Advancement Theory:
"a cultural condition in which an Advanced Individual -- i.e., a true genius -- creates a piece of art that 99 percent of the population perceives to be bad. However, this is not because the work itself is flawed; this is because most consumers are not advanced."
-- Chuck Klosterman
Esquire December 2004
So that explains it!
The reason why a lot of the stuff I respond to is ignored by the rest of the public. The reason why movies and books I consider proof of divinely inspired talent is ridiculed by press and populace alike. It all makes sense now. It's getting clearer. Things are coming into focus...
Take Alexander, Oliver Stone's flick. I love it. Most of the world, um, doesn't. Most people who have seen it would like to burn the print they saw, torchbomb the theatre, piledrive the director's son. Fair enough.
But now this Advancement theory has come into play. It allows me to say: "Fair enough, fair enough, but the thing is, this film's too Advanced for you. In five, ten years you'll finally recognize it's greatness."
At which point I would be accused of being a pompous snob, because believing in the
'Advancement' theory implies that, if such a work of art is, in fact, Advanced, the minority who responds to it would themselves have to be advanced, no?
Maybe not.
Maybe there are just some works of art that are so far ahead of their time (or behind the time) that they generally just soar over the heads of most people, while a small group of odd, displaced others see something illuminating there.
I happen to believe Alexander is a movie like that. I think it's both intensely old-fashioned in tone and presentation while at the same time aiming for something that modern cinema hasn't quite evolved itself into, a mythic blending of eras and narrative apporaches that nobody else is attempting. Hence, people's confusion and lack of response. Maybe I'm blending my own aesthetic biases into my read of the flick, but I think that's the Advancement theory's strength:
it allows your own idiosyncratic responses to art to have a theory that validates their fundamen- tal oddness. It backs you up, in other words.
Some films are obviously Advanced. Take Stanley Kubrick's movies. Films like 2001, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and his final flick, Eyes Wide Shut, were both loved and hated upon release. People either thought they were non-sensical, pretentious messes, or glowing examples of cinematic genius. Nobody's indifferent to a Kubrick film.
I think Oliver Stone's film J.F.K. is Advanced. What's scary is that that film is so Advanced that when watching it, it seems light years ahead, in theme and style, than all films being made today -- and it was made fourteen years ago. In its dissection of the means by which the military
industrial complex has shaped the way we perceive reality, in its exploration of who owns and shapes and diverts the explanations for the events that shape our lives, it exhibits a level of Advancement that becomes more and more relevant with the ongoing Iraq-Halliburton-US Army connection. Stone was highlighting the importance of this stuff a decade and a half ago. Only now is that message starting to seem truly relevant.
Many movies and books are good, even powerful, but not Advanced. If everybody loves it and agrees on its worth, then it's not Advanced. If most people are left puzzled, disappointed, or even indifferent, there's a possibility it's Advanced.
Confused? So am I.
What I like about the theory, though, is that it allows personal interpretation to occupy a prominent place on the judgement of the 'goodness' and 'badness' of something. If everyone in America rushes to see a stupid action flick, than the intelligentsia proclaims the stupidity of the national public. If that same public stays away in droves from a flick, well, those same non-elected elite state that the film probably has nothing going for it, that the public sensed a turkey and stayed home. Well, which is it? Are the people morons or dilettantes?
Probably both. Satisfying taste on a mass scale is a futile quest. There is only You, and your response to things. If it doesn't mesh with what everyone else is thinking, we are taught to think of that as proof of our own deficiencies.
That's b.s. We are the sum and total of all of our experiences on this earth -- an amalgamation of our loves and trips and schools and jobs and fears and hopes and books read and music listened to. Sometimes, if we're lucky, our own DNA can mystically recognize its counterpart out there in the real world; we can link our own view of life with another's.
We are all Advanced, in our own way. (Except for maybe Dr.Phil; something scares me about that guy. Maybe it comes from living abroad, from having learned about familial and culture mores in Japan and Cambodia, but I can't help but think that all of his stuff is so temporally, geographically finite. Meaning, none of his advice would make sense twenty years ago, or twenty years from now; it would have absolutely no relevance in China, or Brazil, or Russia. And so if something's so short-term and of the moment, so locked into a specific piece of land, how worthy could it possibly be? Final verdict: Not Advanced.) We are all operating on wavelengths that most people's frequencies are not tuned in to. The next time you see a stranger on the street mumbling to herself, or dancing to their own beat, remember that they are not weird, or strange, just at a different level of Advancement. The next time you see a flick that you just...don't...get, think of it as being Advanced, ahead of its time, displaced in time. It will allow you to sidestep our judgemental culture and leave room in your head for that point in time fifteen, twenty years from now, when you'll see it again, and something will click, and its Advancedness will, finally, at long last, be revealed, and maybe even appreciated.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Monday, January 31, 2005
A BEGGAR'S LAMENT
On consecutive days,
she waits
For the tall, pocket-filled, bag-filled foreigners to escape
From the pristine chill of
The supermarket's icy grip
Hoping,
For five hundred,
Or
One thousand,
Riel
Or,
Possibly even
A dollar,
American,
Because two days
Without food
Is long
Enough.
she waits
For the tall, pocket-filled, bag-filled foreigners to escape
From the pristine chill of
The supermarket's icy grip
Hoping,
For five hundred,
Or
One thousand,
Riel
Or,
Possibly even
A dollar,
American,
Because two days
Without food
Is long
Enough.
"I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not."
Thank God for Chevy Chase.
And I'm not the only one who thinks that way, either. I've been meaning to write a blog about the need for more Chevy in American cinema, and then, lo and behold, the online edition of The New York Post today featured in interview with Chase at the Sundance Film Festival, where he plays a part in a new independent film that allows him to show a little more depth and emotion than in his past, comedic roles.
About time, I say.
Bill Murray was given a big-time career rejuvenation by filmmaker Wes Anderson in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Why has it taken so long for directors of my generation to latch on to Chevy Chase?
In the Fletch and Vacation films, we saw the Chevy persona in all its glory. He was either the rogue or the naif, the sly one or the clueless one. Not too many people could pull off one of those parts believably, let alone two.
Ah, but then again, few like Chevy have walked the face of this earth. If Chevy and Jesus had lived at the same time (and who's to say they didn't), Jesus would have said: "Dude, the water's all yours. Go walkin' on it, bro."
Like most comedians, you either get Chevy, or you don't. I know people that despise Mike Myers, who I love; the Canadian sketch show The Kids in the Hall is another one of those, well, acquired tastes. To all those who dislike Chevy, who haven't thought of him in years, who wonder what all the fuss is about, let me make it clear that I hear your voices, and I respect their worth. Dissent is the cornerstone of a healthy democracy. (Even though you're wrong...)
Like Bill Murray, Chevy has an often pompous, arrogant self-confident exterior that hides a great, deep, boundless, endless, depthless inner pain. (A little dramatic, I know, but too much exposure to Mr.Chase has that effect on people.) The great mark of an actor, I think, is to be able to see that character thinking -- to believe that something unspoken is going on beneath the lines that actually are being spoken.
Chevy has that, in spades. (David Spade, despite his name, doesn't have it in spades. Go figure.) That kind of silent judgement. Works great in comedy, for those long, lingering deadpan looks. Works great in drama, too.
In the above-mentioned article, he sheepishly mentions being a bit of an arrogant s.o.b. in the past. (He's a legendary dick, in other words.) Who cares, say I. If we were to judge the worth of our actors by their real-life personalities, who among us would be innocent?
So I say: Now that Chevy Chase's back on the silver screen, let's keep him there. And give him some drama to play, alongside the comedic stylings that shaped my pre-pubescent mind.
He deserves another shot.
The world needs more Chevy.
And I'm not the only one who thinks that way, either. I've been meaning to write a blog about the need for more Chevy in American cinema, and then, lo and behold, the online edition of The New York Post today featured in interview with Chase at the Sundance Film Festival, where he plays a part in a new independent film that allows him to show a little more depth and emotion than in his past, comedic roles.
About time, I say.
Bill Murray was given a big-time career rejuvenation by filmmaker Wes Anderson in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Why has it taken so long for directors of my generation to latch on to Chevy Chase?
In the Fletch and Vacation films, we saw the Chevy persona in all its glory. He was either the rogue or the naif, the sly one or the clueless one. Not too many people could pull off one of those parts believably, let alone two.
Ah, but then again, few like Chevy have walked the face of this earth. If Chevy and Jesus had lived at the same time (and who's to say they didn't), Jesus would have said: "Dude, the water's all yours. Go walkin' on it, bro."
Like most comedians, you either get Chevy, or you don't. I know people that despise Mike Myers, who I love; the Canadian sketch show The Kids in the Hall is another one of those, well, acquired tastes. To all those who dislike Chevy, who haven't thought of him in years, who wonder what all the fuss is about, let me make it clear that I hear your voices, and I respect their worth. Dissent is the cornerstone of a healthy democracy. (Even though you're wrong...)
Like Bill Murray, Chevy has an often pompous, arrogant self-confident exterior that hides a great, deep, boundless, endless, depthless inner pain. (A little dramatic, I know, but too much exposure to Mr.Chase has that effect on people.) The great mark of an actor, I think, is to be able to see that character thinking -- to believe that something unspoken is going on beneath the lines that actually are being spoken.
Chevy has that, in spades. (David Spade, despite his name, doesn't have it in spades. Go figure.) That kind of silent judgement. Works great in comedy, for those long, lingering deadpan looks. Works great in drama, too.
In the above-mentioned article, he sheepishly mentions being a bit of an arrogant s.o.b. in the past. (He's a legendary dick, in other words.) Who cares, say I. If we were to judge the worth of our actors by their real-life personalities, who among us would be innocent?
So I say: Now that Chevy Chase's back on the silver screen, let's keep him there. And give him some drama to play, alongside the comedic stylings that shaped my pre-pubescent mind.
He deserves another shot.
The world needs more Chevy.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
THE AIR THAT WE BREATHE
Coming back to Cambodia after a short stint home in Canada last September, the first thing I noticed when walking out of Pochentong Airport in Phnom Penh was the smell. It wasn't even the heat that struck me the most, after the pleasantly cool air of an Ontario autumn, because you get used to the heat, expect the heat, almost wait for the heat to begin its long and slow process of breaking you down, second by second.
The smell, though, is so strange and potent that its presence eventually, somehow, becomes an afterthought; its unique aura is in and of itself the very reason it sinks into those beautiful and hideous natural phenomenas that we take for granted, like sunsets, or rain, or Richard Simmons' hair.
This is the smell of life, intensified: gas and dust and roads and rice and grass and sweat and motos and people screaming and laughing, dirty and alive. It hovers in the air, this smell, following you around, clinging to your memories. It is not an altogether unpleasant smell, truth be told; after a few days, it simply is, a fact of life, a reality of Cambodia. It is earthy and real.
In Canada, there is a clean and freshly milked glow to the air, for lack of a better word. The air is good. The air is alive. The air, when you are in parts of nature that are pure and unspoiled, feels and smells and tastes like whatever air is supposed to be, in all its pristine glory, the apothesis of our hopes for our future selves, healthy beings at one with the world.
In Phnom Penh, the air is the way we actually are: unkempt, indifferent, intrusive, fundamentally the opposite of what we could and should be. It stinks of people and their efforts, mechanical and natural. It lays claim to our worst-kept secrets, and reveals them, constantly, effortlessly, as the day dies down to night. As we're left in the dust.
The smell, though, is so strange and potent that its presence eventually, somehow, becomes an afterthought; its unique aura is in and of itself the very reason it sinks into those beautiful and hideous natural phenomenas that we take for granted, like sunsets, or rain, or Richard Simmons' hair.
This is the smell of life, intensified: gas and dust and roads and rice and grass and sweat and motos and people screaming and laughing, dirty and alive. It hovers in the air, this smell, following you around, clinging to your memories. It is not an altogether unpleasant smell, truth be told; after a few days, it simply is, a fact of life, a reality of Cambodia. It is earthy and real.
In Canada, there is a clean and freshly milked glow to the air, for lack of a better word. The air is good. The air is alive. The air, when you are in parts of nature that are pure and unspoiled, feels and smells and tastes like whatever air is supposed to be, in all its pristine glory, the apothesis of our hopes for our future selves, healthy beings at one with the world.
In Phnom Penh, the air is the way we actually are: unkempt, indifferent, intrusive, fundamentally the opposite of what we could and should be. It stinks of people and their efforts, mechanical and natural. It lays claim to our worst-kept secrets, and reveals them, constantly, effortlessly, as the day dies down to night. As we're left in the dust.
WHERE'S PERRY MASON WHEN YOU NEED HIM?
The Phnom Penh Post reported the other day that prison authorities here in Cambodia are in a bit of a bind, given that there aren't, in fact, any laws on the books forbidding prisoners from breaking out of prison.
Kind of a Catch-22 thing, I guess. You're put into prison for doing something bad. You're not supposed to break out of prison, but if you do, well, there's not much we can do about that, because it's not against the law.
Sorta defeats the whole point of a prison, doesn't it? Having a sort of 'revolving door' policy and all.
Just one more example of how seriously twisted the Khmer justice system is.
Where I work, a lot of the, like, really smart and important and talented people are actually working on important and relevant stuff, a lot of which has to do badgering the Cambodian government, pleading with them, cajoling them, convincing them that, yes, laws are, contrary to what you might believe or have heard, important. (I've never used the word 'cajole' or any form of it in a sentence before. I swear. I don't know what got into me. I try not to use words that sound totally strange and ridiculous in everyday conversation, but I think I just violated my own oath.)
Case in point:
A lot of the tsunami coverage has focused on the fact that (gasp) orphaned children may, in fact, be sold into the sex trade.
Guess what? It happens all the time. Every day. Every hour.
And a lot of these kids that are kidnapped or coerced into working in Cambodia or Thailand or Vietnam eventually, for various reasons, find themselves trying to sneak back into their native lands any which way they can. (I also try not to use titles of Clint Eastwood movies in my writing, but I think that that last phrase was the title of a flick featuring Clint and an ape. And wasn't it a sequel, too? But I promise there'll be no 'pink cadillacs' or 'magnum force' phrases.)
You know what often happens when the authorities catch them? The kids are charged with being illegal immigrants! (As if they had any say in being, I don't know, sold.)
Back home, if you're a kid, and if you do something bad, no matter what it is, they can charge you with something. Here, there's no, I repeat no, laws for young offenders. They receive the same sentences as adults, and, not only that, they're put in the same prisons.
Scary stuff. As functional and seemingly thriving as Phnom Penh is, it's little details like that that can make you shiver, if you think about them too long, if you ponder them too much.
Lots of work remains to be done here. Lots of rules to be written up. In the meantime, lots of boys and girls wait. Crossing borders, passing through hands, travelling over unfamiliar roads to destinations they'd rather not think about, as the indifferent machinations of government continue their creaky ways.
Kind of a Catch-22 thing, I guess. You're put into prison for doing something bad. You're not supposed to break out of prison, but if you do, well, there's not much we can do about that, because it's not against the law.
Sorta defeats the whole point of a prison, doesn't it? Having a sort of 'revolving door' policy and all.
Just one more example of how seriously twisted the Khmer justice system is.
Where I work, a lot of the, like, really smart and important and talented people are actually working on important and relevant stuff, a lot of which has to do badgering the Cambodian government, pleading with them, cajoling them, convincing them that, yes, laws are, contrary to what you might believe or have heard, important. (I've never used the word 'cajole' or any form of it in a sentence before. I swear. I don't know what got into me. I try not to use words that sound totally strange and ridiculous in everyday conversation, but I think I just violated my own oath.)
Case in point:
A lot of the tsunami coverage has focused on the fact that (gasp) orphaned children may, in fact, be sold into the sex trade.
Guess what? It happens all the time. Every day. Every hour.
And a lot of these kids that are kidnapped or coerced into working in Cambodia or Thailand or Vietnam eventually, for various reasons, find themselves trying to sneak back into their native lands any which way they can. (I also try not to use titles of Clint Eastwood movies in my writing, but I think that that last phrase was the title of a flick featuring Clint and an ape. And wasn't it a sequel, too? But I promise there'll be no 'pink cadillacs' or 'magnum force' phrases.)
You know what often happens when the authorities catch them? The kids are charged with being illegal immigrants! (As if they had any say in being, I don't know, sold.)
Back home, if you're a kid, and if you do something bad, no matter what it is, they can charge you with something. Here, there's no, I repeat no, laws for young offenders. They receive the same sentences as adults, and, not only that, they're put in the same prisons.
Scary stuff. As functional and seemingly thriving as Phnom Penh is, it's little details like that that can make you shiver, if you think about them too long, if you ponder them too much.
Lots of work remains to be done here. Lots of rules to be written up. In the meantime, lots of boys and girls wait. Crossing borders, passing through hands, travelling over unfamiliar roads to destinations they'd rather not think about, as the indifferent machinations of government continue their creaky ways.
Saturday, January 29, 2005
DIFFERENT SPEEDS
He was there again last night, Tom, the Khmer kid who hangs around the Galaxy Web Internet cafe, hoping to sell some newspapers.
I'd already read what he was selling, so I just chatted with him for a moment or two, his English broken and hesitant, but good, all things considered. Great, in fact.
He's a short kid, like most Cambodians. Guessing their ages is always tricky. My first instinct said: He's twelve.
"How old are you?" I asked.
"Fifteen," he said.
Me, half-surprised, half-not: "fifteen?"
"In Cambodia, people small," he said.
True, but that's not only Cambodia. In Japan, too, people are short, and hell, I'm not that big myself. Here, though, it ain't necessarily genetics, though that plays a part. Most Cambodian kids and teenagers have stunted growth.
I did some teaching for awhile at an orphanage on the outskirts of Phnom Penh (www.futurelight.net). A lot of the kids were from the countryside, where their meals mostly consist of rice, rice, more rice, and rice. You have kids that are fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old that look nine and ten. It's unnerving at first, but like anything here (or anything in life), you get used to it.
They grow at their own speed, that's all. Then they stop. Simple.
We all do. Some people are tall at eleven years old, towering over the hopscotch courts. (Do kids still play hopscotch anymore?) Some are short until nineteen, then bam, it's Kareem Abdul-Jabar time.
I would like to think it's the same thing in life, too. I'm not sure about that; it's just one of those strange theories of mine that refuse to go away, like the mosquitoes in my room at night. Things I've learned in Japan and Cambodia over the last five years are things that some kids, kids whose parents are aid workers, or missionaries, or just really-rich-and-powerful-embassy-type-people, would have learned by age seven. The allure of foreign lands, the confusion that results when you are immersed in them, the gradual unfolding of peoples and cultures that can envelop or smother you -- it too me by surprise at age twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five (and still does, at twenty-nine), but maybe embassy kids go through all that before adolescence. (Me, before adolescence, I was mostly going through Spider-Man.)
We all move through life at different speeds. Where you are now -- in your job, your family, your (hopefully) life -- is not where I'm at. We started at different places. We rested at alternative points. You got a bit of a lead, and I'm still catching up, and vice versa.
Tom, the Cambodian boy who sells the papers, he's hustling out of bed at five a.m., going to make some bucks. He's fifteen and too poor for school and chasing down foreigners for the 500 riel cut he makes from each and every sale. (That's about twelve cents, U.S.).
He started at a place far different from me, in time and space, and, let's face it, plain old luck. My position's better than Tom's, and Tom's is better than the kids around the corner, the ones you see with their mothers, rummaging through the garbage at night. I'm a bit ahead of him -- in terms of comfort, occupation, sustainability.
I still have some bumps (craters?) in the road ahead of me. I can't see the next time I'll be knocked to the canvas.
I hope Tom somehow, in the face of all rational logic and plausibility, catches up to me, if only for a moment, a second, an instant. I really, really do.
I'd already read what he was selling, so I just chatted with him for a moment or two, his English broken and hesitant, but good, all things considered. Great, in fact.
He's a short kid, like most Cambodians. Guessing their ages is always tricky. My first instinct said: He's twelve.
"How old are you?" I asked.
"Fifteen," he said.
Me, half-surprised, half-not: "fifteen?"
"In Cambodia, people small," he said.
True, but that's not only Cambodia. In Japan, too, people are short, and hell, I'm not that big myself. Here, though, it ain't necessarily genetics, though that plays a part. Most Cambodian kids and teenagers have stunted growth.
I did some teaching for awhile at an orphanage on the outskirts of Phnom Penh (www.futurelight.net). A lot of the kids were from the countryside, where their meals mostly consist of rice, rice, more rice, and rice. You have kids that are fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old that look nine and ten. It's unnerving at first, but like anything here (or anything in life), you get used to it.
They grow at their own speed, that's all. Then they stop. Simple.
We all do. Some people are tall at eleven years old, towering over the hopscotch courts. (Do kids still play hopscotch anymore?) Some are short until nineteen, then bam, it's Kareem Abdul-Jabar time.
I would like to think it's the same thing in life, too. I'm not sure about that; it's just one of those strange theories of mine that refuse to go away, like the mosquitoes in my room at night. Things I've learned in Japan and Cambodia over the last five years are things that some kids, kids whose parents are aid workers, or missionaries, or just really-rich-and-powerful-embassy-type-people, would have learned by age seven. The allure of foreign lands, the confusion that results when you are immersed in them, the gradual unfolding of peoples and cultures that can envelop or smother you -- it too me by surprise at age twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five (and still does, at twenty-nine), but maybe embassy kids go through all that before adolescence. (Me, before adolescence, I was mostly going through Spider-Man.)
We all move through life at different speeds. Where you are now -- in your job, your family, your (hopefully) life -- is not where I'm at. We started at different places. We rested at alternative points. You got a bit of a lead, and I'm still catching up, and vice versa.
Tom, the Cambodian boy who sells the papers, he's hustling out of bed at five a.m., going to make some bucks. He's fifteen and too poor for school and chasing down foreigners for the 500 riel cut he makes from each and every sale. (That's about twelve cents, U.S.).
He started at a place far different from me, in time and space, and, let's face it, plain old luck. My position's better than Tom's, and Tom's is better than the kids around the corner, the ones you see with their mothers, rummaging through the garbage at night. I'm a bit ahead of him -- in terms of comfort, occupation, sustainability.
I still have some bumps (craters?) in the road ahead of me. I can't see the next time I'll be knocked to the canvas.
I hope Tom somehow, in the face of all rational logic and plausibility, catches up to me, if only for a moment, a second, an instant. I really, really do.
Friday, January 28, 2005
ONLY YOU
Quick question:
If you had grown up on the streets of Phnom Penh, or in Canada's verison of America's projects in the Jane and Finch section of Toronto, would you be where you are right now? Working in the same job? Living in the same house?
I'm betting no.
The other night on DVD I watched the new Samuel L. Jackson film Coach Carter, about a California high school basketball coach who locked his team out of the gym, banned practice, and forfeited games until the students improved their academic standing and fulfilled the contracts they had signed with him at the beginning of the season. At one point in the flick he says: "The system has failed these kids."
The line resonates.
There will always be the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Oprah Winfreys of the world, people who, though uncommon will and focus, manage to transcend their roots and plant themselves firmly on the foundation of their dreams.
For the rest of us, we need help.
It's scandalous to even consider, but it's true -- the systems are sometimes purposefully designed to hold people back. Or sometimes there's no systems in the first place.
In Cambodia, you usually can't go to school unless you have enough money to pay the teachers alittle bit every day. Why do you have to pay the teachers? Because the teachers ask for bribe money? Why do the teachers ask for bribe money? Because the government pays them twenty American dollars a month. They can't live on that much; nobody can live on that much. The government doesn't care -- not when they're living the high life, driving Benzes and raising children who tend to scream through town on their motorbikes and ram into civilians.
It's funny. On TV yesterday there was a live panel debate from the Davos conference in Switzerland, that yearly gathering that assembles the best and the brightest from the world of finance and politics, technology and business. The members of the panel? Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Bono, Tony Blair, the Prime Ministers of three or four African nations. Not bad. Their concern? How do we help Africa? Their solution? Well, we're not sure, they said. Yes, they had many options, but implementing them, actualizing them, remains fuzzy.
The biggest problem is the most obvious problem: corruption. Economist Jeffrey Sachs has a much applauded new report stating that the way to end poverty in the next few decades is through a massive influx of cash; the only way to help the poor is to give them more money.
I agree.
It's that simple.
It's that difficult.
How do you get the money to the people? Therein lies the difficulty. How do you get past the endless levels of bribery and payoff these nations' governments demand, expect, require? You can throw all the money in the world into these countries, but if nobody's able to track it, seeing that it goes where it's actually supposed to go, then the cycle will continue.
Clinton made a point that I could relate to, because much of where I work is related to capacity building, moving away from aiding a community, city or nation, and shifting towards enabling them to build things on their own. Sounds so simple, doesn't it?
It's the hardest thing in the world. Think how long it took you to figure out how the world works -- how to tie your shoes, take a test, do a job interview, learn new software. It takes years and years and years. (I'm just realizing, after almost thirty years, that I have no idea how the world works. If anyone knows, please let me know.)
The same thing is true for countries. But there's no other choice, is there? If we just give money and feel satisfied, then nobody learns anything, nothing gets done, and in twenty years the poverty, coups and deterioration will continue, if not escalate.
It all comes down to capacity building -- having people on the ground, with the people, telling them: You do it like this and like and like this. And you do that for a whole generation, in all fields: health, education, entertainment, finance -- the list goes on and on.
There's no other way.
You have to show people how to build a system.
The system may be corrupt, and illogical, and faulty, but it has to be there to work.
If you're a kid in Cambodia, the system is barely hanging together. If you're a kid from the streets of Jane and Finch in Toronto, there's a system, yes, but what real hope is there? How good are your schools? How good are your teachers? What kind of support system is in place? Who's giving kids the self-confidence and tools that will enable them to get beyond Jane and Finch to at least the Harvey's burger restaurant at Yonge and Bloor?
The system is failing a lot of people all over the world.
And, in the end of course, the big slap in the face comes when you realize that there is no system.
Watch the movie Spartan, with Val Kilmer. It's a crafty political thriller that also kind of encapsulates everything you need to know about life. As Kilmer learns at a crucial point in the film: There is no 'they'; there is only him, and what he said he was going to do, and whether or not he will do it. That's all.
There is only you.
If you had grown up on the streets of Phnom Penh, or in Canada's verison of America's projects in the Jane and Finch section of Toronto, would you be where you are right now? Working in the same job? Living in the same house?
I'm betting no.
The other night on DVD I watched the new Samuel L. Jackson film Coach Carter, about a California high school basketball coach who locked his team out of the gym, banned practice, and forfeited games until the students improved their academic standing and fulfilled the contracts they had signed with him at the beginning of the season. At one point in the flick he says: "The system has failed these kids."
The line resonates.
There will always be the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Oprah Winfreys of the world, people who, though uncommon will and focus, manage to transcend their roots and plant themselves firmly on the foundation of their dreams.
For the rest of us, we need help.
It's scandalous to even consider, but it's true -- the systems are sometimes purposefully designed to hold people back. Or sometimes there's no systems in the first place.
In Cambodia, you usually can't go to school unless you have enough money to pay the teachers alittle bit every day. Why do you have to pay the teachers? Because the teachers ask for bribe money? Why do the teachers ask for bribe money? Because the government pays them twenty American dollars a month. They can't live on that much; nobody can live on that much. The government doesn't care -- not when they're living the high life, driving Benzes and raising children who tend to scream through town on their motorbikes and ram into civilians.
It's funny. On TV yesterday there was a live panel debate from the Davos conference in Switzerland, that yearly gathering that assembles the best and the brightest from the world of finance and politics, technology and business. The members of the panel? Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Bono, Tony Blair, the Prime Ministers of three or four African nations. Not bad. Their concern? How do we help Africa? Their solution? Well, we're not sure, they said. Yes, they had many options, but implementing them, actualizing them, remains fuzzy.
The biggest problem is the most obvious problem: corruption. Economist Jeffrey Sachs has a much applauded new report stating that the way to end poverty in the next few decades is through a massive influx of cash; the only way to help the poor is to give them more money.
I agree.
It's that simple.
It's that difficult.
How do you get the money to the people? Therein lies the difficulty. How do you get past the endless levels of bribery and payoff these nations' governments demand, expect, require? You can throw all the money in the world into these countries, but if nobody's able to track it, seeing that it goes where it's actually supposed to go, then the cycle will continue.
Clinton made a point that I could relate to, because much of where I work is related to capacity building, moving away from aiding a community, city or nation, and shifting towards enabling them to build things on their own. Sounds so simple, doesn't it?
It's the hardest thing in the world. Think how long it took you to figure out how the world works -- how to tie your shoes, take a test, do a job interview, learn new software. It takes years and years and years. (I'm just realizing, after almost thirty years, that I have no idea how the world works. If anyone knows, please let me know.)
The same thing is true for countries. But there's no other choice, is there? If we just give money and feel satisfied, then nobody learns anything, nothing gets done, and in twenty years the poverty, coups and deterioration will continue, if not escalate.
It all comes down to capacity building -- having people on the ground, with the people, telling them: You do it like this and like and like this. And you do that for a whole generation, in all fields: health, education, entertainment, finance -- the list goes on and on.
There's no other way.
You have to show people how to build a system.
The system may be corrupt, and illogical, and faulty, but it has to be there to work.
If you're a kid in Cambodia, the system is barely hanging together. If you're a kid from the streets of Jane and Finch in Toronto, there's a system, yes, but what real hope is there? How good are your schools? How good are your teachers? What kind of support system is in place? Who's giving kids the self-confidence and tools that will enable them to get beyond Jane and Finch to at least the Harvey's burger restaurant at Yonge and Bloor?
The system is failing a lot of people all over the world.
And, in the end of course, the big slap in the face comes when you realize that there is no system.
Watch the movie Spartan, with Val Kilmer. It's a crafty political thriller that also kind of encapsulates everything you need to know about life. As Kilmer learns at a crucial point in the film: There is no 'they'; there is only him, and what he said he was going to do, and whether or not he will do it. That's all.
There is only you.
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