[afro-nets] Eliminating world poverty: making governance work forthe poor (28)

["Jeff Buderer" <jeff@onevillage.biz>]

Eliminating world poverty: making governance work for the poor (28)
------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear George, Dabesaki,

Whatever you want to call it in intellectual and political terms, I think we all agree that people need to be able determine their own destiny and not be subject to the coercive and governance systems. When people don?t have this power in their lives, social ills emerge and eventually lead to a myriad of serious health impacts. Many in the field of ecopsychology attribute everything as revolving around health. If this assumption is correct, then the proliferation of more open and participatory societies where everyone is given equal opportunities to realize their highest potential will have a major impact in reducing disease on the whole.

Health is not an issue of modernity and affluence (we see in terms of the fact that in affluent countries there are many growing health epidemics), as much as it is a issue of encouraging harmony and balance in terms of how we live our lives. A lack of relevance in the world leads to addictive and self-destructive behaviors. When we succumb to addiction, and make bad decisions that impact our personal health or engage in behaviors that cumulatively lead to massive social, cultural and ecological degradation globally, we are perpetuating sickness and disease by our own thoughtless actions. If one looks at the dynamics of say a country like America, squandering much of its huge wealth on gambling, drugs, cars and other consumeristic objects of addiction and affliction. All this questionable economic behavior is deemed necessary by American political and economic elites because, it of course keeps the much vaunted American economy humming.

To be fair, we can see the impacts of encouraging such unsustainable and addictive behavior in the consumer and economic sector not just in America but in most of the industrialized affluent world - America is just a extreme case. The adverse impacts of such behaviors are externalized into the social, cultural, ecological and the political realms in a complex array of ways.

Most relevant to this discussion is the political. When people are not educated they are gullible and prone to manipulation. As they become manipulated into mistaking addictive and stress driven lifestyles for prosperity, success and progress, they lose the ability to make informed decisions in a democratic or open society. The question emerges is America truly a democracy or more precisely as Craig notes a republic, when the tendency on the part of the influential is to manipulate the masses for their own selfish, personal gain, and when this is so commonly accepted as appropriate behavior for wealth creation in the economic sector.

Democracy is an old word that emerged from ancient city states where democracy was a exclusive right reserved for the dominant males in Athens and more recently Genoa. The idea of the Republic in my understanding was first popularized by the Romans. Both are similar in that they can only function sustainably as open and participatory societies. However the idea of monarchy to me is problematic because it is not based on merit or achievement but rather birthright. England is one example of a model hybrid system but in that system the monarch is mostly a figurehead. Jordan or Bhutan might be two model examples of a hybrid where the monarch still wields considerable influence in governance and does benevolently. Tibet before it was invaded by the Chinese was a theocracy and is still administered in exile by the Dalai Lama.

One could argue that say in the case of country like Nigeria democracy is unworkable and that in countries with a lot of instability there is a need for a strong and not necessarily a democratically accountable leader for reasons mentioned previously in other emails. The term that comes to mind here is benevolent dictator or a elitist society with a leadership class sincerely concerned with the needs of masses but unwilling to share power with them (basically because they think the masses are too stupid to govern themselves). A case can be made that most societies referred to as "liberal democracies" are not really democratic but in actuality plutocratic, autocratic, technocratic or oligarchic or a combination of them. The key issue though is in seeing the connection of holistic thinking, which understands the notion of health is a systemic definition not simply a term that refer to say the health of a human body or a large human social unit. Rather any complex system has many interactions internally and externally that determine the overall health of that particular system.

So in my view whether the governance structures of the particular society authentically value and internalize the needs of its citizens is in my view a major determining factor in the long term health and stability of that society. In addition the social, political and economic structures of a society have an indirect impact on the health of their citizens because societies that truly encourage honesty, integrity, compassion and altruism translates over time to less stressful societies. This combined with a focus on a deeper sense of what is important other than the accumulation of wealth, power and social status, leads inevitably to less addictive and obsessive behaviors and the organic preeminence of preventative health practices and truly sustainable livelihoods and lifestyles

The outcome in Africa is understandable as these societies were until relatively recently much more community oriented (and to a limited degree is still the case) than was common in the West and so adjusting to often dehumanizing modern practices and norms has been a challenge. In addition the patterns of development put forward by the West have supported the African autocrats and their top down solutions, uncovering the misplaced intent of these programs, which is more about PR than in promoting community empowerment for the socially economically and politically marginalized. As Dabesaki says, why would we expect development to actually work in a world order driven by zero sum win-lose thinking? In other words, if development programs worked to well, the affluent countries would lose their dominant position in the global economy. We must also consider that if development programs actually worked well, the development institutions implementing them would eventually be put out of business.

Jeff Buderer
oneVillage Foundation
mailto:jeff@onevillage.biz