Make It So

posted 1/11/2007
I believe Albert Einstein said something to the effect that the definition of madness is trying to solve a problem in the same old way and expecting an entirely different outcome. Here we are again, staring out at the pristine blankness that is the New Year and asking ourselves what 2007 holds for us. No matter how many times we've watched the ball drop at midnight, January 1st gives us all a little flutter of hope that this year (finally) we'll have the resolve to be different.

We'll exercise, meditate, find God, do good works and be a light onto the world. We'll become active in the sustainable energy movement, use the bread machine with only whole grains, pick up those water colors, get rid of our Matterhorn of clutter, cut out sugar completely and drink more water. We'll volunteer and donate to charity and we'll be more compassionate. We'll tidy up all of our messy relationships and make better choices from now on.

I do not suffer any grand delusions in my resolutions. I know myself well enough to know that any changes I make move at a glacial pace, and will be thwarted by my relatives and pets all along the way. In 2001, I resolved to maintain enough clear space on the dining table so that a person could sit and eat there if they were so inclined. That has not gone so well. My solution, then, was to just keep acquiring tables, believing that any one of them is bound to be clear at any given time. This strategy has not been successful.

My point? January 1st begs you to start over and make a better, tidier and more effective you. But changes, both big and small, are elusive if you attack a familiar dilemma in the usual old way (see Einstein, above). It didn't work before, but you think if you just throw a little more energy and effort at the troubled spots in your life (like, buy more tables), the original undesirable condition will be resolved.

This is as true globally as it is on the personal level. Whatever your politics, it is (or should be) pretty clear that people everywhere need clean water, food and medical care. History is simply full of blood baths that yielded nothing but loss and grief. Yet, generation after generation, someone, some where gets the bright idea that war or genocide is the prerequisite for peace and international stability, regardless of the extenuating circumstances or available options. We resolve that peace is probably the answer, but we don't actually get around to trying it.

I wish I had profound guidance to offer here. I'm struggling with creating a new vision for my life as much as anyone, but I think that Einstein had it right. The secret for transformation is understanding that new solutions bring about new results.

About 12 years ago, I was visiting my friend Jess. Jess is a professor of economics. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago; he grew up in a banking family and his parents were personal friends with the renowned economist, Milton Friedman. It's safe to say that Jess is pretty sharp on the topic of economics. With me on this visit was another friend named Dana. Dana was involved in various activist organizations whose mission statements focused on ending oppression and poverty.

Dana was also very bright, but she came from a working-class family who did not know Milton Friedman. Her grasp of the realities of the market were not keen, but she had a lot world-changing enthusiasm on her side and she took Jess to task about wealth and the wealthy.

Dana's position was, essentially, that if you want to end poverty, you have to redistribute the wealth and give poor people money. Jess pointed out that people with money understand money. Even if every poor person in America woke up to find themselves in possession of 100K, models indicate that they would only be impoverished again in 6 months. The money would simply sink away like water poured on dry earth.

Their dispute raged for a couple of hours, and, I have to admit, I weighed in on Jess's side. (He knew Milton Friedman, for heaven's sake.)

As it turned out, they were both off the mark. Despite their knowledge, education and good intentions, they were both trying to solve an old problem with an old version of Economics 101 - capitalism and socialism. They were looking through the filter of economics to solve a problem in economics. Enter, the recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, Professor Muhammad Yunus.

Acquaintances of mine are befriended with Prof. Yunus, who is a Bangladeshi economics professor and banker. My acquaintances were attending the award ceremony in Oslo, and I joined a group here to watch the telecast and see if we could spot them in the audience (we did...twice) and eat spinach dip. But for this obscure connection (and my fondness for spinach in all of its forms), I would not have heard the speech given by Prof. Yunus and, therefore, might have missed his message.

Prof. Yunus won the Nobel for his dedication to relieving the suffering of humanity, as you would expect. He was educated in the United States and believes in traditional free market principles. However, it was very clear to him that his economics lectures at the university in his home country were doing nothing to improve the lives of millions of impoverished Bangladeshis. Capitalism only really works if you have some capital to work with in the first place, and the poorest of the poor - women with children - had no hope of access to capital.

Despite years of study devoted to conventional economics and international banking, Prof. Yunus stepped so far outside of the box that he has changed the dimensions of the box forever. Yunus developed a loan program which he characterized as operating in direct opposition to any known banking principles.

First, he made loans only to women, having recognized that women use money, primarily, for the benefit of their families. He loaned small amounts of money to poor women with nothing, rather than large amounts of money to men with collateral. He went to them, rather than expecting his clients to come to him.

As most of the borrower's were illiterate, the loans were made on a verbal promise of repayment. In short, he functioned as a sort of an anti-bank, offering micro-credit so that women could make tiny and creative investments into various means of livelihood.

This little idea has been phenomenally successful. The loans have a 98% rate of repayment. Millions of families have risen out of hopeless poverty due to the economic vision of Prof. Yunus and the Grameen Bank, and the micro-credit movement is spreading like proverbial wildfire across the globe. Prof. Yunus imagines a day in the very near future when poverty will be extinct and confined to displays in museums. Milton Friedman was a very smart economist, but Muhammad Yunus went where no economist has ever gone before.

I left the party profoundly impressed by the grace and humility of this year's Peace Prize recipient. What an extraordinary man and what a simple, and perfect idea - empower the poor so they can stop being poor. But, beyond this, he stood on a podium in Norway and reminded the entire world that "we make it so." Poverty, and its resultant evils, does not have to exist. We're just used to it, and we had come to accept it as insurmountable. We create our experience and we can change our experience.

Wherever you are at, right now, whatever you want and whatever your losses, your gifts and your faults are within your power to transform. We can churn out the same ineffectual solutions to the same disheartening problems as we did last year, or we can resolve to look at our challenges (both personal and global) from a different perspective.

What do you want for yourself in your New Year (besides more spinach dip)? What is your vision for your family, your neighbors, your community, your country?

It is your New Year. You make it so.

Note-to-Self 2: My favorite quotes so far in 2007: when referring to a well-known political figure, Jon Stewart said, "...he was watching the souffl� of his genius rising."

And I don't know remember where I ran across this one, "Teach a man to fish for compliments, and he can stroke his ego for a lifetime."

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Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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