Laughter

A few days ago I began to read Marie Luise Knott’s Unlearning with Hannah Arendt.

In the early 1970s I had Hannah Arendt for classes and seminars at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City. She was a breath of fresh air.

But it was not until I started reading Knott’s chapter on “Laughter: The Sudden Turn of the Mind" did I realize that what I most appreciated was her humanness – the twinkle of laughter which one could occasionally glimpse in her eyes.

I am not finished the chapter but I wanted to share two quotes from the book.

In the early 1940s Arendt wrote:

“The friend of the oppressed will always need that great confidence in our fellow men which teaches us to laugh.”

There are too many overly serious persons seeking to change the world and to be in solidarity with the oppressed. We need the hope of laughter and confidence in others that Arendt noted.

The other quote is from Walter Benjamin whose thought she admired:

“Let me note in passing that there is no better starting place for thought than in laughter. Specifically, the convulsion of the diaphragm usually offers better opportunities for thought than the convulsion of the soul.”

I think we need a lot more laughter in our lives and in our world – so that we can think more freely and more imaginatively and so that we can be real friends with the oppressed.

More thoughts to come - as the laughter continues!

Water advocacy

The rainy season was supposed to start here in mid-May. There have been a few torrential rainstorms, but the campesinos who work the land are saying that it’s still the dry season. If we don’t have good rains soon, we may have a serious drought.

But another real issue for many rural communities is water for drinking and for household chores. Many communities here have water but the quality is questionable.

Caritas of the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán has a project, Strengthening Citizenship, that began to work in the Dulce Nombre parish this year. When a Caritas worker visited a parish zone meeting in El Zapote de Santa Rosa, several brought up the issue of the village’s water source.

Caritas arranged to do a test of the water and I accompanied the village’s Water Board and two Caritas workers to the source.

Water source

A laboratory in Santa Rosa found significant contamination with bacteria and fecal mater. A later test, after a few rainstorms, revealed more bacterial contamination and more than double the contamination with fecal matter. They also tested tap water from El Zapote.

The water source supplies not only El Zapote but also two other villages. So today a Caritas worker, Eliezer, met with representatives of the Water Boards of the three villages.

He began the meeting asking the El Zapote Board if they chlorinated their water at the town’s water tank. They checked it about every week. The cost for the chloride is about $17 a month.

Their efforts have resulted in no contamination of the water.

Eliezer also asked the other two boards about chlorination. One hasn’t chlorinated since February, because they had no chlorine and couldn’t find it in Santa Rosa or in La Entrada. The other village hasn’t chlorinated for about a year.

With the help of the El Zapote Water Board president, the two villages will take samples in a few weeks to be tested. I’m also sure they will find serious contamination.

Eliezer called someone from another municipality where Caritas works. They have a “bank” of chlorine that can provide one barrel to the two villages here.

The three Water Boards are going to meet and put together a statement to give to the mayors of the three municipalities involved as well as to the local association of municipalities. They also decided other matters.

What really impressed me, though, was how the El Zapote Water Board was so thorough and prepared. It was a little discouraging to listen to the lack of initiative in the other villages.

But efforts are being made that will, hopefully, bear fruit.

Eliezer asked me to say a few words before the meeting ended. I congratulated El Zapote for their work and mentioned that Caritas was ready to accompany the three villages in their work. But I emphasized, as did Eliezer, that they had to take the initiative, they had to be the protagonists. Caritas wouldn’t do it for them.

That is part of what outside organizations can do – accompany, encourage, motivate, help them make connections, and – when necessary – provide a bit of money. But the people must be the protagonists.

The tyranny of experts

In an effort to serve the people I work with and minister with, I am always looking for good analyses and suggestions for how to help the people assume their roles as protagonist in their lives.

I recently finished William Easterly’s The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor. I had hoped this would help me understand what is happening. It did – but not in the way the author might have hoped.

Here is a preliminary review of his book which I will revise.

THE TYRANNY OF EXPERTS

I do believe that there is a tyranny of experts who seek to control the processes of community development in the world of the poor. There are groups that come into a community without knowing the situation and impose their solutions. The desires of the people are not considered and their consent is a mere formality.

I read William Easterly’s The Tyranny of Experts in the hope of a scholarly analysis of a phenomenon that is all too real.

Easterly does a masterful job of laying bare the problems of experts, although he may exaggerate at times and chooses the worst-case examples to make his point.

I appreciate his critique of technological autocrats, centralized planning solvers, who see “one size fits all” solutions because we need to see the details of each situation and the knowledge of each part.

In chapters 3 – 5, he lays out a strong case against the autocratic/technocratic top-down theory and practice of development – I largely agree with him, especially his analysis of its relation to racism and imperialism.

I also concur with his judgment that oppression holds back development.

But I believe that his analysis is narrow and biased.

FALSE DICHOTOMIES

At base, his work is faulty because of what I see as a philosophical error. He sets up a series of dichotomies, which I believe are false:

• Free development versus autocratic development
• Conscious direction versus spontaneous evolution
• Blank Slate versus learning from history
• Nations versus individuals
• Individualistic versus collectivist values 

He asks: “Is the object of development efforts to be the nation or the individual?”

Underlying all this is what I see as an inadequate philosophical anthropology. For Easterly, it is either the nation or the individual, the collective or the individual. This dualism does not, I believe, reflect the reality of human life which is both personal and communal.

In Catholic Social Thought, as well as in much of pre-modern philosophy, the person is social.

Aristotle gives two definitions of the human person – the living person with reason, or the living person living in a polis, a city.

In their 1986 pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All, the US bishops note that: “Human dignity can be realized and protected only in community. In our teaching, the human person is not only sacred but also social.”

Reading this book, I sometimes felt as if I was in the middle of the “design versus evolution” creation debate. In fact, Easterly acknowledges this:

The debate in development between conscious design and spontaneous solutions is similar to the evolution debate between religious believers in “intelligent design” as opposed to those who celebrate the “spontaneous order” of evolution. (pp. 32-33).

I believe the debate between intelligent design and the spontaneous order of creation fails to consider alternatives – most notably, the paradox of a divine providence that needs the free participation of persons. So does Easterly’s analysis fail to consider that it is not an either-or situation.

What I see as the real issue, the person and the common good, is reduced to the individual and the nation.

A NARROW UNDERSTANDING OF DEVELOPMENT

Easterly states that trade is necessary for development.

     

What does he mean by development? By development he seems to presume “growth,” mostly economic growth – and the liberty of the market, free enterprise, which is primary in his understanding of liberty is the liberty of the market.

In contrast Pope Paul VI wrote in Populorum Progressio, ¶ 14:

Development cannot be limited to mere economic growth. In order to be authentic, it must be complete: integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man. As an eminent specialist [French Dominican Jean Lebret] has very rightly and emphatically declared: " We do not believe in separating the economic from the human, nor development from the civilizations in which it exists. What we hold important is man, each man and each group of men, and we even include the whole of humanity".

FAITH IN THE MARKET

 Easterly has a great faith in the free market, which I believe is misplaced. He even states that, “Monopoly is usually self-corrective.”

His argument seems to be decontextualized, not looking at the reality of the free market.  

Easterly writes:

 In any given area, the individual who has the knowledge to produce what customers want most is the one chosen through market competition to be the producer.  (pp. 38-39)

But what about the manipulation of wants by propaganda and advertising?

Easterly, citing his intellectual inspiration, states:

In Hayek’s words, “we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many” to produce what we want. Hayek’s poetic touch was that even when we don’t know what we want, spontaneous market competition produces “what we shall want when we see it.” (p. 34).

But is this trust misplaced?

PROBLEMS, DESIRES, OR NEEDS

This trust is problematic partly because there is no analysis of desires, wants, and needs in Easterly’s work, probably because of a faulty anthropology where needs and wants are mere related to one’s choices.

For him, economics and politics involve “the choice between conflicting or competing ends— different needs of different people.” (p. 31). 

The competition of the free market will provide for meeting needs:

A spontaneous order of competition among individuals with different kinds and degrees of knowledge to supply our needs will decide who knows best for each particular need. (p. 39).

His use of the word “needs” often seems more like a reference to “desires” or "wants."

There are genuine concerns about income distribution, in which the rich get their needs met so much more than the poor. There are still so many things wrong with the private suppliers of our needs that we could also describe the Invisible Hand in reverse: it is the process of driving out of business the incompetent in favor of the mediocre, the mediocre in favor of the good, and the good in favor of the excellent. (p. 252).

Easterly states, “Each of us has some problems we need solved…” Why does he speak of problems to be solved, instead of a fulfillment of needs?

For him food is such a problem. Instead he could have written that “Each of us has some needs we need fulfilled,” but this would need an understanding of the  nature of the human person.

Knowledge and incentive are, for him, problems of a successful problem solving system.

Each of us has some problems we need solved and we look around for who is best at solving each of our problems. Each of us also decides which of the problems of others we are best at solving. Individual freedom of choice is what decides who is best at solving problems. The chosen problem-solver is often the one who can solve their problem the best at the lowest cost— a lot of customers will choose that one to solve their problems. (p. 248)

Basically, there is no sense that desires can be formed or reformed. They are problems to be solved.

PROBLEMS OF ARGUMENTATION 

I also found his argumentation problematic in various ways.

Correlation or causation

At various places in the work Easterly notes that correlation is not necessarily causation. But his argumentation often relies on perceived correlations.

Overstatement and generalization

In making comparisons (e.g., between the Maghribhis and Genoans) he isolates certain aspects without considering others.

He also lists several success stories one of which he characterizes as “insanely great”.

To understand the South Korean specialization success, you need to know it was not just great, it was insanely great. (p. 271)

His example of Apartmenistan is, I believe, an example of reductio ad absurdum.

FINAL CONCERN 

Easterly presents his work as being concerned with the rights of the poor. But I believe that he limits his understanding of rights to some civil rights and the right of the free market. He does not seem to take into account the power of large corporations to influence public opinion as well as to influence laws in opposition to the good of the poor.

The rights of the poor to participate in their development, as well as in political and economic decisions, are important. But I believe that Easterly’s ideas of development will not really respect these rights. I fear they may reinforce a style of development that reinforces the power of the elites – political and economic.

Children fleeing Honduras

According to a School of the Americas Watch report:

The number of children attempting to cross the border into the United States has risen dramatically in the last five years: In FY 2009, roughly 6,000 unaccompanied minors were detained near the border. Credible estimates project that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will detain as many as 74,000 unaccompanied minors by the end of FY 2014. Approximately 28% of the children detained this year are from Honduras, 24% from Guatemala, and 21% from El Salvador. 

People asked me about this several times during my visit in the US. I do not have a simple answer.

A bishop testifying before congress proposed violence as a major cause. I think this is partly true – especially in migrations from urban centers where there is intense violence, for example in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula here in Honduras. But I think poverty is also a major cause.

Some US conservatives blame Obama, claiming that he’s soft on undocumented migrants. (Note that I do not talk about “illegal immigrants.” As Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has stated: “No human being is illegal.”)

Someone I know in the US claimed that Obama policy is giving assurances that children who return will not be deported. The truth is that two years ago Obama policy of non- deportation of minors who came was only for those who arrived in the US before 2007.

One morning in the US I heard a commentator on NPR speak and he made the most sense as he spoke of the growing poverty in Central America. He also noted that the coyotes  who contract the transit of people from Central America to the US have twisted US policy and told people that minors will not be deported. “Why?” the reporter asked. It’s the money! Each person using a coyote pays a fee often between $5,000 and $10,000 – with no guarantee of arrival in the US.

But a short good analysis can be found by the Sisters of Mercy here. It's probably one of the best available. 

I have many questions about this recent phenomenon.

For example, I would really like to know the ages of the child immigrants. The US considers minors any person under 18. But here in Honduras, where most of the children only have access to grade schools, there are many children and young people above 12 years of age who are working (or looking for work). In the countryside there is very little access to the equivalent of high school. Some work during the week (often in the family’s fields) and go to school in nearby cities on the weekends. So, I consider the case of 15 to 18 year olds very different from those under 15. I don’t know how many young people under 18 have asked me about going to the US. How many are between 15 and 18?

I would also like to know how many have parents or close relatives in the US. Sending for children because of fear of violence or poverty is very different from children being sent from her or leaving from here on their own.

It would also help to know where the young people come from. There is a map and some statistics in a Mother Jones article.

But even these need more careful analysis. According to Home Land Security figures, there are more than 200 unaccompanied minors from Santa Rosa de Copán. But do these young people and children come from the city or from the many outlying villages?

There are so many questions and so simplistic responses do not serve the interests of the young people involved.

I do however believe that poverty and violence, together with the lack of decent police and justice systems, are major contributing factors.

Heading home

Waiting for a plane to Miami in the Chicago airport for more than six hours, anxious to get home.

I do enjoy my visits to the US, because they offer a chance to visit with people I know and love.  

This visit ended up being rather special since I had the blessing to attend the Saturday ordination of three young men for the archdiocese of Dubuque, two of whom I know from my days as a campus minister.

I also attended the Mass to celebrate 150 years of the Dubuque Franciscans at Mount St. Francis and saw a good number of sisters whom I know.

Chapel at Mount St. Francis

In Ames, I saw a fair number of people – some by chance – and I renewed my Iowa driver’s license.

But I’m anxious to get home – to Honduras. There’s a lot of ministry to do – and I want to see how the house is going.

Honduras is my home. These visits to the US are not just chances to meet friends but also ways to share what the lives and ministry of the people I work with in Honduras.