"America controls nearly 20 percent of the world's wealth. There are around six billion people in the world, and there are roughly three hundred million people in the US. That makes America less than 5 percent of the world's population. And this 5 percent owns a fifth of the world's wealth.
One billion people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water, while the average American uses four hundred to six hundred liters of water a day.
Every seven seconds, somewhere in the world a child under age five dies of hunger, while Americans throw away 14 percent of the food we purchase.
Nearly one billion people in the world live on less than one American dollar a day.
Another 2.5 billion people in the world live on less than two American dollars a day.
More than half of the world lives on less than two dollars a day, while the average American teenager spends nearly $150 a week.
Forty percent of people in the world lack basic sanitation, while forty-nine million diapers are used and thrown away in America every day.
1.6 billion people in the world have no electricity.
Nearly one billion people in the world cannot read or sign their name.
Nearly one hundred million children are denied basic education.
By far, most of the people in the world do not own a car.
One-third of American families own three cars.
One in seven children worldwide (158 million) has to go to work every day just to survive.
Four our of five American adults are high school graduates.
Americans spend more annually on trash bags than nearly half of the world does on all goods."
and...
"The US accounts for 48 percent of global military spending."
God has blessed America.
35,000 children died today of a preventable cause, meaning that America, this place about which all the above is true, could have done something. 35,000 children. That's 1500 an hour. That's 24 a minute. That means that 1 child around the world dies every 2 seconds. Most under the age of five. And we could have done something about it. We have the funds. We have the resources. We have the food. We have the medicine. Yet, we did nothing.
Wow. That puts it in perspective a little bit. The kids died today. But at least we're secure. And that's what happens when we accumulate stuff. When we have so much. We have to preserve it. We have to defend it. That's where the 48% of global military spending comes in. In Everything Must Change, this is what Brian McLaren calls our "suicidal system." The security, prosperity, and equity dysfunction. And there's so much more that goes into it. (see Everything Must Change, Jesus for President, and Jesus Wants to Save Christians.
And the only thing I know to call all that is evil.
evil. dark. broken.
And for now, I'll leave it at that.
7 comments:
What would you have us do?
The world has not been nor will ever be fair, to try to change that is a goal worth pursuing but won't the joys of Africa disappear if we change it?
This may be complete nonsense but, I propose that to lose the suffering is to lose the passion for life. In America, we are desperately afraid of death. We live long and we presume to have intellect. In a world where death abounds, where people are not caught up in wealth and they may die any day, a hopefulness emerges. I have not been to Africa and do not know as you do what it means to be transformed there but I do not think that lacking something is always so bad. We have decided that it is clearly terrible for people not to have what we have, electricity, relative longevity, money to buy goods in excess. However, we are not happy. Why do we presume that we are capable of improving people's lives by giving them what we have? That's imperialism in a nobler form. I do not want children to die, It has been long ingrained in me to deplore such a thought, but as a Christian, isn't death supposed to be a fulfillment?
Conclusion: To preserve the raw richness of life, life itself must be by nature raw.
That is, to live life with the passion and joy that the poorest and most destitute possess, they must remain poor and destitute, with death around them, making them more aware of the richness of life.
And therein lies the rough...
Thank you for commenting. This will be a long response because I struggle with these questions all the time, as the answers (which I very well may never find) will influence the way I live the rest of my life, and more especially, what I do with the rest of my life.
Many of the things you say are true, but I would argue that if we, ignore this equity gap, we are less than human. If we turn our backs from "bottom billion," there are things inside of us that have already died.
I think that I left the West to travel to Africa because I wanted to leave our culture and find this simplicity and vibrancy you speak of. In Kenya, I saw the negative effects of this noble imperialism you speak of. Many of my journal entries from Kenya rant about the way development was handled in Kenya. In Nairobi, I saw women in pant suits and business attire. The businessmen wore their black and white suits with their very stylish leather shoes, and it disgusted me because Nairobi was busy. Always rushing...moving, just like a Western City and very different from many of the other cities in East Africa. The colorful dress and vibrant life I saw elsewhere in Africa was not completely, but largely missing from Kenya. I was given a nice, tailored western dress shirt as a gift one time. During this time, I knew that the developed countries engaged in the development of the third world were missing it...We were imposing our culture and the negative aspects of our culture upon this orally based, community oriented, vibrant culture. And that is a travesty.
However, in Burundi and Congo there was a different story. My prior thoughts about "development" were exposed as being inhumane in some of the places I visited. When you look upon people who are dying from Kwashiorkor bellies and children who have alien-like heads because of malnutrition, I do not believe you can say that these people should remain this way. In addition, a lot of what affected me in these places were the effects of war. I won't paste the picture to this blog, but I took a photo of a young boy with a malnutrition caused alien-like head whose hair and eyebrows and cranial skin had been badly burned. I believe he was too close to an explosion in the endemic wars in Burundi. That image, along with the images of Congolese orphans as well as those of Congolese women who were raped by the Rwandan genocidaires who fled into Congo after the Tutsi liberators retook Kigali, was forever ingrained into my head. And I told that boy that I would not forget him.
Thus, there must be a balance.
Many of the Burundians I spent time with had little hope. They didn't even have a roof over their head and in the third poorest country of the world, they had no way to get out of that cycle of poverty. I would argue that the people at the bottom are not happy. These poorest of the poor, or in Christ's words, the least of these. As I said before, I believe that we are less than human if we do nothing to alleviate their suffering in light of our excess.
But... like you say, lacking something is not always bad. In fact, I'd argue that it is good. I do not believe that we should take our electricity, our obesity, and our money to buy foods in excess to third world countries. But the fact remains, that many of these people live in complete oppression, racked by wars that some would argue our Western governments caused by lack of foresight (see The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith), and have little quality of life. It's hard to enjoy "the raw richness" of life when both your parents, and 17 out of your 25 siblings were killed in a war.
So, at this point in my young life, my naive and largely innocent 19 years... it's hard for me to be presumptuous enough to say what we should do. I do want to ask these questions and I hope to stir up complacency.
Grassroots development. Microfinancing, microlending. These are interesting developments in the world of international development economics.
But as of yet, the "solution" for me in my own life, lies in a quote I was shown at the beginning of my semester here at Sewanee.
"If you come to help me, you are wasting your time... But, if you come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us walk together."
Maybe that raw richness, that vibrancy, that pure passion can be found when we realize that lacking things can be good, and we give up what we have for the poor. (Luke 18:18-30) Maybe in that we will see what Christ meant when he said that the Kingdom of heaven is here. Maybe then, we can be a part of bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. Maybe then, we will find our liberation, as we live for the liberation of another.
I had intended to write a follow up blog, and I will try to do so, but thank you for illuminating those pieces of what I wrote that were lacking or incomplete. I'd love to know what you think about this response.
One more thought, I did see the vibrancy, the beauty, and the rawness of life all over East Africa. It's there and it pulls at me, calling me to come back. Somewhere between that red dirt and that huge sky lies a lot of things we, in the West have forgotten. That's why I believe that quote is so true. We must work together for one another, giving and taking, learning and teaching.
love and peace dude...
;-)
And this may not make sense, but that post was more directed at the idea of America being an Empire than it was directed at the third world. That we should examine ourselves and our culture, rather than just ranting about dying children on commercials. That maybe, they are not the only ones lacking something... and that maybe, the more we lack, or the more we give, the more we would find.
You all should check this out, it's playing out in the "real" world. http://jesuswantstosavechristians.blogspot.com/
Yeah, the system is broken. And nationalism sucks. I'm sure you've seen McCain's "country first" slogan...no, I won't go there. That would require a whole blog post. But the point was, I agree.
Ah, perhaps it would have been just as well for me to wait for a second response. Then again, our liberation is bound together isn't it?
We dare not ignore the suffering of the poor. I think you are quite right. I continue to wonder though, is happiness in being non materialistic but still free from tyranny? What was Africa like before the ignoble imperialism that we and our forebears are responsible for?
It is tremendously tragic that children are made to suffer the kind of horrors that are no doubt somewhat common place in demilitarized regions all over the world. I agree, we can not stand to let such atrocities continue as long as we have the ability to do something. That "something" does remain problematic, and if I remain in my role of cynic, isn't the confrontation with death what remains so good at stirring passion? In America, there's sort of a malaise about living because we feel entitled to live eighty years and for medicine to keep us happy and healthy even if we take terrible care of ourselves. When life has death for neighbor, is there something more fulfilling about simply living? We can't be passive if we are truly human, this is true. However, there must be suffering for the contrast of life as vibrant to occur. It's a sort of utilitarianism argument, in theory, having a group of people die to remind the living that they need to enjoy the preciousness of life seems reasonable on one hand. It is a sick argument, but the problem continues that if a child has lost both parents and 17 of 25 siblings, they that remain are still dangerously continuing to increase the frighteningly large human population.
This is not to say that I think letting people die is effectively going to halt population growth (the 20th Century is ample proof of that).
I think that, as usual, a balance is as suggested is fundamental to making a world order. A question is, what is your ideal picture for the future of Africa? It seems like a complex issue because at present it is both much more wonderful and significantly more atrocious in different ways than America. Do you think that it is possible to raise the African people out of the present tyranny without turning them into oh how shall we put it, capitalist pigs?
For that matter, is there something that the Africa can learn from the US other than having relative peace and prosperity?
I enjoyed your insight on this matter and hopefully you can assist me again in explaining your views on these matters.
As a side note, is dude a gender neutral term these days?
Peace to you as well.
today, i miss the beauty. the simple passion. the simplicity of having nothing and yet possessing all. i wonder, as you do, is it the confrontation with death that makes life so vibrant and passionate?
but i still cannot and will not let that be an excuse for people dying of preventable causes. that is where i have to let God be in control. he can control that.
today, i remember the passion and the simplicity and the beauty in those two things. but i also remember the pain, the sadness, and the despair. i have more questions than answers, but i must continue to live for that liberation that can be found together.
i hope to write more in depth on this soon, but as of now, these are my thoughts. school seems to be getting the best of me.
in answer to your question, development as it is occurring now is doing more to make africa american than it is to simply relieve the pain and suffering.
can the third world experience relative peace without losing the vibrancy inherent in its nature?
can the world?
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