I like books. Love books. LIVE for books.
The test of a reader is: Have you read a book while walking down the street at any point in the last, oh, year.
If the answer is yes, then you're a reader.
I was walking out of the train station near my apartment in Japan, reading the first volume of Robert Caro's great, unending biography of Lyndon Johnson when a crazy Japanese homeless guy whacked me in the stomach with a two-by-four. (Howard Cosell's famous call of the Ali/Frazier fight echoes in my mind: "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!") I was down for the count in Sagami-Ono, Japan.
I could sit in a room by myself and read and be reasonably happy for the rest of my life.
But is reading enough?
There's the world inside the books, and the world outside of the room where you're reading the books. And, at a certain point, those two worlds have to, should, collide.
You can't get everything from books. You can get a lot -- perspective, compassion, empathy, plain old knowledge -- but as a way of learning about the world, understanding the world, you gotta get out.
You gotta walk around.
You gotta travel, listen, observe.
I was given a book by a friend of the family called LOST JAPAN by Alex Kerr before I went to Japan. It was all about how the Japan of today doesn't compare to the Japan of yesterday, about how the modern Japan is trashing the traditional Japan, about how customs die and are buried on a daily basis, and now nobody in Japan seems to be noticing, let alone caring.
I read half of it. Put it down. I couldn't get it. Couldn't process it. Couldn't imagine it.
Why?
Because it was all about stuff that I had no first-hand contact with. Culture, economy, history and society -- I knew about that stuff in Canada. (Kind of. Well, a little.)
But in the rest of the world? Japan? Didn't affect me. My borders were square, and I was inside them, and I hadn't been out.
Cut to two years later, and I've lived in Japan, and taught the people, and ate the food, and watched the news, and learned the language (a little.)
I tried to read LOST JAPAN again. I found myself nodding. Understanding. Agreeing and disagreeing with his points. The book had a shape and a texture and a relevance that was suddenly, well, relevant to me. Because I'd been in that world for awhile, if not of it.
Books and reality are sometimes two different worlds for me.
The intersection of the two is when life really starts getting interesting. It's when 'life' with a capital 'L' meets and greets the thinking, pondering individual who turns the pages.
The intersection is when the boldness and vividness of life come into full play.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
YOU SAY MACRO, I SAY MICRO
How do you save Cambodia?
How do you save Sudan?
How do you save Bangladesh?
And what does that mean, anyway -- how do you 'save' a country? Are some countries doomed, simply because of their location and their leaders?
No, according to Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world's foremost macroeconomics gurus who is trying to figure out a way to stop poor countries from being poor.
His answer, as detailed in a New York Times story that ran last weekend, is simple: Money.
Lots and lots of money.
Simple.
Simplistic?
I kinda think so.
Now, I'm no economist. I took no poli-sci, economics, or development classes in university. (You're looking at a guy who dropped out of Grade 11 Accounting after a month, and whose idea of a good history lesson at the time was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.)
But I'm living in Cambodia, and work for an NGO, so I'll put in my two cents worth.
You can inject all the money you want into these poor, desperate countries in South-east Asia and Africa, and Sachs is probably right -- more money IS what is needed.
The problem, however, is...
1) Where will the money go? Most likely, right into the pockets of the charming, benevolent governments that lead most third-world countries. They don't care about the poor. They care about lining their own pockets with all the goodies that they can.
(Oh, sure, they care, yes, but in the same way that everybody cares about poor people. Nobody likes to see it. Nobody likes to think about it. And it all comes down to the individual and the individual's own life -- if he can improve it, he will. If he can use the money to get him out his own dire circumstances, he will. Why wouldn't he? He's been through hell and back, most likely. He's seen his family starve, die, beg. The biggest governments and wealthiest nations are still just groupings and gloppings of individuals who are looking after their own self-interest first, period. Any good that arises is a trickle-down side effect.)
2) Assuming that the money gets where it's supposed to go, will it be used efficiently? Probably not, because the people in charge of the governments of most of the poor countries in the world don't really know what the hell they're doing. They either siphon the money into their own bank accounts, or, should the money actually be used how it is intended to be, it will probably be used in a wasteful, inefficient manner.
Why? Well, they don't have the skills. They don't have the know-how. They don't have the time or the energy to implement the skills or the know-how, either, because life is short and projects are long and it's difficult to create something out of nothing. Difficult to build castles in the sand. Easier to watch them wash away as you kick back in your villa with a pina colada in one hand and the remote in the other.
This is not to say that there is no hope, because I think there is, but it lies in the next gen -
eration, and the generation after that, and the generation after that. And so international experts -- carrying lots and lots of cash, as Sachs suggests -- have to dig in deep and prepare for the long haul and do the best they can, with what they have, to help train and implement, by hook or by crook, government and community programs that are relatively easy to run. You have to train the young and hope that they can somehow break the endless cycle of dependen-
cy and corruption that so many third-world countries revolve around.
So, I think Sachs is right, to some extent -- it takes cash. But cash alone ain't enough, and I think he approaches everything from a macro-economic perspective.
All well and good, for the big issues.
But life is lived on the ground level, on a micro-scale.
Life is lived in inches.
How do you save Sudan?
How do you save Bangladesh?
And what does that mean, anyway -- how do you 'save' a country? Are some countries doomed, simply because of their location and their leaders?
No, according to Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world's foremost macroeconomics gurus who is trying to figure out a way to stop poor countries from being poor.
His answer, as detailed in a New York Times story that ran last weekend, is simple: Money.
Lots and lots of money.
Simple.
Simplistic?
I kinda think so.
Now, I'm no economist. I took no poli-sci, economics, or development classes in university. (You're looking at a guy who dropped out of Grade 11 Accounting after a month, and whose idea of a good history lesson at the time was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.)
But I'm living in Cambodia, and work for an NGO, so I'll put in my two cents worth.
You can inject all the money you want into these poor, desperate countries in South-east Asia and Africa, and Sachs is probably right -- more money IS what is needed.
The problem, however, is...
1) Where will the money go? Most likely, right into the pockets of the charming, benevolent governments that lead most third-world countries. They don't care about the poor. They care about lining their own pockets with all the goodies that they can.
(Oh, sure, they care, yes, but in the same way that everybody cares about poor people. Nobody likes to see it. Nobody likes to think about it. And it all comes down to the individual and the individual's own life -- if he can improve it, he will. If he can use the money to get him out his own dire circumstances, he will. Why wouldn't he? He's been through hell and back, most likely. He's seen his family starve, die, beg. The biggest governments and wealthiest nations are still just groupings and gloppings of individuals who are looking after their own self-interest first, period. Any good that arises is a trickle-down side effect.)
2) Assuming that the money gets where it's supposed to go, will it be used efficiently? Probably not, because the people in charge of the governments of most of the poor countries in the world don't really know what the hell they're doing. They either siphon the money into their own bank accounts, or, should the money actually be used how it is intended to be, it will probably be used in a wasteful, inefficient manner.
Why? Well, they don't have the skills. They don't have the know-how. They don't have the time or the energy to implement the skills or the know-how, either, because life is short and projects are long and it's difficult to create something out of nothing. Difficult to build castles in the sand. Easier to watch them wash away as you kick back in your villa with a pina colada in one hand and the remote in the other.
This is not to say that there is no hope, because I think there is, but it lies in the next gen -
eration, and the generation after that, and the generation after that. And so international experts -- carrying lots and lots of cash, as Sachs suggests -- have to dig in deep and prepare for the long haul and do the best they can, with what they have, to help train and implement, by hook or by crook, government and community programs that are relatively easy to run. You have to train the young and hope that they can somehow break the endless cycle of dependen-
cy and corruption that so many third-world countries revolve around.
So, I think Sachs is right, to some extent -- it takes cash. But cash alone ain't enough, and I think he approaches everything from a macro-economic perspective.
All well and good, for the big issues.
But life is lived on the ground level, on a micro-scale.
Life is lived in inches.
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