this. In the arrogance of exercising power without the total self-awareness demanded by love, we are blissfully but destructively ignorant of the fact that we are playing God. But those who truly love, and therefore work for the wisdom that love requires, know that to act is to play God. Yet they also know there is no alternative except inaction and impotence. Love compels us to play God with full consciousness of the enormity of the fact that this is just what we are doing. With this consciousness the loving person assumes the responsibility of attempting to be God and not carelessly play God, to fulfill God’s will without mistake. We arrive, then, at yet another paradox: only out of the humility of love can humans dare to be God.

From M. Scot Peck’s The Road Less Travelled.

I think that this passage from The Road Less Travelled if taken to heart could improve the way aid and development work is done a lot. I was going to say a lot about this, but I think the quote does a much better job then anything I could write. I will however share some of my thoughts. Changing the world is a big responsibility and the responsibility I hold for the small insignificant amount that I do as one person is certainly enough to humble me. I am comforted that I have the humility Peck talks about sometimes. Some of the most inspiring people I know have far more of this humility then me though. Which is good because it challenges me to improve.

I am feeling rather passionate about Aid and Development again today. It’s been a while since I’ve kind of felt the level of passion that is just fun. Today I went to the launch of a voice mail and call back service called Soochna Se Samadhan designed to enable farmers to get advice on their crops through simply calling a number, leaving a message and then calling back the following day for the recorded answer. I found the presentations of which there were half a dozen a little lack luster, but I could get the passion for using Information and Communications Technology appropriately.

During the question time a women pointed out something that I had noticed, that in the pictures and all the slides they only showed men interacting with the project. She questioned the gender equality of the project, the two female leads of the project said they had noticed the mistake. It was fun because all the people involved were really passionate about the gender equality issue. It’s great that gender equality is accepted as something any development project requires. Another interesting thing about the project was the low tech nature of it from an end user point of view, they are even hiring locals to help farmers dial in.

A big issue with this project though is the cost to the farmer for this advice. They haven’t work out a model yet but it’s not going to be a free service. One of the partners is called TARAhaat who are basically a group all about making money in socially responsible ways.

Other thoughts to come out of the morning for me, was getting expert advice vs leveraging community based knowledge. Data vs Information vs Knowledge, which is too big a topic for this blog post. It was a good reminder to me of the human nature of development work and how it is OK to make mistakes. The ethics of having a posh launch for an NGO based project, the morning was at a convention centre place and a large buffet lunch was provided, as well as a conference gift. Which also raised the question for me of what is acceptable administration cost and what is waste. It was a good reminder that their are other people working on different problems in India and it also reminded me of why I like EHA and TEAR so much.

Work is gaining momentum finally as well which is good. I now have a vendor working at a pace I am happy with to sell me my servers for the hospital. Those who have talked to me lately may have heard how frustrated I was getting so it is a big relief.

Tonight I went out with Rob and Nicole both from St Stephen’s Belrose for dinner which was nice. I got in to two big passionate social justice rants, it had been too long a time since I have done a good just rant so I was happy. One was about the injustice both perpetrated and perpetuated by Australia, and the second was that India’s problems are not unsolvable and that the main real problems are silver bullet attitudes by government and some NGO’s, and a lack of transparency in many projects. It was such good fun.

Now I really should head off to bed as I have a meeting in the morning.

In an age of globalism,
my heros are not global,
they work locally,
wherever that may be,
they fight unsexy boring battles,
joining people on the fringe, at risk, and people who just need a friend,
They work with love for and with all kinds of people,
people with disabalities,
people with physical illness,
people with mental illness,
people with painful pasts,
people without hope,
people with dull everyday problems,
people like me,
people like you,
through relationship they work,
loving and building people up,
even as the world seems determined to tear them down,
in a world filled with war, poverty, hate and indifference,
they often feel rather hopeless,
making mistakes and often filled with doubt,
sure they can’t live up to their own heros,
and yet they get up each day and fight,
determined to love,
even when it is hard,
and so somehow I’ll find a way,
to stumble on and try to love my neighbour,
whomever that may be.

And I know for shore why they hate US?

Our countries (UK, US, Australia) are complicit in so many war crimes in a war that was started using lies.  Can there any longer be any doubt that the war on terror is an evil cynically used political tool?

The timing of most terror events is so convenient and the beneficiaries so clear.  The lives of 3000 odd American’s, now has another 2666 US lives added to that number in Iraq.  Add to that 40,000 civilian deaths.  13.3 Iraqi civilian deaths for each American death from September 11.  Is that justice?

Of course I am not be fair as it was to liberate in the end that we went into Iraq. So please feel free to disregard my maths.

But another interesting point is that however horrific these figures are 50,000 people a day who die due to extreme poverty.  The US have spent to date 313 billion US dollars on this war, I wonder how many lives could be saved with that money? How many friends in volatile areas they/we could make with that kind of cash?

But no they won’t do that, instead they will honour the dead by killing more people.

Walking home from my coffee shop in South Extension, listening to music on my iPod, feeling a dust storm gathering a thought hit me. We are going to win, poverty will be made history.

For so long I had doubted that victory was possible, much of my work seems to be so futile. The lack of commitment from rich countries like Australia to poverty reduction has been depressing for me. As is the seeming lack of interest from the general public.

I don’t know if it will be in my life time or not but I know in my heart we are going to eliminate poverty. It is simply not sustainable. I had a think about the people I know who are working to fight poverty and how many people are working on it that I don’t know. We have some of the brightest, hardest working and most passionate people working for our cause.

But the thing that convinces me the most is watching the local Indians setup a market as I was walking along. These people are so enterprising, there is no way that unfair trade rules will keep them down.

We have the most powerful weapon in the history of man on our side, love. You can’t suppress that, people have tried to do so and they have failed. Love also has a powerful and life changing network effect on people. One persons actions can inspire a nation, or even the whole world. I’m thinking of people like Mandela or Gandhi here.

So I sit here filled with hope.

It is just a matter of time before poverty will be history.

Apparently world leaders are hesitant to put the word condom in their AIDS declaration. Other scary terms that they are trying to avoid are men who have sex with men (or homosexuals), people who inject drugs (or drug users) and people who sell sex (or prostitutes). Other scary concepts include empowering women, and of course money in the form of patents and clear financial commitments. For some reason in the news coverage prisoners the 4 identified at risk group was not mentioned.

The Bush administration, heavily influence by the Christian right, is blocking key proposals for a new United Nations package to combat HIV/Aids worldwide over the next five years because of its opposition to the distribution of condoms and needle exchanges and references to prostitutes, drug addicts and homosexuals.

The United States is being supported by many Muslim countries, including Egypt, and various conservative African and Latin American nations. “There are a lot of unholy alliances all over the place,” said a European official attending UN talks in New York on Thursday night.

Mail and Guardian

It upsets me that Christians can be so bloody STUPID.
Why can’t we acknowledge that people have SEX, and some people have it out of marriage.
Condoms help protect people who have sex outside of marriage and they also protect people with unfaithful partners.
People have been selling sex for centuaries and probably a lot longer! I can see no reason why we can’t have this in a declaration.
Men have been having sex with men for a long time too! What’s the big deal.
I don’t have any idea why injecting drug users are taboo. If you have an idea please leave it as a comment.
I guess the main objection might be distributing needles makes it seem like it’s OK to do drugs. But surely everyone knows, “Drugs are bad, mmmK.”

Anyway I really don’t understand this attituted. I guess the thinking might be this if you give me a condom I’ll go out and have sex.

Newsflash
I have been given condoms before and I didn’t end up having sex. My medical kit for India also contains condoms and it hasn’t made me go out and have sex.
I also brought clean needles with me to India and I haven’t gone out and brought myself some drugs to inject.
I have heard that men have sex with men, and I have meet men who have sex with men, but somehow I have managed to not be tempted into having sex with a man.
Oh and I have heard that I can exchange money for sex and that hasn’t made me go and hire a sex worker.

My argument is not that I am a saint, my argument is that education and giving people access to the commodities they need to live out their lifestyle choices more safely is not going to make people any less moral.

I think that we need to embrace harm minisation and education, they save lives. The UNAIDS report shows this clearly.

There are some interesting articles on the forming of the draft declaration:
BBC News
African News Dimension
Reuters
US ABC News

So how do we get around these issues:

Well taking a look at the final decleration it seems negotiation was the key.

With enough pressure they managed to get condoms in their AIDS declaration, and a few references to sterile injecting equipment and a reference to harm minimisation. Empowering women actually made it’s way into the declaration, upsetting some of the countries who seem to want poor uneducated girls to be married without being empowered to look after their own sexual health. Money does get mentioned, but not patents.

The big loss though is the vulnerable groups, it seems that men who have sex with men, people who sell sex, people who inject drugs and prisoners.

Despite this the declaration does actually mention that HIV is got through risky and unsafe sexual behaviour and injecting drug use. It commits the countries to working towards prevention and sets a slightly clearer path towards universal treatment for 2010. If we can manage that then maybe just maybe the Millennium Development Goals are still in reach.

I found out that someone I meet recently has just been diagnoised with TB. She works for an AIDS project and works really hard to support her children as a single mother.

TB is treatable there is a program by the World Health Organization called DOTS. Yet 1000 people die from it in India alone, that is really depressing. This should not be.

We have the drugs and the knowledge to do something to stop TB why aren’t we doing anything?

I wonder if it’s patent protection from the big drug companies, stopping cheaper Indian versions of the drugs entering the market place. Is it like Anti-retrovirals that help people with AIDS, where people argue that these ignorant villages wouldn’t be able to maintain there treatment.

I do not know, but I am angry. I don’t know what I can do for these people. I don’t know what I should do either. So many worth wild causes in the world.

So I sit here in India, next to my AC in my nice middle class flat. And reasure myself that I am already doing enough… Pretending that there is such a thing as enough.

I’ve been reflecting on Mathew 25 and the Sheep and The Goats.

31″When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34″Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37″Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40″The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

41″Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44″They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45″He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46″Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

I am trying to work out whether I am a goat or a sheep by this catagory. I’ve heard it said that this passage referers only to Christian’s. To give myself a sporting chance of not going to hell I’ve decided to accept this narrowing of scope.

To be a goat I need to of done the following to a Christian, “For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’”.

I know I must of failed to give someone food and drink. One example of this failure is that I’ve failed to do all I can to feed the hungry Christians in Africa and provide them with clean water.

I have passed homeless people and failed to invite them in.

I have passed beggars in India who had need of clothes and failed to clothe them.

I have not visited many people in hospital.

I have not visited anyone in prision.

So far I have 5 out of 5 for being a goat.

Now lets see if I am goat.

37″Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

1) I have given food and drink to hungry people on a number of occasions.

2) I have been inviting to strangers but not into my own home :-(. (I’ll give myself .75).

3) Clothes.. Hmmm.. I sometimes put my old clothes in those big bins.

4) I have visited some people when they have been sick.

5) I have not visited anyone in prision. I did go to Villawood once but never ended up going again. I think that counts for (.25)

So I have 4/5 for being a sheep and 5/5 for being a goat.

I still have some time left. I wonder how God does his maths.
Do you think he rounds up in our favour??
Does he give conceded passes?

The interesting thing is the areas of gray when at comes to salvation. By this passage I believe that most of us could either be sent to hell or heaven.

Is judgement based on a simple adding up of the good and the bad? Where then is grace?

Are we simple judged on attitude? This seems a bit more in accordance with grace.

Is it just a cautionary tale reminding us to take social justice seriously?

I don’t know. What I do know is that if we took this teaching seriously life on Earth would be far better for many people.

I find it so difficult some times to live a life that honours the grace I have received. I try to live a life of grace filled relationships, unfortunately so often I seem to want Karma. When am I standing up for my rights and not just hurting others because I feel hurt?

Why am I fascinated by war so much? I went and saw Lord of War today by myself. I must say I found myself feeling quite disturbed. The odd thing that always gets me is how much as a male from my culture I have been conditioned to be in awe of guns and weapons in general. When I look at a semi-automatic weapon my first instinct is not revulsion but awe. Why does it take so long for revulsion to set in?

Is there something wrong with me that I sometimes enjoy violent movies. Does it expose some deep down suppressed desire of mine to be as Cain to Able? Am I in my heart any better then any other man? Is this just instinct?

More and more though I am finding violence abhorrent, though still often more of a second reaction then first. Buying weapons instead of food seems to have at least contributed to the horrendous levels of poverty in much of this world of ours. The debt from those weapons is still crippling nations. (I think a lot of the debt is from bonded military aid to dictators. Am I right Ben?)

The movie makes it sound inevitable that man will kill man. It suggests that man is evil and that the wholesale slaughter of people is unavoidable. However an alternative reading of Lord Of War would be the answer to violence and world conflict is free and fair trade.

I don’t want to hate anyone. I find it difficult some times. I really am tempted to scapegoat people and blame them for the evil I see. Instead of getting in to a cycle of blame and descending into hell, I hope to work instead towards building heaven here on Earth. For my own part I see myself using my skills to serve those whom I can.

To that end I am planing to arrive in India in about three weeks. I am going to enter an area of India that is slowing recovering from the waste caused by civil conflict. Working on a hospital project that should have significant impact on not just the local community but as a referral centre it will have a broader impact on the entire region as well. God please keep the peace process there on track. It would be sad for the hospital to be reduced to dealing with the injuries caused by man against man.

My life’s work probably weren’t change much on this earth. But everything is meaningless so I figure I might as well try and do some good.

Please note I am aware that I have not used gender inclusive language in this post. This is because I do not have sufficient insight into women to be able to work out if they share this violence. I don’t think they do as much so I left them out.

Humans are so complex. It makes me smile often and cry sometimes.

I don’t think God wants another person in this world to get infected with HIV/AIDS. We can stop a hell of a lot of infections by supporting two simple things.

1) Needle Exchange programs for injecting drug users

2) Condoms for all

I think that we need to adopt these now. I don’t think there is time to debate the ethics of whether or not by doing these things we condone activities which we may or may not agree with. I think it’s far more important to prevent further suffering from HIV/AIDS. 40.3million people are currently infected with HIV/AIDS about 3.1million died last year from it and 4.9 million people got infected.

This has to stop.