Message-ID: <199701062042.AA16446@mail.crl.com> Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 12:41:52 -0800 From: Gary Berlind <mailto:gberlind@CRL.COM> Subject: Pushing development, and little wood puzzles To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
*** My (Gary Berlind) comments follow...mailto:EUNSteve@aol.com wrote:
>Kerry,
>
>Like you say, we need help.
>
> Who can help us?
>
>You clearly know your work, care about people and the planet, spend your time
>doing something about the human condition.
>
>For now, accept the possibility that despite our differences and my seeming
>"arrogance and callousness" and embrace of naked capitalism I too care about
>the hungry and the sick and the land.
>
>What keeps us all from joining forces, finding our common ground, pushing
>forward?
>
<<<snip>>>> >Is it possible for us to create a new story that we can all accept?
>
>Steve
***Biggest problem I see is that this is not a very easy problem to solve, even if everybody on different "sides" decided to work together. I'm reminded, every time I think of it, of those wooden puzzles I used to play with as a kid, in which a shape (cube, sphere, or whatever) came apart into a bunch of little pieces. What made it hard to put the pieces back together again was not just the (relatively) simple matter of finding where each piece fit, relative to the others. What made it hard was that there was a particular *sequence* that had to be observed in order for the thing to be reconstructed. Otherwise you ended up with broken pieces of things and a frustrated soul.
I'm afraid that I think that's the way the situation is right now with regard to attempting to fix the mess we're in. Making any change at all has repercussions all over the place, and even the best intentioned efforts can cause more harm than good if they are done out of sequence. And, with zillions of development organizations all over the world (has anyone ever really tried to tally all of them?) I dare say that quite a number of pieces are attempting to be shoved back in place, but in the wrong "sequence", going back to my analogy. Arghhhh!
I put this out for what it's worth: We need to know what the overall implications of things are before we just start shoving pieces in place. Has there been any serious study of the systemic nature of the situation we are trying to correct? If so, I'd be most happy and eager to read about it, and then I'd recommend it to EVERYBODY!!!. But I suspect that our thinking and analysis tools may not really be up to the task. So what can we do, other than hope and pray? And for Goodness' sake, let's try to look before we leap.
Gary Berlind (Berkeley, CA)