The Theoretical End Of Poverty

So many political issues seem to revolve around the idea of poverty and conversely abundance.  And while the two main parties would like to think they're at the opposite ends of an issue, I suspect they're a little closer than they imagine.  While not being politically inclined left or right, I've been privy to several conversations between lefties or between righties and it seems my "Switzerland" status seems to lower certain armor that influences communication when in mixed company.  I've seen the tender heart of a republican and surprisingly, yes, it seems they do have hearts.  Likewise, I've witnessed incredible logic and flawless reasoning woven through the banter of democrats.  I don't buy into the stereotypes of heartless, curmudgeonly reps or spineless, weak-minded dems but so many of my friends and acquaintances seem to sling these cliches around like they're actually some kind of useful foundation from which to prove points.

And being Switzerland, I'm constantly frustrated by how easy it has been to divide us and blind us to our commonalities.  Take poverty.  Both parties (assuming they are average citizens) would solve the problem once and for all if they could.  Poverty is both heartbreaking and a nuisance.  It drives down property values, it leads to obesity and malnutrition in the same individual, it pushes up healthcare costs, it leads to more unplanned births.  The poorest neighborhoods are eyesores and hotbeds of crime and watching all this suffering take place in our own communities is very depressing indeed.  Some are afraid of the crime, the litter blowing around...maybe just the whole thing in general makes them feel uncomfortable.  Others take it a little more personally, feeling more sympathy for the underprivileged, uneducated, and the chronically ill lower class.  Whoever you are, I doubt you would want poverty to continue if you could choose.

Where we diverge is how we believe we can go about doing this.  Generally speaking reps choose tough love.  End social programs.  Sink or swim.  The strongest will survive.  Dems choose a more nurturing approach and believe we can make a difference through assisting those who can't help themselves.  To my mind, it doesn't matter which way is better.  What really needs to be brought to the forefront is this:

Until we can agree, that in order to end poverty we must first identify the cause, we will make no real progress.

It's the same kind of thinking that has led this country down the dark path of over-medication.  We simply don't address causes as a people anymore.  We prefer band-aids.  We like to fix the symptoms but we don't like to think about what might be causing them.  We are LAZY thinkers.  And although I try to avoid pessimism at all costs, I am disheartened by how ready we all are to disagree with each other, sometimes just for the sake of argument.  Even if we do suddenly redevelop our mental muscles and really get to it thinking about what led to poverty in this country to begin with and what factors still contribute, our political habits have our minds entrained to pigeonhole everything and I fear it would be a difficult task to come to any kind of consensus.   And to be quite honest, I think it would be difficult to engage the minds of our population in a non-politically aligned activity.  We seem to be addicted to this right vs left, this vs that paradigm.  

An open mind will be absolutely necessary.  We all live here and the world we are currently experiencing as "life in this country" is the cumulative result of 236 years of our "opinions".  Opinions are a reflection of worldview and worldview is what ultimately influences actions and creates the reality we experience.  It would be tempting to find what seems to be a cause and end the thought process then and there, refusing to consider others' "findings", but I think in order to get a complete view of the issue, a complete review of the populations' opinion on the matter is necessary.  I think we need to keep going and asking why, long after we think we've gotten to the bottom of it.  For every answer, we should again ask "but why is that the case?"  Eventually we will come to an "aha moment" as happens when you apply this same technique to some burning question in your personal life.  For an easy example, "Why do I sabotage relationships?"  A month later you get to the bottom of it, finally, after scurrying down a psychological rabbit-hole of cause and effect.  It's a very useful tool for freeing the psyche from limiting inclinations which leads me to think it would be useful on a larger scale.  

Is this possible for an entire nation?  And would everyone even care?  Or are we too distracted with our own busyness to consider it worth our time and mental effort?  One thing seems certain to me.  With every tacit decision to ignore the increasing destitution in our country, we gamble with the fate of our own progeny.

The Specialists

I have big ideas for this blog.

I've blogged before under various other names but always there was this dilemma...I never felt like I could really unleash myself.  Or like it was okay to be fully myself while blogging.  Although I couldn't put my finger on it then, my thoughts on the matter have led down this path.

We live in modern world of specialists...everywhere you look, there's a specialist of some sort.  And specialists, must by virtue of their nature, specialize in something to the exclusion of other things.  Initially, one of the medical professions may pop into your head, such as an allergy specialist or a cardiologist.  But don't stop there.  Keep seeking with your mind all the other areas of modern life in which this "taking apart" of things has occurred.  There certainly is specialization in careers.  Anyone in cubicle can attest to that and the mind-boggling beauracracy that goes hand in hand with no single employee ever grasping the bigger picture of their particular business.  But I urge you to go beyond doctors, beyond business...even so far as education.  School is preparation for "real" life which, in all reality, runs together like wet watercolors and yet in training for this adult thing called life, what are considered necessary lessons are delineated and compartmentalized from each other so most students never get the idea that one subject may bleed messily into the next, until much later in their in their high school career but by then, they're already preparing to major (or specialize) in something in college.  I don't dispute that obviously, they will know math is used with science or that reading will be necessary to even approach science or history.  I simply purport that this method of singular instruction deeply and yet subtly conditions young formative minds to view their world in pieces rather than the spectacular dynamic whole that it is.  What is the result of so many generations of this type of thinking?  What about our world today is a reflection of this?

Masanobu Fukuoka in The One-Straw Revolution writes of some of the frustrations he encountered on the subject.  Fukuoka was a rice farmer in Japan who radically challenged the farming status quo by what he called "Do Nothing Farming".  He once worked for the Yokohama Customs Bureau in the Plant Inspection Division and then fell ill as a young man and nearly died.  This near-death experience brought him to the epiphany that Man knows nothing.  Everything we do interferes with a pristine inter-dependent system that is designed to work beautifully without our help.  In his farming work, he did significantly less than the average rice farmer and yet enjoyed larger and heartier yields so he is still the subject of much speculation and study by several experts.  Here is an excerpt from the chapter Limits of the Scientific Method.

Recently Professor Tsuno of Ehime University wrote a lengthy book on the relationship of plant metabolism to rice harvests.  This professor often comes to my field, digs down a few feet to check the soil, brings students along to measure the angle of sunlight and shade and whatnot, and takes plant specimens back to the lab for analysis.  I often ask him, " When you go back, are you going to try non-cultivation direct seeding?"  He laughingly answers, No, I'll leave the applications to you.  I'm going to stick to research."

So that is how it is.  You study the function of the plant's metabolism and its ability to absorb nutrients from the soil, write a book, and get a doctorate in agricultural science.  But do not ask if your theory of assimilation is going to be relevant to the yield.

I have to wonder, with such narrow schools of focus on everything from dietetics to string theory, what is the yield?  We have mechanics who specialize in vehicle types, hair stylists who specialize in long hair, grocery stores that specialize in health food, schools that specialize in law, authors that specialize in economics, dentists that specialize in orthodontics...the list goes on.  I know it's unavoidable for there to be no specialization considering everyone cannot know everything.  But are we losing the big picture when we focus so precisely on one particular slice of reality?  We've seen what happens with this in politics and it is often not pretty.  In worst case scenarios, we can see what happens when we cannot bridge the gap between races and "specialize" in only our own particular worldview to the exclusion of the others.  I would daresay even religion is a particular type of spiritual specialization.  

What's so odd to me is that this all seems to be incredibly counter-intuitive.  The relationships of things in nature are so incredibly labrynthine, that even doing something as simple as trying to learn about minerals in order to bring up my copper levels was a nearly impossible task and I confess I still haven't fully grasped all the inter-dependent relationships of all the mineral levels.  As I learned about how magnesium is necessary for calcium absorption, I learned that barium interferes with calcium absorption but only if selenium levels are low.  But fairly moderate aluminum toxicity will interfere with yttrium which is responsible and necessary for selenium absorption and distribution. And I've only mentioned a few.  As you can imagine, it gets even more complex from there.  So I wondered, do I have a hard time with "cloud" thinking because I've been raised to think in linear way?  As I read more and more about minerals and their deficiencies and symptoms I couldn't help but realize that minerals are the very primal basis for life and having healthy levels of them should logically be the first line of defense in healthcare.  But it's not.  Doctors should know more about this and apply the knowledge on a daily basis...but they don't.  Why?  I can only guess is has something to do with their specialized training.  

In the midst of all these lines drawn in the sand, I find myself at the computer browsing favorite blogs.  There's the cooking blog, and the farmgirl blog...then there's the sustainable blog and the philanthropy blog.  Also the crafting blog, the apartment therapy blog, the art blog....  And here's the thing.  I am not one thing.  I am, as they say, a walking contradiction.  And my thoughts are occasionally a mess.  They don't always come out prepackaged and nicely categorized to fit right into my little class of blog.  And I suspect the same of all of you.  So since I've identified this thing as the very issue which causes me the most heartburn about blogging

the pressure of having to conform to what my blog is supposed to be about or forcing myself to come up with ideas about gardening for my gardening blog when what i really want to write about is jack white

I'm officially, up-front, saying no.  I will not classify myself.  I have a few select favorite interests and hobbies but I can't bear the thought of slapping a couple of those on my blog-forehead and living with that tattoo for the rest of my blog-life.  Warning:  I may be all over the place.  If that's cool with you, then this is the beginning of a wonderful blog-friendship.