Kruse Kronicle

Saturday Links

 1. The High Calling published an article I wrote. I linked it earlier but here it is again in act of shameless self-promotion. It goes to some of the core issues I'm trying to put into a book. Six Ideas on How to Lead Congregations to Integrate Work and Discipleship

2. Should Pastors Know How Much Church Members Give?

A recent study found that churches where pastors know how much is donated and by whom were more likely to be doing well financially. However, only half of the 3,000 responding congregations (and only 39 percent of evangelical ones) told the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving that their pastors knew this information.

What experts said (starting with "yes" and moving to "no"): ...

3. Model for megacities? Mexico City cleans up its air.

... With urbanization advancing, economies expanding, and climate change a concern, Mexico City has emerged as an unlikely environmental example for cities in developing countries suffering similar air quality issues.

Mexico City recorded only eight days with air quality considered "good" in 1992. That compares with 248 "good" air days in 2012, reflecting the success of initiatives to relocate industry, kick clunkers off the capital's streets, encourage cleaner technologies, and expand public transit and cycling options. ...

4. Unmanned Drones May Have Their Greatest Impact on Agriculture

Talk about beating swords into plowshares. The mention of drones may conjure up images of Star Wars-like spacecraft or hell-fire war machines. But the controversial technology may prove to have its greatest impact in a peaceful endeavor: farming. ...

... The market for agricultural drones lies in the technology’s ability to provide farmers with a bird’s-eye view of their land. Historically, farmers have walked their land to survey it—looking for areas that need more fertilizer or water. More recently many have begun using small passenger planes to look at their lots from the air. But since airplane rental and fuel costs can quickly run into five figures, there’s strong demand for cheaper alternatives. ...

... “Eighty percent of the utilization, once we are allowed to have Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the national airspace, in the first 10 years is going to be in precision agriculture,” said Michael Toscano, CEO of AUVSI. “You will have a situation where you can spray crops by a UAS that flies 2 or 3 feet above the plants. You can control the downwash because you can put the pesticides on the plants and not in the ground where it gets to the groundwater.”

“It sounds trivial but those numbers really add up a lot,” said Rory Paul of Volt Aerial Robotics. “If we could save farms 1 percent on inputs like herbicide and pesticide and increase their yields by 1 percent, you are looking at multibillion dollar savings.” ...

5. Fascinating piece about the The Historical Horror of Childbirth

... Such stories were not at all shocking, as a woman's chances of dying during childbirth were between one and two percent -for each birth. If a woman gave birth to eight or ten children, her chances of eventually dying in childbirth were pretty high. The infant mortality rate was even higher. The chances of a child dying before his fifth birthday were estimated to be around 20 percent, depending on the community (accurate records are scarce). In addition to the fear of death or the fear of the child dying, there was no pain relief during labor, except for whisky in some places. ...

6. "INDIA will soon have a fifth of the world's working-age population." India's moment

7. 'Late-life crisis' hits the over-60s

"Of the 33% who went through a crisis, bereavement was the most common trigger, followed by personal illness or injury."

8. Hispanic High School Graduates Pass Whites in Rate of College Enrollment

 

9. Atlantic Cities asks the question that has interested me for years: Why Do So Many People Think Gun Violence Is Getting Worse?

"Twenty years into this safer era, we still don't know quite how we got here. Perhaps in absence of a logical narrative, many Americans simply find it hard to believe this is true."

10. People Don't Wear A Shocking Amount Of Their Clothes.

"The average person only wears about 20% of the clothing in his or her closets. Most clothing goes unworn because it's the result of an impulse buy or doesn't fit correctly, Ray A. Smith at the Wall Street Journal reports."

11. This week was the 20th anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web. The Day Distance Disappeared

12. Great piece! The Tech Trends to Fear the Most: It's Not All Good

13. The market 'bubble' you've never heard of: "Some economists are worried that farmland prices are nearing bubble territory. How bad can it be if no one's heard of it?"

14. Michael Barone says College Bubble Bursts After Decades of Extravagance

15. Whatever happened to these Fortune 500 companies? "Here are seven companies from the first Fortune 500 that have since been merged, split up, or put out to pasture."

16. Dwight Lee has a thought provoking piece about The Two Moralities of Ebenezer Scrooge.

17. The global economy: Welcome to the post-BRIC world

18. Development finance in Africa

19. Toxic Waste Sites Take Toll on Millions in Poor Nations

New studies attempt to quantify just how harmful the rampant exposure to lead and other chemicals is in the developing world.

20. James Pethokoukis with a provocative article about income inequality: Why A Decline In Income Inequality Would Be Bad News

Why has income inequality been rising in advanced economies — it’s not just the US, people — over the past few decades? The economic consensus mostly explains the phenomenon as a race between accelerating technological change and expanding education. And the rise of inequality shows, as JPMorgan economist Mike Feroli puts it in a new report, that the “pace of technological advance has outstripped the ability of the educational system to supply the human capital skills needed to utilize this technology, leading to out-sized earnings gains for those who have such skills (the so-called college wage premium).” ...

 

 

Six Ideas on How to Lead Congregations to Integrate Work and Discipleship

The High Calling: Six Ideas on How to Lead Congregations to Integrate Work and Discipleship

“How can we create a congregation where work and discipleship are truly integrated?” This is a question I am hearing more often, even though much has been written about a theology of work in recent years.

Pastors and church leaders are looking for a programmatic strategy. I don’t think there is one. ...

This is a piece I wrote for the High Calling. They posted it yesterday. What do you think? What ideas do you have?

Denominational Change in American Protestantism since 1972

Black, White, and Gray: Denominational Change in American Protestantism since 1972 (Brad Wright)

Talk about a picture that says a thousand words ...

The Triumph of Suburbia

New Geography: The Triumph of Suburbia

A lengthy piece. This analysis was particularly interesting:

... Ultimately the question of growth revolves around the preferences of consumers. Despite predictions that the rise of singles, an aging population and the changing preferences of millennials will create a glut of 22 million unwanted large-lot homes by 2025, it seems more likely that three critical groups will fuel demand for more suburban housing.

Between 2000 and 2011, there has been a net increase of 9.3 million in the foreign born population, largely from Asia and Latin America, with these newcomers accounting for about two out of every five new residents of the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas. And these immigrants show a growing preference for more “suburbanized” cities such as Nashville, Charlotte, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth. An analysis of census data shows only New York—with nearly four times the population—drew (barely) more foreign-born arrivals over the past decade than sprawling Houston. Overwhelmingly suburban Riverside–San Bernardino expanded its immigrant population by nearly three times as many people as the much larger and denser Los Angeles–Orange County metropolitan area.

Clearly, immigrants aren’t looking for the density and crowding of Mexico City, Seoul, Shanghai, or Mumbai. Since 2000, about two-thirds of Hispanic household growth was in detached housing. The share of Asian arrivals in detached housing is up 20 percent over the same span. Nearly half of all Hispanics and Asians now live in single-family homes, even in traditionally urban places like New York City, according to the census’s American Community Survey.

Nowhere are these changes more marked than among Asians, who now make up the nation’s largest wave of new immigrants. Over the last decade, the Asian population in suburbs grew by about 2.8 million, or 53 percent, while that of core cities grew by 770,000, or 28 percent.

Aging boomers, too, continue to show a preference for space, despite the persistent urban legend that they will migrate back to the core city. Again, the numbers tell a very different story.

A National Association of Realtors survey last year of buyers over 65 found that the vast majority looked for suburban homes. Of the remaining seniors, only one in 10 looked for a place in the city—less than the share that wanted a rural home. When demographer Wendell Cox examined the cohort that was 54 to 65 in 2000 to see where they were a decade later, the share that lived in the suburbs was stable, while many had left the city—the real growth was people moving to the countryside. Within metropolitan areas, more than 99 percent of the increase in population among people aged 65 and over between 2000 and 2010 was in low-density counties with less than 2,500 people per square mile.

With the over-65 population expected to double by 2050, making it by far America’s fastest-growing age group, they appear poised to be a significant source of demand for suburban housing.

But arguably the most critical element to future housing demand is the rising millennial generation. It has been widely asserted by retro-urbanists that young people prefer urban living. Urban theorists such as Peter Katz have maintained that millennials (the generation born after 1983) have little interest in “returning to the cul-de-sacs of their teenage years.” 

To bolster their assertions, retro-urbanist point to stated-preference research showing that more than three quarters of millennials say they “want to live in urban cores.” But looking at where millenials actually live now—and where they see themselves living in the future—shows a very different story. In the nation's major metropolitan areas, only 8 percent of residents aged 20 to 24 (the only millennial adult age group for which census data is available) live in the highest-density counties—and that share has declined from a decade earlier. What’s more, 43 percent of millenials describe the suburbs as their “ideal place to live”—a greater share than their older peers—and 82 percent of adult millenials say it’s “important” to them to have an opportunity to own their home.

And, of course, as people get older and take on commitments and start families, they tend to look for more settled, and less dense, environments. A 2009 Pew study found that 45 percent of Americans 18 to 34 would like to live in New York City, compared with just 14 percent of those over 35. As about 7 million more millenials—a group the Pew surveys show desire children and place a premium on being good parents—hit their 30s by 2020, expect their remaining attachment to the city to wane.

This family connection has always eluded the retro-urbanists. “Suburbs,” Jane Jacobs once wrote, “must be difficult places to raise children.” Yet suburbs have served for three generation now as the nation’s nurseries. Jacobs’s treatment of the old core city—particularly her Greenwich Village in the early 1960s—lovingly portrayed these places as they once were, characterized by class, age, and some ethnic diversity along with strong parental networks, often based on ethnic solidarity.

To say the least, this is not what characterizes Greenwich Village or in Manhattan today. In fact, many of the most vibrant, and high-priced urban cores—including Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle—have remarkably few children living there. Certainly, the the 300-square-foot “micro-units” now all the rage among the retro-urbanist set seem unlikely to attract more families, or even married couples. ...

Nanoparticle Tech Could Bring Clean Water to Rural Poor

Live Science: Nanoparticle Tech Could Bring Clean Water to Rural Poor

A water purification system that uses nanotechnology to remove bacteria, viruses and other contaminants may be able to deliver clean drinking water to rural communities for less than $3 a year per family, according to a new study.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai, India, developed a purification device that filters water through a specially crafted mixture of nanoparticles to remove harmful contaminants. Their study was published today (May 6) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The device, which is currently being tested in communities in India, could offer an affordable way to provide small families with at least 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of safe drinking water per day, said study co-author Thalappil Pradeep, a professor in the department of chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. ...

The Rise Of Social Entrepreneurship Suggests A Possible Future For Global Capitalism

Forbes: The Rise Of Social Entrepreneurship Suggests A Possible Future For Global Capitalism

... Barely half of Americans polled in 2010 by GlobeScan said they believed in the free-market system, down from 80 percent in 2002. A large majority had lost trust in government. The most recent Edelman Trust Barometer found that trust in business has been below 50 percent for 8 of the past 12 years. Throughout Europe, only small minorities said they believed in free-market capitalism.

Meanwhile, social entrepreneurs are developing innovative business models that blend traditional capitalism with solutions that address the long-term needs of our planet. They are tackling chronic social problems, ranging from healthcare delivery in sub-Saharan Africa to agricultural transformation in East Asia and public-school funding in the United States. Social entrepreneurs are working in close collaboration with local communities, incubating groundbreaking (and often lifesaving) innovations; modeling synergistic partnerships with governments, companies, and traditional charities; and building business models that deploy technology and enable networking to create wins for investors and clients alike. “Social entrepreneurs are mad scientists in the lab,” says Pamela Hartigan, director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University. “They’re harbingers of new ways of doing business.”

We believe this collaborative approach offers intriguing hints about how enterprises of all sizes can deliver value for themselves and society. Below we suggest four ways in which social entrepreneurs are showing the way forward.

USING PROFIT TO FUND PURPOSE ...

DELIVERING INDIVIDUALIZED PRODUCTS THAT MARRY NEED AND WANT ...

CROWDSOURCING THE SOLUTION ...

WORKING THEMSELVES OUT OF A JOB ...

The Active Life - 5. “The Angel”: Action, Failure and Suffering. Parker Palmer

Today we move to chapter five, “The Angel”: Action, Failure and Suffering, in Parker Palmer’s The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring. This chapter features a story by Martin Buber, “The Angel and the World’s Dominion.”

The Angel and the World’s Dominion

Martin Buber

There was a time when the Will of the Lord, Whose hand has the power to create and destroy all things, unleashed an endless torrent of pain and sickness over the earth. The air grew heavy with the moisture of tears, and a dim exhalation of sighs clouded it over. Even the legions that surround God’s throne were not immune to the hovering sadness. One angel, in fact, was so deeply moved by the sufferings he saw below, that his soul grew quite restless. When he lifted his voice in song with the others, a note of perplexity sounded among the strains of pure faith; his thoughts rebelled and contended with the Lord. He could no longer understand why death and deprivation need serve as connecting links in the great Chain of Events. Then one day he felt to his horror that the eye of All-Being was piercing his own eye and uncovering the confusion in his heart. Pulling himself together, he came before the Lord, but when he tried to talk, his throat dried up. Nevertheless, the Lord called him by name and gently touched his lips. The angel began to speak. He begged God to place the administration of the Earth in his hands for a year's time, that he might lead it to an era of well-being. The angelic bands trembled at this audacity. But at that same moment Heaven grew bright with the radiance of God’s smile. He looked at the supplicant with great love, as He announced His agreement. When the angel stood up again, he too was shining.

And so a year of joy and sweetness visited the Earth. The shining angel poured the great profusion of his merciful heart over the most anguished of her children, on those who were benumbed and terrified by want. The groans of the sick and dying were no longer heard in the land. The angel’s companion in the steely armor, who only a short time before had been rushing and roaring through the air, stepped aside now, waiting peevishly with lowered sword, relieved of his official duties. The earth floated through a fecund sky that left her with the burden of new vegetation.  When summer was at its height, people moved singing through the full, yellow fields; never had such abundance existed in the memory. At harvest time, it seemed likely that the walls would burst or the roofs fly off, if they were going to find room to store their crops.

Proud and contented, the shining angel basked in his own glory. For by the time the first snow of winter covered the valleys, and dominion over the earth reverted into God’s hands, he had parceled out such an enormous bounty that the people of the earth would surely be enjoying his gifts for many years to come.

But one cold day, late in the year, a multitude of voices rose heavenwards in a great cry of anguish. Frightened by the sound, the angel journeyed down to the Earth and, dressed as a pilgrim, entered the first house along the way. The people there, having threshed the grain and ground it into flour, had then started baking bread—but, alas, when they took the bread out of the oven, it fell to pieces, and the pieces were unpalatable; they filled the mouth with a disgusting taste, like clay. And this was precisely what the Angel found in the second house and in the third and everywhere that he set foot. People were lying on the floor, tearing their hair and cursing the King of the World, who had deceived their miserable hearts with His false blessing.

The angel flew away and collapsed at his Master's feet. “Lord,” he cried, “help me to understand where my power and judgment were lacking.”

Then God raised his voice and spoke: Behold a truth which is known to me, and only to me from the beginning of time, a truth too deep and dreadful for your delicate, generous hands, my sweet apprentice —it is this, that the Earth must be nourished with putrefaction and covered with shadows that its seeds may bring forth — and it is this, that souls must be made fertile with flood and sorrow, that through them the Great Work may be born.” (79-81)

Where Angels Fear to Tread

So was the angel caring and compassionate, or full of arrogance? Palmer believes he was both:

Our action is often a mixture of ego and innocence, and we will not become whole until we can embrace that simple fact. If we wait for purity of motive, we will never act, or our action will be immaterial. If we abandon hope for a ‘second innocence,’ our action will merely multiply cynicism. (82)

And later:

Our most constructive impulse is often accompanied by a destructive impulse, made all the more destructive by the fact that we usually remain oblivious to this sinister energy within us. (82)

This duality was present in the angel, as it is with us. But Palmer reminds us that the angel is not the same at the end of the story as he was at the beginning. If we will embrace the presence of this tension we can grow to greater wisdom as the angel did.

Some see the angel motivated by compassion at the start of the story but Palmer does not. Compassion means being with another. But the angel’s “… relation to that suffering was both visual and vertical: he saw it rather than touched it, and he kept himself above it rather than entering into it.” (83) Only at the end of the story is he motivated by the horror to “journey down to earth” to understand what has happened.

And here is the rub. “What we usually learn, once we are there, is that there is no “fix” for the person who suffers, only the slow and painful process of walking through the suffering to whatever lies on the other side.” (84) Our attempts at “fixing” things is really an effort to distance ourselves from the pain of others.

If you take my advice, and do it right, you will get well and I will be off the hook. But if you do not follow my advice, or do not follow it properly, I am of the hook nonetheless: I have done the best I could, and your continued suffering is clearly your fault. (85)

Meaningful action requires coming close to the others with compassion.

The Healing Power of Failure

Key to the angel’s transformation is his willingness to enter into his failure, to understand it and learn from it. He does not run away from it and minimize it. Palmer tells a wonderful story about a wealthy white suburban congregation yoked with an urban black congregation. After three years of making money and skills available, nothing meaningful was happening for the black congregation. The white congregation asked Palmer to do a sociological analysis to help them “fix the problem.” Palmer writes:

… In fact, I did not view the situation as a problem to be solved. I suggested that in a congregation as wealthy as theirs, among people with so much power, the one kind of poverty that they could experience was the poverty of being unable to achieve the results they wanted. Their frustration with their sister church was, perhaps as close as they would ever get to the daily poverty of inner city blacks who can achieve so few of their cherished goals. (88)

Only by thoroughly embracing failure can we grow in understanding. Palmer concludes this section with this observation:

Rather than holding his [the angel] failure at arm’s length and trying to move on, he entered fully into the pain of it and sought help from the only source left. That is all we can do when we fail so miserably – but if we do it, it is enough. (90)

What Kind of God is This?

Palmer notes that many people are put off by the characterization of God in the story. God seems to be in total control and yet allows seemingly unnecessary cruelty. If God knew how the story would end, why did God not tell the angel?

Palmer counters that the angel did know something of the truth from the start. The problem was that the angel “could no longer understand why death and deprivation need serve as connecting links in the great Chain of Events.”

… The problem from the beginning is that the angel knew the truth but “could no longer understand” it. That is, he refused to accept what he already knew.

Some of us do a lot of that, I think. We know things that we do not want to accept, and so we act as if we do not know them – until our actions and their outcomes force us to acknowledge what we already knew. … (91)

Furthermore,

… We are often ready to receive a false blessing no matter what the eventual cost; it takes unusual maturity to turn down. … (91-92)

Palmer writes:

So Buber’s God might be acquitted of irresponsibility on at least two counts. One, God gave the angel freedom, even to mess up. Two, even if God had reminded the angel at the outset that life demands suffering, the angel still would have tried to circumvent that truth. But those understandings of God do not go deep enough. The truth about God in this story – and, I believe, about God in our lives – is far more radical and unsettling: God is in this mess with us and has the same unfulfilled yearnings that make our human hearts ache. (92)

I have no doubt many will find this controversial. Personally, I think there is angle from which this must be true. If God has created beings with whom he desires a loving relationship, then those beings must be able to freely chose to love God (or not). God can still be sovereign with confidence that God’s love will prevail and still be open-ended in honoring our freedom to choose, in including us as co-creative partners of the new reality to which God is calling us.

Jesus says “I am the vine and you are the branches.” Vines do not bear fruit. Branches do. It is through his community that Christ makes himself known. Paul says that we are the body, the physical presence, of Christ. Again, it is through Christ’s community that God is made known. In the Buber story, it is God who awakens something in the angel to take creative action, not God acting independently or God sending an automaton to execute instructions.  “… God in this story is a trusting and risking parent who gives the child the power and freedom to live his or her life to the fullest, no matter what.” (94)

A Great Work to be Born

In the final section Palmer writes:

On one level, the lesson God has to teach is simply the truth about nature itself: Seeds do not grow if they are not “nourished with decay.” That is what composting and fertilizing are all about. By ridding earth of decay for a year, the angel destroyed the conditions that allow true grain to grow, and the result was grain that could not nourish people once it was made into bread. This law of nature, God tells the angel, is the law of human nature as well. Decay and shadow, flood and sorrow, must fertilize souls as well as seeds if the fruit of our inner life is to nourish us and others.

But God’s teaching has a more immediate, less abstract, meaning. With it, God is trying to help the angel understand the very process that God and the angel are going through. The Great Work is the work the angel is engaged in – the work of developing compassion by suffering the fires of failure. God is engaged in this Great Work with us, continually expanding the scope of God’s own compassion and experiencing the failures of love. (95)

With all this being true there is the hope that somehow this inescapable reality can be escaped. Enter the vision of a messiah. God does enter in to our circumstances to overcome this reality, not over and against us, but with and through us. It is a process of sanctification, of learning becoming ever more compassionate.

 

Questions

What parts of the story resonate with you? Which parts trouble you? Why?

Can you recall you times when you or others sought to achieve great works only to end in great disappointment, even horror? How have those experiences shaped you?

What do you think of how Palmer frames God? What encourages you or troubles you about seeing God in this way?

Previous/Next

Will Science Journalists Ever Confront Democrats?

Real Clear Science: Will Science Journalists Ever Confront Democrats

... He [Phil Pliat at Slate] also rattles off a list of anti-science Congressmen, all Republicans. Excluded from his list are the 53 Democratic Congressmen and Senators (compared to only two Republicans) who wrote a letter to the FDA demanding labels on genetically modified food. This policy position is in direct opposition to that held by organizations representing America’s finest scientists and doctors – the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Medical Association (AMA).

Plait also failed to mention the group of Democratic Congressmen who support a resolution proposing a new hypothesis about global warming: That climate change will cause an increase in the number of hookers around the globe.

Also AWOL from Plait’s list is Tom Harkin, the quack-loving, homeopathy-pushing Senator from Iowa who is responsible for helping legitimize alternative medicine. Such pseudoscientific voodoo has done more to harm average Americans than any misguided teachings on evolution or climate change.

Plait goes on to lament how scientific reports were censored in the “Bad Old Days” of the George W. Bush administration. He conveniently leaves out that the Obama Administration purposefully withheld information from scientists during the BP oil spill and doctored documents to make it appear as if scientists agreed with the drilling moratorium they implemented. And he did not mention that the Obama administration interfered with the FDA’s approval of genetically modified salmon. ...

... Finally, at the end of the article, Plait makes something of a confession:

I know I focus a lot on these attacks coming from the far right—because that’s where the overwhelming majority originate—but in truth they’re coming from all directions, and it’s up to us to do something about it. [Emphasis added]

Wrong. Plait focuses on the far right because he is a partisan. He ignores the equally massive volume of anti-science garbage coming from the far left because he sympathizes with that side of the aisle. It is confirmation bias combined with motivated forgetting. ...

Saturday Links

Some weeks the pickin's are thin. Not this week.

1. Asians are now the largest immigrant group in Southern California: New Suburban Dream Born of Asia and Southern California

2. Surge in unwed mothers: Deep in the stats, it's not what you think

According to the US Centers for Disease Control, 42 percent of children will have lived with cohabitating parents by the time they are 12 years old, almost twice as many who will have divorced parents. And this particular sort of family structure is on the rise, a number of studies show.

3. In a sharp trend reversal, highway fatalities rise

"The news, while disheartening, is not surprising," said Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. "With the improving economy and historically low levels of motor vehicle deaths in recent years, we expected deaths to increase. Highway deaths have been declining significantly in recent years."

4. We live in a house that is 105 years old. IMO, most houses built after 1940 are boring. How Americans' Taste in Houses Has Evolved Over the Last Century

5. Are we purging the poorest?

In a new book, MIT urbanist Lawrence Vale examines the downsizing of public housing.

6. Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen having been popping up everywhere promoting their new book, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. Here is a PBS interview:

Watch Google's Schmidt, Cohen Describe a 'New Digital Age' on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

7. Love this story: Alleviating Poverty with a Washing Machine Powered by Your Feet

The GiraDora uses the principles of a salad spinner to make cleaning clothes less back-breaking and time-consuming work for millions of people in poverty.

8. Amen to this article. Good charities spend more on admin but it is not money wasted

The popular idea that charities fritter money on unnecessary admin has been proven wrong. You must spend to be effective.

9. Why US firms are turning to Mexico, leaving China behind

 ... Mexico has more international trade deals than any other country, and exports as many goods as the rest of Latin America combined.

There has always been an electronics manufacturing hub in Tijuana, but Chinese competition damaged its business a decade ago.

Now rising wage costs in Asia and a higher exchange rate are prompting many companies targeting the US market to take another look at Mexico. ...

...The new Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto wants to put a new spin on the country with the image of a booming economy and as a good place to do business.

Security and the drugs problem still dominate talks between the US and Mexico, but its southern neighbour's increasing importance in the global economy is changing the relationship. ...

10. The Manufacturing Cost Components For A Bunch Of Different Things

11. Five Innovative Technologies that Bring Energy to the Developing World

12. No-Wash Shirt Doesn't Stink After 100 Days

13. Craig Stanford, 'Planet Without Apes' Author, Says Eco-Tourism Could Save The Primates

A slice of the money that tourists pay can run $500 an hour at some of the sites in East Africa and goes to build hospitals and hire teachers.” Although it’s not philosophically or altruistically driven, the bottom line is the animals are more valuable alive than dead, since there’s an incentive to protect them.

14. Approaching Nutrition From An Investor’s Mindset

How does one succeed in nutrition when nobody seems to agree on anything? How can one get the benefits that arrive in the early stages of a diet without staying too long and compromising their health? What has worked well for me is thinking about nutrition like an investor thinks about investment opportunities.

15. The Lies You've Been Told About the Origin of the QWERTY Keyboard.

The QWERTY configuration for typewriters can be traced, actually, to the telegraph.

16. Money Buys Happiness and You Can Never Have Too Much, New Research Says

Here again we have to revisit the differences between happiness, joy, meaning, and satisfaction.

17. Baseball as a Road to God

Watch Baseball and Religion on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

18. Why Older Minds Make Better Decisions

Recent research has already challenged what we thought we knew about the capability of the brain. What has become clear, says Dr. Gregory Samanez-Larkin of Vanderbilt University, one of the network’s co-directors, is that despite a decline in some types of cognitive function, “older people often make better decisions than younger people.”

19. Moon Landing Faked!!!—Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories

New psychological research helps explain why some see intricate government conspiracies behind events like 9/11 or the Boston bombing.

20. Scot McKnight give his answer to the question So What’s an Anabaptist?

21. Beneath the stereotypes, a stressful life for preachers’ kids

22. When and Where Is It Okay to Cry?

23. 10 Reasons Why Humor Is A Key To Success At Work

24. Scientists May Be On Brink Of Major Discovery In Hunt For HIV Cure

Danish scientists are expecting results that will show that “finding a mass-distributable and affordable cure to HIV is possible.”

They are conducting clinical trials to test a “novel strategy” in which the HIV virus is stripped from human DNA and destroyed permanently by the immune system.

God’s Favorite Place on Earth

I recently received a copy of new book by Frank Viola titled God’s Favorite Place on Earth. The book uses a creative approach to reflecting on Jesus' visits to Bethany. Each of the six chapters begins with Viola role-playing Lazarus, narrating the various episodes from his viewpoint. Each chapter then presents the biblical text of the story, followed by Viola's reflections. There are discussion questions at the back for group study.

I confess that I am not typically fond of this genre where an author tries to offer a narrative through the mouth of a biblical character but this worked. I had never really thought about the place of Bethany in the larger scheme of things, at least not in the way Viola has done here. I found this to be an enjoyable read, prompting many moments of reflection. I encourage you to check it out if you are looking for a devotional or for a small group study.

To promote the book, Viola and the publisher will give you  twenty-five bonus gifts if you buy by May 7. So jump on over to www.godsfavoriteplace.com and check it out.

How Nations Succeed: What's the Secret to Ending Poverty?

This piece is a little too narrow in attributing positive change almost exclusively to markets. I would argue that things are considerably more complicated and the video would be more convining with some balance. But the video does do a powerful placing our economic moment in time in context.

Protecting land rights using Wikipedia-style maps

Christian Science Monitor: Protecting land rights using Wikipedia-style maps

Anyone who is familiar with Hernando DeSoto's The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, knows that the poor control trillions of dollars of capital in the form real estate but can't leverage it due to inadequate property rights. As you read this article keep in mind that 5 billion people are expected to gain access to the internet in less than a decade.

Building data bases of land ownership, Wikipedia-style, would be a cheap and easy way for poor, rural communities to compile a record of property rights and land use, reducing corruption and helping to lessen illegal land grabs.

Imagine whipping out your smartphone, walking the boundaries of your property, and pressing “Send” to upload a map of your land to a common databank. You also could attach a photo of a legal contract proving your tenancy or ownership.

The pressure to record land tenure is mounting worldwide. ...

It seems like this could have a tremendous impact on economic development with the poor.

Suicide Rates Rise Sharply in U.S.

New York Times: Suicide Rates Rise Sharply in U.S.

Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the past decade, prompting concern that a generation of baby boomers who have faced years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers may be particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted harm.

More people now die of suicide than in car accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the findings in Friday’s issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In 2010 there were 33,687 deaths from motor vehicle crashes and 38,364 suicides.

Suicide has typically been viewed as a problem of teenagers and the elderly, and the surge in suicide rates among middle-aged Americans is surprising.

From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7. Although suicide rates are growing among both middle-aged men and women, far more men take their own lives. The suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000.

The most pronounced increases were seen among men in their 50s, a group in which suicide rates jumped by nearly 50 percent, to about 30 per 100,000. For women, the largest increase was seen in those ages 60 to 64, among whom rates increased by nearly 60 percent, to 7.0 per 100,000. ...

The Benefits of Servant Leadership

Harvard Business School's "Working Knowledge" has a post, Why Isn’t ‘Servant Leadership’ More Prevalent?, which is a bit strange because the article never addresses the question. However, I did think this was interesting:

Now it appears that a group of organizational psychologists, led by Adam Grant, are attempting to measure the impact of servant leadership on leaders, not just those being led. Grant describes research in his recent book, Give and Take, that suggests that servant leaders are not only more highly regarded than others by their employees and not only feel better about themselves at the end of the day but are more productive as well. His thesis is that servant leaders are the beneficiaries of important contacts, information, and insights that make them more effective and productive in what they do even though they spend a great deal of their time sharing what they learn and helping others through such things as career counseling, suggesting contacts, and recommending new ways of doing things.

Further, servant leaders don't waste much time deciding to whom to give and in what order. They give to everyone in their organizations. Grant concludes that giving can be exhausting but also self-replenishing. So in his seemingly tireless efforts to give, described in the book, Grant makes it a practice to give to everyone until he detects a habitual "taker" that can be eliminated from his "gift list."

6 of the world’s ten fastest growing economies are in sub-Saharan Africa

Economist: Development in Africa: Growth and other good things

... Six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies of the past decade are in sub-Saharan Africa. A clutch of countries have enjoyed growth in income per person of more than 5% a year since 2007. ...

... GDP is not a perfect measure of living standards. A new study from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative takes a broader look at well-being in Africa. As well as income per person, BCG’s gauge of living standards includes jobs, governance, health, and inequality. Measured in this way, well-being in much of sub-Saharan Africa is lower than it ought to be, given rising average incomes per person. Levels of well-being in South Africa are out of whack with its GDP per head. Kenya and Ghana do a much better job of reaping the benefits of a growing economy.

Yet many of the countries whose well-being has improved most in the past five years are in Africa. This list is headed by Angola and includes Congo, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania. All have enjoyed rapid growth in GDP per person. But they have also done well at translating that strong growth into improved well-being: in technical terms, the correlation between GDP per person and well-being above one in these countries (see chart). ...

 

 

Is It Crazy to Think We Can Eradicate Poverty?

New York Times: Is It Crazy to Think We Can Eradicate Poverty?

... Fortunately, this deadly and cyclical form of poverty [living on less than $1.25 a day] is already on its way toward obsolescence, and much faster than many development economists expected. The first Millennium Development Goal — to halve the proportion of the world population living in dire poverty by 2015 — was met five years early, as the rate fell to an estimated 21 percent in 2010, from 43 percent in 1990. Some economists had feared that the recession would arrest or even reverse the trend, given how interconnected the global economy is, but the improvement continued, unabated. Annual growth dipped for developing economies in 2009 but has since rebounded to about 5.3 percent a year, a figure dragged down by weaker peripheral European economies.

For much of the improvement, the world can thank one country: China, which alone accounts for about half of the decline in the extreme poverty rate worldwide. It has also driven significant gains across the region. In the early 1980s, East Asia had the highest extreme-poverty rate in the world, with more than three in four people living on less than $1.25 a day. By 2010, just one in eight were. But other middle-income countries, like Brazil, Nigeria and India, have experienced significant growth, too — in no small part because tens of millions of the very poor have moved from rural areas to cities, where they become richer, healthier and more productive for their economies....

... For the poor living in poor countries, particularly the profoundly unstable ones, gains have been harder-fought and slower, a trend that the World Bank’s own economists describe as worrisome. But that is not to play down the successes so far. In 2008, for the first time since the bank started measuring the statistics, the number of people living in dire poverty and the dire-poverty rate fell in every region around the world. Extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa has at last dipped below the 50 percent mark. Still, many within the development world doubt the ability of NGOs to cure the world’s most troubled nations of their woes. “I don’t think we have a recipe for fixing the Congo or South Sudan or Afghanistan,” says Birdsall, of the Center for Global Development. ....

 

 

The Active Life - 4. "The Woodcarver": A Model for Right Action. Parker Palmer

This week we are looking at chapter 4, “’The Woodcarver’: A Model for Right Action,” in Parker Palmer’s book, The Active Life. Palmer is drawing on another story by the ancient Taoist philosopher, Chuang Tzu.

 

The Woodcarver.

 

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand

Of prescious wood. When it was finished,

All who saw it were astounded. The said it must be

The work of spirits.

The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:

“What is your secret?”

 

Khling replied: “I am only a workman:

I have no secret. There is only this:

When I began to think about the work you commanded

I guarded my spirit, did not expend it

On trifles, that were no to the point.

I fasted in order to set

My heart at rest.

After three days fasting, I had forgotten gain and success.

After five days

I had forgotten criticism.

After seven days

I had forgotten my body

With all its limbs.

 

“By this time all thought of your Highness

And of the court had faded away.

All that might distract me from the work

Had vanished.

I was collected in the single thought

Of the bell stand.

 

“Then I went to the forest

To see the trees in their own natural state.

When the right tree appeared before my eyes,

The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.

All I had to do was to put forth my hand

And begin.

 

“If I had not met this particular tree

There would have been

No bell stand at all.

 

“What happened?

My own collected thought

Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;

From this live encounter came the work

Which you ascribe to the spirits. (55-56)

 Palmer suspects that many people will find this story a bit on the romantic side. Does it really apply to our contemporary work world?

Many people feel hampered by the hierarchies in which we often must work, by institutional structures that curtail the independence that we think we need to do our creative best. But few people work in a setting as demanding as the woodcarver’s. … When I ask Chinese scholars what would have happened if Khing had failed to produce a bell stand acceptable to the prince, they usually answer with a sweeping movement of the forefinger across the front of the throat. (57)

Few of us work under such demanding circumstances and yet the woodcarver seems to us to take on odd approach in completing his task. Palmer writes that after years of reflection on this story he sees four “critical junctures” in the story where an element of work is revealed that we can learn from. “The four elements are motives, skills and gifts, ‘the other,’ and results.” (58) Palmer unpacks these four elements during the rest of the chapter.

Motives

Each action has a motive behind it. Khing is not making the bell stand out of some whimsical desire to create but in response to a command by the prince. He must do this to survive. This may not be the most desirable motivation for action but it is what is. However, once the action is set in motion, Khing has the freedom to choose how he will complete his task. He begins by fasting to cleanse himself of all the destructive pressures and motivations that will hinder him from authentically engaging his task. By forgetting the details of his present context he was able to re-member … join back together the authentic pieces of his identity … and act out of who he truly was. Palmer writes:

 … If we are to transcend the motives and context that so often limit and distort our action, we must enter into our versions of fasting, forgetting, and dying. (64)

As I read this section my mind kept going to this passage in the Bible:

Col 3:22-24

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ.  NRSV

R. Paul Stevens notes that ministry is not defined by what we do but rather by who we serve. It is critical to continually “re-member” our identity as servants of Christ in the face of a world that endlessly seeks to dismember us with other motives.

Skills and Gifts.

Khing resists the adulation thrust upon him for his work and thereby the temptation to unreflectively throw himself into his task. His skill is not superhuman. His workmanship comes from experience, practice, and awareness. People often give such accolades (“the work of the spirits”) to an accomplished craftsman because ascribing high quality of work to supernatural sources frees them of reflecting on how poorly devoted they have been to their own development. Khing is not letting others off the hook.

Palmer goes on to reflect on a distinction between innate abilities we possess and skills we have learned. He writes:

The skills we are most aware of possessing are often those we have acquired only through long hours of study and practice, at considerable financial or personal cost. Precisely because these skills once cost us effort to acquire, and still cost us effort to employ, we are acutely aware of owning them. Ironically, these self-conscious skills are often not our leading strengths; if they were, they would not be so effortful. But they are our strengths upon which we sometimes build our identities and our careers – though we build on an anxious, uncertain foundation. Meanwhile, our native, instinctive gifts either languish unused and unappreciated or get used unconsciously without being named and claimed. (66)

Concerning the woodcarver, Palmer observes:

… the woodcarver possesses several other gifts [other than technical woodcarver skills], all of which are essential to the mastery he demonstrates: the capacity to wait patiently for insight to emerge, the capacity to trust in the outcomes of uncertain process, the capacity to take risks under pressure, the capacity to speak his truth even when it is not what people want to hear. (67)

To discover our innate abilities, Palmer suggests we might want to reflect on our earliest memories as a child and remember how we spent our time. What things brought us pleasure and what things we could not abide? By going back to early memories of ourselves we can recapture what we naturally did before we were socialized to conform to particular norms or to ground our identity in acquired skills. I was counseled to do this a few years ago. I think the exercise was one of the most important acts of self-discovery I have ever done.

The Other

Action always involves an “other,” whether other people or other objects. “Right action requires knowledge of the other’s nature, which means knowledge of its potentials and limits, of what it can and cannot do.” (70)

In this section I think Palmer is wrestling with a polarity. We are not intended to leave the world untouched in a pristine primitive state but neither are we to treat the “other” as only raw material to be shaped for utilitarian purposes. In this sense, I’m reminded of Darrell Cosden (Theology of Work) who reminds us that the natural order is simultaneously the raw material out of which we fashion artifacts and also our home. Embracing either pole without the other is dehumanizing. Our human existence is one of correctly discerning how we work in harmony with other, even as we reshape it.

Results

Palmer does not deny that achieving results are important but he pushes back against the idea that the only meaningful, or even primary, thing is the results.

“… As long as ‘effectiveness’ is the ultimate standard by which we judge our actions, we will act only toward ends we are sure we can achieve. People who undertake projects of real breadth and depth are very unlikely to be “effective,” since effectiveness is measured by short-term results (never mind the fact that such people may be creating cultural legacies by their “failures”). But people with small visions will win the effectiveness awards, since those projects are so insignificant that they can almost always ‘succeed’ (never mind the fact that they contribute nothing of real merit to the commonweal). (75)

Palmer tells of a friend who said, “’I have never asked myself if I was being effective, but only if I was being faithful.’” (76) But Palmer goes on to add:

Again, results are not irrelevant. We rightly care about outcomes; we have to live with them, and being accountable for them is part of right action. But to make results the primary measure of action is a sure path to either inanity or insanity. The only standard that can guide and sustain us in action worth taking is whether the action corresponds to the reality of the situation, including the reality of our own inward nature.

The paradox is that faithful action does get results. …  (78-79)

Finally, Palmer reminds us the when we act we are not only shaping the “other” but we are also shaping ourselves.

 

Questions

Do you feel trapped in your work, compelled to do work that may not be your first choice or work for which your employer is seeking to motivate you in ways that dismember your true identity? What do you think of Palmer’s idea of “re-membering” ourselves?

Have you ever deeply reflected on your childhood to discover what things brought you pleasure or dissatisfaction? What does such reflection tell you about the innate abilities God has given you?

It what ways do you experience a tension between seeing the world as raw material and as home that nourishes us?

How have you seen the tension between results and faithfulness played out in your own life?

Previous/Next

Pro-business vs. pro-market

I came across this quote a couple of weeks ago by Luis Zinagles in his article Capitalism After the Crisis (HT: Carpe Diem)

True capitalism lacks a strong lobby.

That assertion might appear strange in light of the billions of dollars firms spend lobbying Congress in America, but that is exactly the point. Most lobbying seeks to tilt the playing field in one direction or another, not to level it. Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition. Open competition forces established firms to prove their competence again and again; strong successful market players therefore often use their muscle to restrict such competition, and to strengthen their positions. As a result, serious tensions emerge between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business one, though American capitalism has always managed this tension far better than most.

This also explains why many people bristle at the term "free market." They incorrectly perceive that "free market" means unfettered businesses having the freedom to stack things in their favor (and indeed some business lobbyists try to twist free market constructs to justify efforts to curb challenges from competition contributing to the confusion.) They advocate for "fair trade" but free trade is fair trade. They should be championing a free market in opposition to many pro-business agendas.

Saturday Links

1. Research Digest reports that Students motivated by wealth are just as likely as others to help in an emergency

"... Seventy-eight per cent of the business students offered some kind of help to the stranger. Sixty-six per cent went so far as refusing to leave the stranger or giving him/her their mobile phone. The degree to which the students reported being wealth-driven was not associated with their levels of helping. Neither was their self-reported willingness to accept an illegal stock trading tip off. Being in a hurry also made no difference, neither did the content of the speech they were about to give. A factor that was linked with helping behaviour was "intrinsic religiosity" - that is, pursuing religion as an end in itself, not for the sake of status or other gain. ..."

2. American progressives are fond of pointing to the Scandinavian economic model as a model for the United States. As I've noted in other posts, for years Sweden has been moving steadily away from the model progressives champion. (for example see Free Market Sweden, Social Democratic America and Are free markets the secret to Sweden's success? Now the New York Times reports that Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault.

... Already the government has reduced various early-retirement plans. The unemployed used to be able to collect benefits for up to four years. Now it is two.

Students are next up for cutbacks, most intended to get them in the work force faster. Currently, students are entitled to six years of stipends, about $990 a month, to complete a five-year degree which, of course, is free. Many of them take even longer to finish, taking breaks to travel and for internships before and during their studies....

... It is proposing cuts to welfare grants for those under 30 and stricter reviews to make sure that such recipients are steered into jobs or educational programs before they get comfortable on government benefits.

Officials have also begun to question the large number of people who are receiving lifetime disability checks. About 240,000 people — roughly 9 percent of the potential work force — have lifetime disability status; about 33,500 of them are under 40. The government has proposed ending that status for those under 40, unless they have a mental or physical condition that is so severe that it keeps them from working. ...

3. Business Insider has slide presentation of graphs highlighting 12 Popular Myths About The US Economy. Here is one about the degree of the U.S. offshoring work to low wage countries.

4. Yuval Levin makes an excellent point about how conservatives frequently respond poorly with arguments against dependency when progressives talk about "community."

... We [conservatives] reach for the idea of dependency because of the kind of arguments we often respond to from the left—arguments that seem like calls for common action instead of individual action. But we should look more carefully at those arguments. The problem with the “you didn’t build that” mindset, as becomes particularly clear if you read what the president said before and after that line, is not just that it denies the significance of individual initiative (though that’s an important part of the problem, and our culture of individual initiative, which is far from radical individualism, is a huge social achievement in America) but also that it denies the significance of any common efforts that are not political. The president took the pose of a critic of individualism, but in fact the position he described involves perhaps the most radical individualism of all, in which nothing but individuals and the state exists in society. ...

 ... The utopian goal of the most radical forms of liberalism has always been the complete liberation of the individual from all unchosen “relational” obligations—obligations to the people around you that are a function of the family and community in which you live. Resentment against such obligations was a central and powerful motive in the radical late-18th century thought that gave us some (though not all) forms of modern libertarianism and the modern Left, and the defense of such obligations was central to the counter-arguments that yielded modern conservatism. ...

5. Pew Research has a report on the Public's Knowledge of Science and Technology. You can take the test here. (I got a gold start, though I confess I had two lucky guesses.) And on a related note, 4th-Grade 'Science Test' Goes Viral: Creationism Quiz Claims Dinosaurs Lived With People. Oye!

6. Tyler Cowen looks at two reports on Why did Cuba become healthier during the economic meltdown of the 1990s? From one report:

This “abrupt downward trend” in illness does not appear to be because of Cuba’s barefoot doctors and vaunted public health system, which is rated amongst the best in Latin America. The researchers say that it has more to do with simple weight loss. Cubans, who were walking and bicycling more after their public transportation system collapsed, and eating less (energy intake plunged from about 3,000 calories per day to anywhere between 1,400 and 2,400, and protein consumption dropped by 40 percent). They lost an average of 12 pounds.

It wasn’t only the amount of food that Cubans ate that changed, but also what they ate. They became virtual vegans overnight, as meat and dairy products all but vanished from the marketplace.

And this report:

During the special period, expensive habits like smoking and most likely also alcohol consumption were reduced, albeit briefly. This enforced fitness regime lasted only until the Cuban economy began to recover in the second half of the 1990s. At that point, physical activity levels began to fall off, and calorie intake surged. Eventually people in Cuba were eating even more than they had before the crash. The researchers report that “by 2011, the Cuban population has regained enough weight to almost triple the obesity rates of 1995.”

 7. The Coming Demographic Crisis: What to Expect When No One Is Expecting

... A strain of anti-humanism has always run through population paranoia, a notion that human beings are a problem rather than a resource. But as Jonathan Last documents in his new book What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, it is not overpopulation that threatens the well-being of the human race, it is under-population. As Last writes, “Throughout recorded human history, declining populations have always been followed by Very Bad Things.” Particularly for our modern, high-tech, capitalist world of consumers who buy, entrepreneurs who create wealth and jobs, and workers whose taxes fund social welfare entitlements, people are an even more critical resource. ...

8. 21 Maps Of Highly Segregated Cities In America. I remember doing a less sophisiticted version of dissimilarity analysis for Kansas City back in 1988 without benefit of a computer. Here is the map for Detroit, the most segregated city in America:

9.Christianity Today asks Who Volunteers the Most? Answer? "Graduates of Protestant high schools, apparently."

10. In 2012, America had the most energy efficient economy in US history

11. Climate change inspires a new literary genre: cli-fi. "Cli-fi, or 'climate fiction,' describes a dystopian present, as opposed to a dystopian future. And don't call it 'science fiction.' Cli-fi is literary fiction."

12. Organic Prices: Food Label Just An Excuse To Charge More, Majority Of Consumers Say In New Poll

13. Business Insider with Ten Technologies That Will Shape the Future

14. Atlantic Cities has a great piece on the future of the the payphone: The Payphone of the Future Is Calling

15. Business Insider also had a couple a very interesting retro articles: The First Email, The First Tweet, And 13 Other Famous Internet Firsts and These Huge Brands' Early Websites From The 1990s Looked Terrible.

16. Stonehenge archaeologists reveal new theory of why monument was built. "Stonehenge may have been built on a site occupied by hunters for roughly 5,000 prior to its construction."

17. Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine

Why Tim Keller Wants You to Stay in That Job You Hate

Christianity Today: Why Tim Keller Wants You to Stay in That Job You Hate

There are few better places in the world where Tim Keller could write a book about career and calling. "New York City is a place where people live in order to work," says the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan and author most recently of Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work (Dutton). "They basically live more in their work than in their neighborhoods. That . . . means that if you start talking about work, you get right at their hearts."

In a recent sit-down conversation with This Is Our City executive producer Andy Crouch, Keller explained why he wanted to write a more comprehensive book about faith and work, how he learned to answer congregants' questions about their work, and what Redeemer has done to equip laypeople to live into their vocations outside the church.

Andy: What's been missing from faith-and-work books that Every Good Endeavor was designed to address?

Tim: When I read faith-and-work books, they tended to pass by each other. I had the sense that they were drawing on different streams of thought, maybe different biblical or historical themes. I tend to be a complexifier. I like to hold the different biblical themes in tension. I got the sense that most books on faith and work tended to isolate a certain idea. This book is trying to bring the different streams together.

What streams of thoughts have been most missing when we talk about faith and work?

It depends on who you're talking about. It seems to me the evangelical tradition tends to talk a lot about how faith essentially spiritually helps you deal with the troubles and the stresses of work. You need help to face challenges.

Mainline churches tend to put more emphasis on social justice and basically did a critique of capitalism early on, so whenever the mainline churches or ecumenical movement did faith-and-work stuff, it was usually critiquing the market, not "how's your heart?"

The Lutheran stream emphasizes that all work is God's work. Worldview doesn't matter. You make a good pair of shoes, then you're doing God's work, because work is God's way of caring for creation.

The Calvinist stream was more like yes, it's not just you are caring for creation through work, but you are shaping it. and therefore your beliefs have an impact.

When you put those four streams together, I think they're very comprehensive. If you isolate them from each other, they can create idiosyncrasies at best and imbalances at worst. ...

USAID Rethinks Who Gets Paid to Grow Food for Countries in Need (About Time!)

From the "it's about time" files, PBS: USAID Rethinks Who Gets Paid to Grow Food for Countries in Need

American food aid is sent to places with dire need. And until now, the commodities have been bought from U.S. farmers and shipped overseas on U.S. vessels to be donated. Margaret Warner reports on a new budget proposal that would redirect nearly half the money to buy bulk food more locally to the countries that need it.

Agribusiness and farm state politicians are oppossing the change. I'm opposing them on this one. Paying local farmers to grow the food has greater potential for creating sustatinable economic growth and avoiding dependence.

Watch USAID Rethinks Who Gets Paid to Grow Food for Countries on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

 

The Truth About Entrepreneurs: Twice As Many Are Over 50 than Under 25

PBS: The Truth About Entrepreneurs: Twice As Many Are Over 50 than Under 25

... Myths abound about the young entrepreneurs who dreamed up crazy ideas while in their dorm room, raised millions of dollars in venture capital, and started billion-dollar businesses. But these are just the outliers. The typical entrepreneur is more like Albert -- a middle-aged professional who learns about a market need and starts a company with his own savings.

Research that my team completed in 2009 determined that the average age of a successful entrepreneur in high-growth industries such as computers, health care, and aerospace is 40. Twice as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25; and twice as many, over 60 as under 20. The vast majority -- 75 percent -- have more than six years of industry experience and half have more than 10 years when they create their startup. Nearly 70 percent start their companies to capitalize on business ideas that they have -- which they see as a way to build wealth. ...

Poverty And The Power of Economic Growth

There will always be a need for relief aid and charity but economic development is the answer to poverty. Here is a short video that illustrates how it works:

The technologies powering cars of the future are about to change

Economist: Tomorrow's ride

(Click on the link to see the one minute long video.)

We may be witnessing an African economic miracle

The Irish Times: We may be witnessing an African economic miracle

... By almost every measure – of health, wealth and education – and for most of its people, life in Africa is getting better.

All of these developments are perhaps best encapsulated by the UN’s Human Development Index. Over decades, that organisation has measured health, education and poverty indicators across the world to assess people’s quality of life. Since the turn of the century, human development has not only improved in every one of sub-Saharan Africa’s 45 countries but gains were bigger in the 2000s than in any previous decade.

In many ways, Africa remains the world’s most miserable place. None of its longstanding problems can be declared solved and it faces some new ones, including rising global food prices and climate change, issues discussed this week in Dublin.

The scale of challenges cannot be underestimated. But Africa’s prospects are improving. The dashed hopes of the post-independence decades now stand a better chance than ever of being fulfilled.

Landfill Harmonic- The world sends us garbage... We send back music.

This video is amazing on so many levels. It is a wonderful example of human inovation and creativity under some of the most difficult circumstances.

Landfill Harmonic- The world sends us garbage... We send back music. from Landfill Harmonic on Vimeo.

Why the US economy doesn’t weigh as much as we thought it did

AEI Ideas: Why the US economy doesn’t weigh as much as we thought it did

... One way of analyzing the changing nature of the US economy is by looking at how much GDP physically weighs. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once remarked that the value of US GDP is five times as great as it was 50 years ago. Yet “the physical weight of our gross domestic product is evidently only modestly higher today than it was 50 or 100 years ago.” Very little of the nation’s economic growth ”represents growth in the tonnage of physical materials — oil, coal, ores, wood, raw chemicals. The remainder represents new insights into how to rearrange those physical materials to better serve human needs.”

In other words, to paraphrase economist Paul Romer, more and more we create value by coming up with different “recipes” to rearrange the physical world. Ideas and innovation are what truly drive growth. So even though America becomes more productive and the size of the economy bigger, it doesn’t gain any weight — just wealth.

Interesting way of illustrating the how advanced economies are changing.

The Active Life - 3. "Active Life": The Shadow Side. Parker Palmer

Today we are looking at the third chapter in Parker Palmer’s book the Active Life, “Active Life”: The Shadow Side. The first two chapters laid out preliminary thoughts regarding the contemplative life and the active life. Each of the final six chapters begins with a piece of ancient wisdom, followed by Palmer’s reflections. Today we are looking at a piece by the Chuang Tzu, a Chinese philosopher living in the fourth century, B.C.E. It is called, “Active Life.” Palmer is using a portion of a version translated by Thomas Merton and John C. H. Wu (to which Palmer has made some gender inclusive edits.) Here is the translation. Following it is a video of the complete work as Merton presented it:

 

Active Life by Chuang Tzu

 

If an expert does not have some problem to vex him, he is unhappy!

If a philosopher’s teaching is never attacked, she pines away!

If critics have no one on whom to exercise their spites, they are unhappy.

All such people are prisoners in the world of objects.

 

He who wants followers, seeks political power.

She who wants reputation, holds an office.

The strong man looks for weights to lift.

The brave woman looks for an emergency in which she can show bravery.

The swordsman wants a battle in which he can swing his sword.

People past their prime prefer a dignified retirement, in which they may seem profound.

People experienced in law seek difficult cases to extend the application of laws.

Liturgists and musicians like festivals in which they parade their ceremonious talents.

The benevolent, the dutiful, are always looking for chances to display virtue.

 

Where would the gardener be if there were no more weeds?

What would become of business without a market of fools?

Where would the masses be if there were no pretext for getting jammed together and making noise?

What would become of labor if there were no superfluous objects to be make?

 

Produce! Get results! Make money! Make friends! Make changes!

Or you will die of despair.

 

Distilling the critique of the poem down to one sentence, Palmer writes: “Too much of our action is really reacation.” He says,

“Such ‘doing’ does not flow from free and independent hearts, he says, but depends on external provocation. It does not come from our sense of who we are and what we want to do, but from our anxious reading of how others define us and of what the world demands. When we react this way we do not act humanly; we become cogs in a machine whose every move is forced by what is happening elsewhere in the interlocked system of cogs. ‘All such people are prisoners in the word of objects.” (39)

We tend to seek situations and manipulate the world into scenes that showcase our skill. The world and the people in it become objects we use as a means for getting praise and finding meaning. It makes us feel alive. And it is addictive.

Palmer writes:

At root, a professional is one who makes a profession of faith – faith in something larger and wiser than his or her own powers. The true professional is the opposite of someone who makes objects of other people by creating dependencies. Instead, the true professional is a person whose action points beyond his or her self to the underlying reality, that hidden wholeness, on which we all can rely. (44)

This is the positive side of the professional but there is a dark side as well. In one passage Palmer asks, “What meaning would life have for some mental health professionals if there were not people who depended on their help?” (43) Should the health professional actually be successful in increasing mental health, demand for her expertise would diminish, and therefore her identity. To a hammer, everything looks like nail, and there must be nails if the hammer is to have meaning. Only if you see yourself as something more than a hammer do you have the freedom to hammer nails as needed but then to engage in other action as circumstances change without loss of identity.

Another challenge the reactive life presents is the tendency to create self-fulfilling prophecies. “Action based on false beliefs has the power to bring those falsehoods into being.” (45) Someone addicted to bravery seeks out and creates circumstances were bravery is required. The fighter seeks out and creates conflicts where fighting is needed. The helper seeks out and creates situations where help is needed. We tend to shape the world to fit our professional skill, reinforcing our identity, creating a world where more peril, conflict, and need exists than need be.

Palmer warns that “… ‘goodness’ that is driven primarily by the actor’s needs is unlikely to be good at all. Such goodness is often imposed on people who have no desire for it, people who become objects of the actor’s self-serving charity.” (47) As someone who has been a student of economic development for most of my adult life, I can’t say strongly enough how important this statement is and how resistant so much of the church is to hearing these words.

I remember one pastor telling how his church would prepare Christmas dinners and buy presents to deliver, in person, to families who in lived in a Section 8 housing complex.  What began to dawn on him was that fathers were never home when the meals and gifts were delivered. Why? The fathers slipped out the backdoor in humiliation about not being able to provide for their household. The program was revised. The church still prepared meals but recipient parents came to the church to collect a meal for a minimal fee and then brought the meal home to their families as providers of the feast. Gifts were bought by the church, but parents came to a store where, for a minimal fee, they could select toys to bring home to their children. Until we escape the lie that what makes us feel helpful is always helpful we are caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy where our “help” never really helps, wounding people in need, while simultaneously generating more opportunity for us to feel helpful to people who are trapped in need, in part due to our own comfortable illusions.

Palmer closes the chapter with an interesting reflection on the way we use the verb “make.” We make money, make friends, make changes, make time, make love, make peace, make a deal, make our way, make things right, make meaning, make a living and … the all-inclusive … make “it.” (49) We see ourselves as fabricators of everything around us, including things over which we clearly have no control. He says, “We seem to regard much of the world as raw material that waits passively to be given shape by our own designs and energies …” (49) While there is no doubt that part of what we do as humans is fabricate, it is also true that we receive from the world things over which we have no control, from a world that is dynamic and shapes us. It is our false belief that we are in control, or ought to be in control, that leads to frenetic behavior and objectification of the world and others.

I thought one of Palmer’s most important lines was, “True despair is the failure to learn before we die that the water eventually closes up over everything, that we never manage to leave the indelible marks of our dreams.” (51) I’m reminded of Woody Allen saying, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.” We have immortality in God, not through our work. Attempting to achieve immortality through work is a form of idolatry. It is an illusion. But when we embrace this limitation, we are freer to both receive what has been given and to participate in the transformation our physical and social world into more useful forms with joy and celebration, to be more alive in our work.

Questions

In what ways have you felt yourself life driven by reaction? Do you sometimes feel objectfied by others? In what ways do you think we might objectify others?

Can you recall instances of creating self-fulfilling prophecies in your own life or the life of others? What were the consequences?

How does Palmer's observation that "water eventually closes up over everything" make you feel? Does it feel more threatening or freeing? Why?

Previous/Next

Debt, Spending and Taxes: All Time Highs? (3 Charts)

Business Insider has these three interesting graphs from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Personal taxes are a little below the forty year average but federal spending including transfers is near all time highs, mostly due to an explosion in transfer payments. There is some good news from the New York Times: The Incredible Shrinking Budget Deficit

... The number crunchers at Goldman Sachs have lowered their estimates of the deficit both this year and next, on the back of higher-than-expected revenues and lower-than-projected spending. Analysts started the year projecting that the deficit in the current fiscal year would be about $900 billion. Earlier this year, they lowered the estimate to $850 billion. Now they have lowered it again, to $775 billion, or about 4.8 percent of economic output.

“Spending in the fiscal year to date is lower than a year ago and the nominal growth rate is lower than it has been in decades,” the Goldman economists wrote in a note to clients. “Revenues have also exceeded expectations, with a 12 percent gain fiscal year to date. What is more notable is that the strength in revenues preceded the payroll tax hike at the start of the year, and the spending decline does not seem to reflect sequestration, which has just started to take effect.” To translate: the deficit could come in even smaller than currently anticipated because of spending cuts and higher tax rates. ...

Not everyone is as postive about the growth projections. See the NYT piece for more details

Do Foreigners Really Own America?

Source: Business Insider

US CO2 emissions per capita in 2012 were the lowest since 1964

Carpe Diem: US CO2 emissions per capita in 2012 were the lowest since 1964

"... Last year, CO2 emissions in the US fell to an 18-year low, the lowest level since 1994, and C02 emissions from coal fell to a 26-year low, the lowest since 1986. Further, as the WSJ reported this week (“Rise in U.S. Gas Production Fuels Unexpected Plunge in Emissions“) the US now leads the world in reducing CO2 emissions thanks to the shale revolution. At the same time that America is using less coal and more shale gas and reducing C02 emissions, Europe and Asia are becoming more coal-dependent for electricity generation, and increasing C02 emissions.

Compared to the last time that CO2 emissions were at 2012′s levels — back in 1994 — real GDP in 2012 was 55% higher and the US population was 17.5% larger, making the drop in greenhouse gas emissions to an 18-year low in 2012 even more impressive. Adjusted for the population, CO2 emissions per capita last year were the lowest since 1964, almost 50 years ago (see chart above, data here and here). According to Department of Energy forecasts, the decline in per capita CO2 emissions is expected to continue so consistently that within about 20 years, greenhouse gas emissions per person in the US will be below the level in 1949! ..."

Saturday Links

1. What a horrific week for the people of Boston and West, Texas. Our prayers are with the many people who have so deeply traumatized and injured in these events. In terms of how we respond to such events in public discourse, I thought this article from Slate was especially good. Be Meaningful or Be Quiet

"... We need more restraint and less wild guessing. Free-flowing debate in the search for meaning is a part of these moments and a part of the human condition, but what I’m talking about is using tragedy for evidence shopping. That people reach immediately for their pet political theory at moments like this highlights what's wrong with a lot of political debate. But perhaps this moment also offers a useful sorting technique. If you can't shut up now, when either reason, decency, or good taste requires it, you disqualify yourself from the conversation in calmer times. ...

... Political debate about facts is fine. When the White House puts out a picture of the president in the situation room, it’s fine to point out that it’s propaganda they never put out on Benghazi. But a person who uses tragedy as new evidence in an existing political fight is probably incapable of keeping this window open. They can't pause to honor the solemnity of a moment of tragedy or wait until the facts come in, which means that the facts never really mattered much to them at all. These partisans are ever on alert to advance their relentless claim—whatever it is. Michael Moore immediately fingered Tea Party types after the bombing. In the hours after attack, when authorities questioned a man of Saudi dissent (who was later released), Rep. Steve King tied it to the comprehensive immigration reform he opposes. Nate Bell, an Arkansas state lawmaker, tweeted, “I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine? #2A” There was lots of this from partisans on both sides on Twitter. ..."

2. Are We Losing the Young? Evangelicals by Age Since 1972

3. David Murrow asks Are sermons becoming obsolete?

... So, what does this mean for the church? Is the lecture style sermon going the way of the dinosaur?

Yes and no. There will always be live sermons. But will anyone be listening?

Just as universities are re-thinking the lecture, it might be time for churches to re-think the sermon. Thom and Joani Schultz polled churchgoers and found that just 12 percent could recall the topic of the last sermon they heard. Only five percent of men credited sermons as their primary source of knowledge about God.

So if sermons are becoming obsolete, what will take their place?

Discipleship. Our generation may be drowning in ideas, but we’re starving for real human contact.

The problem is, our churches are structured to deliver sermons and music. If there’s any energy left, we disciple people. ...

4. First there was this article about Self-Employment An Escape From Long-Term Joblessness For Some Older Workers.  It may work for some who are out of jobs but Hiranya Fernando warns Why You Shouldn't Quit Your Day Job To Pursue Your Dream. 

To be sure these are inspiring stories. They make us hope and dream. And I support anyone who is dissatisfied with desk jobs and corporate gigs and is now thinking of other options. But my advice is to take the time to understand your specific situation before you do anything purely because “it feels right” or because “it’s a childhood dream.”

And don’t do it because everyone else is. Don’t do it because the neighbor’s second cousin and Aunt Maggie’s daughter are doing it, and it sounds so easy. Even people who are relatively happy in their jobs think something is wrong with them because everywhere they go they are bombarded with “How I quit my day job and started a million-dollar leaf-raking business.”

5. Walter Russell Mead Warns There’s No Comeback for the PhD

Drezner says that there are really only two reasons why you might get a PhD. One, you’re crazy; or two, you’re crazy about the subject you will be studying. But even the latter is becoming a kind of luxury for those lucky few who can afford to spend several years on a degree without any guarantee of future employment. All others should heed Drezner’s advice before surrendering the money, years, blood, and tears it takes to earn the right to be called “Doctor.”

6. I suspect the J C Penny fiasco is going to become an important case study for business schools: Sometimes, We Want Prices to Fool Us

7. Max Baucus warns about Obamacare: Obamacare Architect Warns “Huge Train-Wreck” Ahead

8. Eric Wemple quotes Mark Lamont Hill in Gosnell case: HuffPost host says left ‘made a decision’ to not cover trial

"For what it’s worth, I do think that those of us on the left have made a decision not to cover this trial because we worry that it’ll compromise abortion rights. Whether you agree with abortion or not, I do think there’s a direct connection between the media’s failure to cover this and our own political commitments on the left. I think it’s a bad idea, I think it’s dangerous, but I think that’s the way it is.”

9. Mother Jones has a great piece on the social psychology of our political leanings: How Science Can Predict Where You Stand on Keystone XL

10. Atlantic Cities says The More Diverse a Metro Is, the More Segregated It's Likely to Be

11. Christian Science Monitor: Babies are conscious? Science confirms what moms know.

Babies are aware of what's going on, not just reflexively reacting to it, scientists concluded after a series of experiments on babies as young as 5 months.

12. Are e-readers hurting our reading comprehension?

13. The future of the car: Clean, safe and it drives itself. See the Economist video about driverless cars.

Yet many people already travel, unwittingly, on planes and trains that no longer need human drivers. As with those technologies, the shift towards driverless cars is taking place gradually. The cars’ software will learn the tricks that humans use to avoid hazards: for example, braking when a ball bounces into the road, because a child may be chasing it. Google’s self-driving cars have already clocked up over 700,000km, more than many humans ever drive; and everything they learn will become available to every other car using the software. As for the liability issue, the law should be changed to make sure that when cases arise, the courts take into account the overall safety benefits of self-driving technology.

14. University of Illinois: Small in size, big on power: New microbatteries a boost for electronics

 With so much power, the batteries could enable sensors or radio signals that broadcast 30 times farther, or devices 30 times smaller. The batteries are rechargeable and can charge 1,000 times faster than competing technologies – imagine juicing up a credit-card-thin phone in less than a second. In addition to consumer electronics, medical devices, lasers, sensors and other applications could see leaps forward in technology with such power sources available.

“Any kind of electronic device is limited by the size of the battery – until now,” King said. “Consider personal medical devices and implants, where the battery is an enormous brick, and it’s connected to itty-bitty electronics and tiny wires. Now the battery is also tiny.”

Now, the researchers are working on integrating their batteries with other electronics components, as well as manufacturability at low cost.

15. What was old is new again: The Beat Goes On: How Vinyl Records Are Making A Comeback

“Vinyl manufacturing plants are bursting at the seams,” said Kurtz. “We took a nascent industry – vinyl – breathed life into it and now we can’t even handle the amount of business we are creating.”

Poor Countries Leading the Way in Economic Growth

"IN recent years poor countries have enjoyed impressive improvements in GDP per person. But in the rich world they have hardly grown at all." Click on the link to see the short video: Economic growth

 
There is also this chart: Poor little rich countries

Cleaning Coal May be Possible

Energy Biz: Cleaning Coal May be Possible

"... Eliminating 99 percent of the pollution from coal, the Coal-Direct Chemical Looping (CDCL) technique will have a significant impact on the rate of global warming. The Environmental Protection Agency has found that in 2010, coal-burning power plants were responsible for about one-third of the country's carbon dioxide, equivalent to 2.3 billion metric tons. If energy can be obtained from coal without burning it, this number should drop considerably.

Liang-Shih Fan, a chemical engineer and director of Ohio State's Clean Coal Research Laboratory, explains the process, "We found a way to release the heat without burning. We carefully control the chemical reaction so that the coal never burns--it is consumed chemically, and the carbon dioxide is entirely contained inside the reactor." The metal from the iron-oxide is recyclable and the only waste products are coal ash and water. If everything goes according to plan, Fan is confident that his discovery can be used to power energy plants within the next 10 years. ..."

Mapping Favorite NFL Teams

This map comes from: How Survey Data Helped the Federal Reserve Make a Regional Map of the United States

Am I correct in reading this map to say that South Carolina and half of North Carolina are Steelers fans? What's up with that? Do you see any other oddities?

A 'Whom Do You Hang With?' Map Of America

NPR: A 'Whom Do You Hang With?' Map Of America

Look at the center of this map, at the little red dot that marks Kansas City. Technically, Kansas City is at the edge of Missouri, but here on this map it's in the upper middle section of a bigger space with strong blue borders. We don't have a name for this bigger space yet, but soon we will.

I would call it, for the moment, "The Part Of America Kansas City Hangs With" because that's what this map is saying. It's a new, intriguing way to see our country. This one was built by tracking dollar bill circulation. There've been similar maps built from phone call data. The idea here is to show America not as 50 states, but as regions where people do stuff together. In other words, a "Whom Do You Hang With?" map. ...

 

This took reminded of the book Nine Nations of North America, though they are clearly using different metrics.

Africans remittances outweigh Western aid

BBC: Africans remittances outweigh Western aid

Africans are helping themselves more than aid workers are, according to new research.

Analysis of cash flows by Hong Kong-based Ghanaian academic Adams Bodomo shows that Africans living outside the continent send more money home to their families than is sent by traditional Western aid donors in what is called Official Development Assistance (ODA).

In 2010 - the most recent year for which meaningful comparisons can be made, according to Mr Bodomo - the African diaspora remitted $51.8bn (£34bn) to the continent.

In the same year, according to World Bank figures, ODA to Africa was $43bn (£28bn).

"I started the research to see if I could support a hunch I had that money remitted by African families was more efficient aid than ODA money," the Ghanaian professor told the BBC.

"I found it was clearly more efficient and better targeted but to my surprise I found it was also a much bigger sum." ...

Caste and entrepreneurship in India

BBC: Caste and entrepreneurship in India

The story of India's economic surge is dominated by two conflicting narratives.

... Delving into the relationship between caste and entrepreneurship, the researchers have found that scheduled castes and tribes, the most disadvantaged groups in Hinduism's hierarchy, owned very little businesses despite a decade of sprightly economic growth and a long history of affirmative action.

Mining information thrown up by the 2005 economic census covering more than 42 million enterprises, they found schedule castes owned only 9.8% of all enterprises in India in 2005, well below their 16.4% share of the total population.

The scheduled tribes owned only 3.7% of non-farm enterprises despite being 7.7% of the population.

However, ownership of business among OBC's - an acronym for Other Backward Castes or the "middle castes" who "neither suffering the extreme social and economic discrimination of the Scheduled Castes, nor enjoying the social privileges of the upper castes" - has grown.

OBCs comprise 41% of India's people. Their members owned 43.5% of all enterprises in 2005, and accounted for 40% of non-farm employment.

This is a remarkable achievement considering that affirmative action for this group was widely introduced only in the 1990s.

The pattern of dismally low ownership of businesses among the most disadvantaged groups, the researchers found, is not specific to any one region or state in India. ...

 

The Active Life - 2. Action and Contemplation: A Living Paradox. Parker Palmer

Parker Palmer spent the first chapter of his book The Active Life defining the active life and the contemplative life. He sees the active life in terms of work, creativity, and caring. He briefly explores the dualism that often develops, favoring one over the other. In chapter 2, he wants us to see how the two are inseparably integrated. He describes it as a “living paradox.” I might have called it a polarity. Rather than speaking of “contemplation and action,” Palmer suggests it might be more helpful to speak in terms of “contemplation-and-action,” symbolizing the interconnectedness.

The Living Paradox

Over the course of our spiritual formation Palmer believes we often experience the paradox in terms of separation, moving to alternation, and finally moving to integration. We typically are drawn to one pole or the other. Activity can fly off into frenzy. Contemplation can become escapism. Excess creates a desire for balance, so we move to alternation. Burned out, we take a “vacation” from action to contemplate. Restored, we move back into action until we are so worn out that we move to a contemplative mode again.

While alternation is an improvement, integration is the optimal. Palmer defines action and contemplation this way:

• Action – “I understand action to be any way that we can co-create reality with other beings and with the Spirit.” (17) And as we saw in the previous chapter, work, creativity, and caring are forms that our action takes.
• Contemplation – “I understand contemplation to be any way that we can unveil the illusions that masquerade as reality and reveal the reality behind the masks.” (17)

Both action and contemplation have at their root a “ceaseless drive to be fully alive,” but neglect of either undercuts the drive for aliveness.

The Nature of Action

Palmer devotes the second part of Chapter 2 to “The Nature of Action.” He opens with this important observation.

“If you are unemployed, if you are forced to do work that brings neither enough money or recognition, if you are young and uncertain about where you are going, or if you are unhappily retired, one of the most painful questions anyone can ask you may be simply “What do you do?” If you are unprepared, if you have not reflected on your situation and found ground to stand on, that simple question can open a dangerous chasm beneath your feet and trigger fierce defenses. Why so?” (19)

His conclusion?

“Perhaps the primitive fear that some of us feel when we cannot answer the question ‘What do you do?’ comes from a deep, unconscious intuition that inaction is a sign of death. When we are not “doing” we are forcibly reminded of our own mortality; we experience a sort of dying through inactivity. But when we are acting we can say to the world and to ourselves that we are here, we are alive, we are making a difference. Indeed, by acting we imagine that we can leave something of ourselves behind, marks that might give us a kind of immortality. In raising a child or shaping an institution or writing a book we may carry the silent hope that our mortal lives can somehow defy the barriers of death.” (20)

But in reality, we cannot escape death and death will sweep away all we have done. We should not count on our work to achieve immortality but we must not error in another direction by becoming passive, dying before we are dead. God has made us for co-creative work in the world but we do so as mortal creatures. Furthermore, pride often accompanies our work. Here we face a dilemma in avoiding prideful behavior but not to the point that withdraw from action for fear of pride. Action is risky. “The greatest risk in action is the risk of self-revelation, and that is also action’s greatest joy.” (22) It is in the risk of self-revelation that we are most fully alive.

Palmer distinguishes between Instrumental and expressive aspects of work:

• “The instrumental image, which dominates Western culture, portrays action as a means to predetermined ends, as an instrument or tool of our intentions. … Instrumental action traps us in a system of praise or blame, credit or shame, a system that gives primacy to goals and external evaluations, devalues the gift of self-knowledge, and diminishes our capacity to take the risks that may yield growth.” (23)
• “An expressive act is one that I take not to achieve a goal outside myself but to express a conviction, a leading, a truth that is within me. An expressive act is one taken because if I did not take it I would be denying my own insight, gift, nature.” (24)

Palmer’s concern is not that all action should be expressive but when all our action is collapsed into instrumental acts, life becomes deadening. Expressive action is the way we make a contribution to the larger scheme of things because it brings our unique qualities into play.

The Nature of Contemplation

The third part of Chapter 2 is devoted to “The Nature of Contemplation.” Palmer reminds us that:

“Every action originates in some assessment of reality, no matter how mistaken. No action will have lasting effects if it is inconsistent with reality.” (25)

He also astutely points out that “Contemplation is difficult for many of us because we have invested so much in illusion.” (25) Illusions are usually a joint project between us and society. They keep things orderly. He highlights three circumstances that tend to promote contemplation.

Disillusionment – When someone lets us down, or when some vision we had fails, we become dis-illusioned. We see life more fully for what it is, or least what it is not. Palmer says “Pain is one of the sure signs that contemplation is happening.” (27) Contemplation may eventually lead to a happier reality but emptiness and pain are frequently part of the journey.

Dislocation – “This happens when we are forced by circumstance to occupy a very different standpoint from our normal one, and our angle of vision suddenly changes to reveal a strange and threatening landscape.” (27) A change in our health or employment, or sometimes just coming to the world through someone else’s eyes, breaks us out of our limited perspective into a more full-orbed view.

Unbidden solitude – Sometimes we find ourselves in isolation from the collective life and the reality our community reinforces for us. Sometimes solitude is forced upon. For any number of reasons we may have the need to make our way without collective support. But unlike the first two, solitude is something that can grow on us. In fact, disillusionment and dislocation can take us into deeper appreciation of solitude. It can render us less needy and more capable of authentically giving of ourselves. Palmer writes:

“The healthy community is one that leaves the solitude, the integrity, of each individual intact; if its members do not respect their own solitude, they will continually violate the solitude of others. The only thing we have to bring to community is ourselves, so the contemplative process of recovering our true selves in solitude is never selfish. It is ultimately the best gift we can give to others.” (29)

The Hidden Wholeness

In the final section of the chapter Palmer writes about “The Hidden Wholeness.” We are frequently taught that wholeness can be found in escape or retreat from the world into ethereal abstractions. Palmer says no. It is found by entering more fully into difficult reality of this world. The answer lies not in getting out of it but by getting into it. Instead of trying to outrun the “monsters” that frighten us we must turn and embrace them, recognize them as part of us, and be willing to learn what they might teach us. He concludes the chapter with this:

“When we live a full life of contemplation-and-action, the monsters will always be aroused, and we will be compelled to search the depths. It is good to know that those very monsters can take us to the depths we need to explore. It is even better to know that in those depths we can find the hidden wholeness that unites and energizes us, the source and the power that make us fully alive.” (34)

Summary

To summarize, then, contemplation-and-action are poles in a polarity that bring wholeness. Through action we participate in co-creation of reality with others and with the Spirit. Instrumental work is an inescapable part of our existence but a life that is absent of expressive work fails to bring what it unique about ourselves into the mix. But our world is mixture of truth and illusion. How do we come to know who we truly are and what we might authentically bring to the world?

Contemplation is what unmasks illusion and reveals truth. Contemplation is often painful, prompted as it often is by disillusionment, dislocation, and solitude. Yet our culture is all about pain avoidance. We are inclined to deny pain, to medicate it, or to seek escape. But only by entering deeply into these painful circumstances do we find truth. With better appreciation for the truth, we are capable of more authentic action. That action will lead to more disillusionment, dislocation, and solitude, but it will also empower us to be more truly alive in all aspects of our lives.

 

Questions

Have you had the experience of moving from separation, to alternation, to integration? What happened that move you along in this progression?

Do you identify with scariness of not being able to say what it is that you do? Does it unnerve you that you and all you’ve done will soon be forgotten after your death? Why do you think that frightens so many of us?

What experiences of disillusionment, dislocation, or solitude in your life have you experienced as gateways into better understanding of yourself and the world?

What do you think about Palmer’s idea of embracing the monsters within us? Does that empower you? Terrify you?

Previous/Next in series.

Saturday Links

1.The World's Fastest-Growing Megacities

The modern megacity may have been largely an invention of the West, but it’s increasingly to be found largely in the East. The seven largest megacities (defined as areas of continuous urban development of over 10 million people) are located in Asia, based on a roundup of the latest population data released last month by Wendell Cox’s Demographia. The largest megacity remains the Tokyo-Yokohama area, home to 37 million, followed by the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, Seoul-Incheon, Delhi, Shanghai and Manila.

2. Houston Rising—Why the Next Great American Cities Aren’t What You Think

America’s urban landscape is changing, but in ways not always predicted or much admired by our media, planners, and pundits. The real trend-setters of the future—judged by both population and job growth—are not in the oft-praised great “legacy” cities like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, but a crop of newer, more sprawling urban regions primarily located in the Sun Belt and, surprisingly, the resurgent Great Plains. ...

... Why are these people flocking to the aspirational cities, that lack the hip amenities, tourist draws, and cultural landmarks of the biggest American cities? People are still far more likely to buy a million dollar pied à terre in Manhattan than to do so in Oklahoma City. Like early-20th-century Polish peasants who came to work in Chicago’s factories or Russian immigrants, like my grandparents, who came to New York to labor in the rag trade, the appeal of today’s smaller cities is largely economic. The foreign born, along with generally younger educated workers, are canaries in the coal mine—singing loudest and most frequently in places that offer both employment and opportunities for upward mobility and a better life. ...

3. Cohabitation first is new norm for unmarrieds with kids

... For almost half of women ages 15-44, their "first union" was cohabitation rather than marriage, says the report from the National Center for Health Statistics. For less than one-quarter, the first union was marriage. The report was based on in-person interviews conducted between 2006 and 2010 with 12,279 women ages 15-44. ...

"Instead of marriage, people are moving into cohabitation as a first union," says demographer Casey Copen, the report's lead author. "It's kind of a ubiquitous phenomenon now." ...

4. James Tarnto says the decline of marriage has a more significant impact on boys. Boys Hardest Hit

5. Hunger Games: Reporters and pundits greatly exaggerate hunger in America

... In stark contrast, the latest USDA/Census data on hunger (page 12) reveals that 1.3% of households with children had a child who was hungry at least once during 2011. The same report (page 19) also shows that on any given day, an average of 0.18% of households with children had a child who was hungry. This first measure of hunger (at least once during 2011) is 22 times lower than the “29.2 percent” figure cited by Zaimov, and the second measure (the average on any given day) is 162 times lower. ...

6. Interfaith marriage: Across the aisles

... Americans are more likely to marry someone of a different faith than someone who supports a different political party. Jews spotted the trend early, with a survey triggering alarm in 1990 when it claimed that more than half of American Jews were marrying out. Interfaith marriage remains most frequent among Jews (and rarest among Mormons, of all creeds studied). But others have been catching up, with overall rates of such unions more than doubling since the 1960s. ...

So is this a positive sign of increasing religious tolerance or just a sign of how insignificant religion is to the lives of people that they do not care what others believe?

7.Emily Temple has a list of 21 Books Written by and About Women That Men Would Benefit From Reading

8. Kyle Roberts Reflecting on “The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work” by Darrell Cosden.

9. An interesting interview with Douglas Rushkoff on his new book: Why Living in the Present Is a Disorder

We’re living in the now, we no longer have a sense of future direction, and we have a completely new relationship to time. That’s the premise of Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, a sort-of update to Alvin Toffler’s influential Future Shock from decades ago. ..

10. Annie-Marie Slaughter suggest that if women want more balanced sharing of household work they need to discover The Immense Value of Giving Men More Control of Household Tasks

As women are experiencing the satisfaction that comes from a professional career, men should also get to know the joy of investing in home life.

11. China Is No Longer A Low-Cost Producer

12. Forbes says The Death of the PC Has Not Been Exaggerated

It really wasn’t that long ago that a new computer every 3 years was a rite of passage. A fancy new chip from Intel or a nifty update to Windows sent both people and corporations out to replace PCs that felt awfully obsolete for shiny new ones. The latest data from IDC shows how things have changed: PC shipments down 14% year-over-year, despite the launch of Windows 8. While Microsoft and its fans might not want to admit it yet, Windows 8 is a flop. The failure to generate new sales is bad; the acceleration of a trend of declining PC shipments is downright awful. “At this point,” IDC said, “It seems clear that the Windows 8 launch [has] slowed the market.” ...

13. Here is an interesting article about some really "crapy" furniture. Sustainable Furniture Made From Agricultural Waste and Poop

14. Mashable says E-Books Now 23% of U.S. Publisher Sales.

15. This was an encouraging story amidst the strife in the PCUSA: Fremont Presbyterian's schism divides congregation - but they still share sacred spaces

16. This is a great piece: FLASHBACK: This Was The Internet In 1995

What Forces Are Driving African Economic Growth?

Africa on the Blog: What Forces Are Driving African Economic Growth?

... Much of the promising economic news coming out of Africa reflects the benefit of rising commodity prices. The continent can also expect to capitalize on having a comparatively young demographic structure, as the growth 16 to 30 age bracket provides the potential for an expanded workforce. This is also the demographic that will rapidly adopt mobile technology, which is likely to increase both markets and productivity on the continent.

With sharp and rapid growth, however, there is greater economic disparity. While global demand for Africa’s natural resources will continue to attract investors, the growing gap between the rich and the poor could trigger social and political instability in the future if countries do not take measures to reduce economic disparity so that more people will benefit from the growth of national and regional economies.

African nations should also be careful to direct a sizable portion of the surplus from this growth into infrastructure and economic diversity, so that nations will not be dependent on high commodity prices to sustain a higher standard of living over the long-term.

The Hard Truth about Economic Inequality that Both the Left and Right Ignore

PBS Newshour: The Hard Truth about Economic Inequality that Both the Left and Right Ignore

Jerry Muller is one of my favorite economic historians. I think this piece offers an insightful analysis of inequality in advanced market economies. As I read this piece I kept thinking back to Robert Fogel's (another favorite economic historian) The Fourth Great Awkening and the Future of Egalitarianism, where he makes the case that the economic challenge of this century is going to be focused on human capital. I don't think the ideologies of the left or right have come to grips with this yet. Muller begins:

Inequality is increasing almost everywhere in the post-industrial capitalist world. Despite what many think, this is not the result of politics, nor is politics likely to reverse it. The problem is more deeply rooted and intractable than generally recognized.

Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it -- because some individuals, families, and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that today's capitalism affords. Some of the very successes of western capitalist societies in expanding access and opportunity, combined with recent changes in technology and economics, have contributed to increasing inequality. And at the nexus of economics and society is the family, the changing shape and role of which is an often overlooked factor in the rise of inequality.

Though capitalism has opened up ever more opportunities for the development of human potential, not everyone has been able to take full advantage of those opportunities or to progress very far once they have done so.

Formal or informal barriers to equality of opportunity, for example, have historically blocked various sectors of the population -- such as women, minorities, and poor people -- from benefiting fully from all capitalism offers. But over time, in the advanced capitalist world, those barriers have gradually been lowered or removed, so that now opportunity is more equally available than ever before. The inequality that exists today arguably derives less from the unequal availability of opportunity than it does from the unequal ability to exploit opportunity.

And that unequal ability, in turn, stems from differences in the inherent human potential that individuals begin with and in the ways that families and communities enable and encourage that human potential to flourish. ...

The bolded sentence is my doing. Read the whole thing. Thoughtful stuff.

Cities Turn Sewage Into 'Black Gold' For Local Farms

NHPR: Cities Turn Sewage Into 'Black Gold' For Local Farms

On a normal day, Kansas City, Mo., processes more than 70 million gallons of raw sewage. This sewage used to be a nuisance, but Kansas City, and a lot of municipalities around the country, are now turning it into a resource for city farmers hard up for fertilizer.

After the sewage has been processed at a treatment plant, it's piped out to Birmingham Farm on the north side of the Missouri River.

Tim Walters is the chief agronomist for Kansas City who runs Birmingham. He's got the 1,350-acre farm plumbed with pipes to disperse the smelly stuff.

The city runs much of the heavier goop through a process called anaerobic digestion, which heats the sewage to kill pathogens. When the processed sludge, or "biosolids," arrives at the farm, thick jets of it arc out 30 to 40 feet from giant moving spreaders.

"It's black, black gold," says Walters. "Looks like grease. Doesn't smell like grease ... and when you get it on you it's hard to get off."

The sludge is packed with nutrients good for the corn and soybeans grown here that generate almost half a million dollars in profits for the city each year. Walters figures the free fertilizer is worth about $175,000 a year, in last year's prices. But it's in short supply.

"Every year we typically run out, they can't digest enough, they can't get enough down to us," says Walters. ...

The Active Life - 1. Spirituality in Action: On Being Fully Alive

(Today I'm beginning an eight week book study on Parker Palmer's, The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring, at Pine Ridge Presbyterian Church from 11:30 to 12:30. If you are in the area and want to attend, please join us. Bring a lunch if you would like. In addition to the face-to-face study, I will be doing a blog post on each chapter here at the Kruse Kroncile every Tuesday, hopefully broadening the conversation.)

Parker Palmer begins The Active Life with this statement: “This book – this exploration of work, creativity, and caring in the world of action – is the result of my long journey toward the knowledge that I am not a monk.” (1) Writing a decade ago, Palmer points to a spiritual renaissance in monastic spirituality over the preceding thirty years, a development he attributes to the influence of notable people like Thomas Merton. He welcomes the positive contributions of this renaissance but finds some aspects troubling:

“In the spiritual literature of our time, it is not difficult to find the world of action portrayed as an arena of ego and power, while the world of contemplation is pictured as a realm of light and grace. I have often read, for example that the treasure of the “true self” can be found as we draw back from active life and enter into contemplative prayer. Less often have I read that this treasure can be found in our struggles to work, create, and care in the world of action.

Contemporary images of what it means to be spiritual tend to value the inward search over the outward act, silence over sound, solitude over interaction, centeredness and quietude and balance over engagement and animation and struggle. …” (2)

Palmer says that he, like many others, retreated into a contemplative life when the coherence of his active life became ambiguous. The contemplative life can become a counterweight to, or even an escape from, the activist orientation of our age, instead of being an avenue for discovering significance in the active life.

This divide between the contemplative life and the active life has been with the church almost from the beginning. The ancient Greeks considered work as a means to survival while contemplation offered the opportunity for transcendence. That mindset influenced Christianity from an early date.  Palmer writes:

“Rooted in this bias, the church and the university became the preeminent institutions of Western culture, in part because they harbored the life of contemplation in a world where the active life was merely what the masses did to survive.” (6)

But with Enlightenment came the rise of science and technology:

“Now we can use the tools of action to change the world, to invent our own reality, to make an historical mark. Knowledge, once seen as an end in itself, becomes the pathway to personal virtue, social status, and even to “salvation” for many modern men and women.”

There is tendency in our time for people to either embrace one mode (active or contemplative) over and against the other, or to compartmentalize the two. Palmer sees the two as a polarity where both poles must be embraced and celebrated, even though we individually may have a call that gravitates to one or the other. I don’t think Palmer doubts for a minute that our culture has typically overemphasized the active life to the detriment of contemplative life. But his concern here is that so many in the church elevate the contemplative life in unhealthy ways as a response. He writes:

“I struggle with those parts of our spiritual tradition in which the energies of the active life are more feared than revered, pictured as wild horses to be brought under control rather than life-giving streams that flow from the source. The feelings of diminishment and guilt that such spiritualties can engender may have some short-term role as prods to self-discovery. But they have no-long-term place in the life of the spirit. People called to the active life need to nurture a spirituality that does not fear the vitalities of action.” (7-8)

He then follows with this paragraph, which I think is key:

“The core message of all the great spiritual traditions is “be not afraid.” Rather, be confident that life is good and trustworthy. In this light, the great failure is not that of leading a full and vital active life, with all the mistakes and suffering such a life will bring (along with its joys). Instead, the failure is to withdraw fearfully from the place to which one is called to squander the most precious of our birthrights – the experience of aliveness itself.” (8)

Palmer goes on to say that most of us are not so much seeking meaning, though there is likely an element of this, but seeking the “rapture of being alive.” He affirms this quest, not in some “narcissistic celebration of self,” but in the sense of being connected to life that transcends us.

Finally, Palmer identifies three forms the active life takes:

• Work – “Work is action driven by external necessity or demand. We work because we need to make a living, because we need to solve a problem, because we need to surmount to survive.” (9)
• Creativity – “Creativity … is driven more by inner choice than by outer demand. … In creative action, our desire is not to “solve” or “succeed” or “survive” but to give birth to something new …” (9)
• Caring – Caring is freely chosen action where “… we aim not at giving birth to something new; we aim at nurturing, protecting, guiding, healing, or empowering something that already has life.” (9-10)

These are not mutually exclusive categories and are often intertwined. Palmer acknowledges that these definitions may seem a little abstract but that may be due in part to the fact that they are so deeply embedded in everyday life … we barely notice them.  He is also keen for us to know that while a deep richness to life is connected to each of these modes of action, so is there an opportunity for violence and destruction. Palmer writes:

"My aim in this book is to celebrate and criticize the active life, to explore its joys and pains, its problems and potentials, to understand the forces that both drive and deform our activity – but to do all this with reverence for the mystery of self-discovery and creation which is at the heart of human action." (11)

 

Some questions for discussion:

What are some moments when you have felt truly alive? Do you see any connection with those moments and either the active life or the contemplative life? Do you agree with Palmer’s statement that what we are seeking most is a sense of aliveness?

Does Palmer’s framing of work, creativity, and caring ring true for you? My experience has been that the church does a much better job at identifying value in creativity and caring but much less so in work. Do you agree? Why do you think this is so?

Next in series.

Saturday Links

1. Atlantic: Could Earth's Population Peak in 2050?

"For the past two decades, demographers have generally agreed that global population growth will continue to inch steadily higher in the coming century, raising concerns about everything from pollution to housing to the world's water supply.

But a new study out of Spain suggests those estimates may be way off—we're talking several billion people off—and that the earth's population could instead peak as soon as 2050. Applying a mathematical model to global population trends, these researchers believe that there will be fewer people living on earth in 2100 than there are today. ..."

Since I first started studying demography thirty years ago, the low fertility estimates seem to be the ones that come closest to actual outcomes. It seems that people are moving to lower fertility rates faster than most people expected.

2. Speaking of world population, Chatham House writes about The End of Youth

"Advances in medicine and health care mean that people all over the globe are living longer, much longer. At the same time mothers in most countries are having fewer babies. The combination is a demographic timebomb. Sarah Harper looks at the challenges that lie ahead and the changes needed to cope with a grey new world."

3. Pew has published an interesting report on Demographics of Asian Americans

4. Forbes on Why China Is Finally Abandoning Its One Child Policy

"The policy was originally justified as necessary because of excess population and to promote economic development. Much has been written and can be found on the Internet about this policy and the current and long-term effects it is having and will have on China. The reluctance by China’s central government to abandon the one child policy is not out of a failure to recognize its shortcomings. Rather, it is because the policy has been highly successful in achieving a principal objective, a unification of the public in support of an unelected, autocratic central government."

5. World Bank Aims To Eliminate Extreme Poverty By 2030

To reach that goal, Kim said the world need to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line of $1.25 per day to 3 percent globally by 2030, and raise the per capita incomes of the bottom 40 percent of every developing country.

The 3 percent level is a new target for the World Bank, which estimated in 2010 that 21 percent of the global population, or 1.2 billion people, lived extreme poverty.

Some World Bank estimates have put the 3 percent target at about 600 million people living below the poverty line by 2030.

6. Susan Brown writes about A 'gray divorce' boom

Until recently, it would have been fair to say that older people simply did not get divorced. Fewer than 10% of those who got divorced in 1990 were ages 50 or older. Today, 1 in 4 people getting divorced is in this age group.

7. Science reports on the prospects of One Drug to Shrink All Tumors.

8.  The Genetic Literacy Project on Monsanto Protection Act? Separating the facts from the fury

9. Dean Kalahar says Economics Is Easy, And Can Be Learned In 5 Minutes

10. Rebecca Schuman on why you shouldn't pursue that Ph.D.: Thesis Hatement

11. Facebook 'Dislike' Button Not A Good Idea, Says Product Engineer Bob Baldwin In Reddit AMA

12. Finally we have an answer to one of the most important questions of our generation: How Many Spaces After a Period? Ending the Debate.

13. ABP News with some interesting data on the future of Mega Churches: Small is big for Millennials

14. Goal Control 4D. How referees will be automatically informed of goals in World Cup 2014.

15. For those of you who have deficiencies in your culture education about all things Whovian, here is a primer for you: 'Doctor Who' Explained in 25 GIFs

Unfair Trade

Foreign Affairs: Unfair Trade

The Fair-Trade Movement Does More Harm Than Good

... Until now, any questioning of the fair-trade movement has been limited to the micro level. The movement has faced repeated criticisms, for example, for the relatively expensive fees that producers must pay to get a fair-trade label, which make it ineffective for many poor farmers. Another area of concern is just how lucrative the process is for middlemen and retailers. Finally, several studies show that very little of the premium that consumers pay actually reaches needy producers. Consumers might be surprised to learn that only one or two percent of the retail price of an expensive cup of “ethical” coffee goes directly to poor farmers.

The adverse effects of fair trade are even more worrying at the macro level. First, fair trade deflects attention from real, long-term solutions to rural poverty in developing countries; and second, it has the potential to fragment the world agricultural market and depress wages for non-fair-trade farm workers. ...

... Fair-trade enthusiasts might argue that the world would be better off if the fair-trade market replaced the free-trade one. But in fact, such an outcome would destroy the livelihoods of millions of farmers who do not have the luxury of paying for fair-trade certification. To survive, these farmers would likely have to stop planting basic crops, such as wheat, corn, and rice, and shift to cash crops, such as coffee, tea, and fruits, which could bring in the income for certification. The immediate effect would be a prohibitive hike in food prices. Further, as farmers shift their production, non-fair-trade basic food products would become more vulnerable to price instability caused by supply and demand shocks, because there would be fewer producers willing to take the risk of non-subsidized farming.

If the fair-trade movement eventually came to encompass all categories of agricultural production (including basic food products), the price shocks would be even worse. Rather than responding to market prices, farmers in developing countries would be incentivized to produce whatever products garner the greatest subsidies. With subsidies, not consumer demand, dictating production, consumers in the developed and developing worlds would see further increases in basic food prices. ...

... Self-proclaimed ethical consumers need to start looking reality in the eye. Fair trade is a form of protectionism, and it should not be allowed to hide behind the mask of morality. There is nothing ethical about privileging small groups of producers while the majority are sinking deeper into poverty.

This is one of those topics where a particular activity (buying fair trade goods) feels so worthwhile and yet does harm in ways that are not readibly discernable. When it comes to commodities, I suspect the authors are right that fair trade does more harm than good. Fair trade doesn't fully account for the economic complexity involved. It becomes yet another form of toxic charity. However, it is not clear to me that all fair trade products have the same consequences. For instance, handcrafted products sold through stores like Ten Thousand Villages are not commodities and I don't think they subject to the same type of economic realities. I haven't seen a detailed analysis by economist that would help me clarify the differences.

Once again we need to heed the admonition to act with warm hearts and cool heads. For an insightful booklet on the problems with Fair Trade Coffee see Victor Claar's Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution. I suspect that what he says about coffee applies to all agricultural commodities.

Gene Veith on Vocation

Intercollegiate Review: How to Find Your Vocation in College - Gene Veith

... These are all struggles about your vocation. That word has become a synonym for “job,” so that colleges debate the extent to which higher education should be primarily vocational training or whether it should have higher goals, such as cultivating the intellect. But vocation is simply the Latinate word for “calling.” It is one of those theological words—like inspiration, revelation, mission, and vision—that has been taken over by the corporate world and drained of its meaning. The idea is that what you do for a living can be a calling. From God. That He has made you in a certain way and given you certain talents, opportunities, and inclinations. He then calls you to certain tasks, relationships, and experiences.

Your job is only a part of that, and sometimes not the most important part. We have vocations in the family (being a child, getting married, becoming a parent) and in the society (being a citizen, being a friend).  There are also vocations in the church (pastor, layperson), but even if you don’t believe in religion, the vocations are operative. Not only that, according to Martin Luther, the great theologian of vocation, God works through vocation, including the work of people who do not believe in Him. God gives us our daily bread by means of farmers, millers, bakers, and the person who served you your last meal. God creates new life by means of mothers and fathers. He heals by means of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists.  He protects us by means of police officers, judges, and the military callings.  He creates works of beauty and meaning by the talents He has given to artists.

The purpose of every vocation—in the workplace, the family, the church, the society—is to love and serve our neighbors. These are the “good works” that we are given to do. That may sound idealistic. Surely in our participation in the economy we are motivated by our enlightened self-interest. And yet it is surely true that if we are not helping someone by the goods or services we provide, we will not stay in business very long. Even our self-interests are taken up into God’s providential workings. In serving ourselves we also find ourselves serving others, whether or not that is our intention. Thus our work, our families, and our citizenship can be charged with moral and even spiritual significance. ...

... College students are often so fixated on what their future vocations may be that they forget that they have vocations right now.

Slinging burgers may be a dull and boring occupation with the sole purpose of earning tuition money. While it won’t be your vocation forever, it is still a calling, a sphere of service to one’s neighbors–customers, the boss, fellow workers—and a meaningful human enterprise.

College students also have a vocation as members of their family, with obligations to their parents, brothers, and sisters. They also have a vocation as citizens of the various communities they inhabit (their hometown, their college community, their state, their country). They also have vocations in their religious communities, if they have one.

Most notably, they have the vocation of being college students. This calling, like all the others, has its proper work—namely, to study, read, go to class, discuss ideas, and write papers. ...

Good stuff! In the popular vernacular we typically think of "vocation" as an "occupation." "Vocation," or "calling," is mission given to us by God. R. Paul Stevens talks about three vocations. 

Human vocation - Doing all of those things we do that make our world run and contribute to human flourishing that God called us to do at creation.

Christian vocation - Caring on the work of Christ in the world.

Personal vocation - Our particular response to the first two vocations in our particular time and context.

Our occupation is an important application of our vocation but our occupation can change. It is only one among many possible applications. And vocation includes much more than our occupation.

Conspiracy Theory Poll Results

Public Policy Polling: Conspiracy Theory Poll Results

On our national poll this week we took the opportunity to poll 20 widespread and/or infamous conspiracy theories.  Many of these theories are well known to the public, others perhaps to just the darker corners of the internet.  Here’s what we found:

-          37% of voters believe global warming is a hoax, 51% do not. Republicans say global warming is a hoax by a 58-25 margin, Democrats disagree 11-77, and Independents are more split at  41-51. 61% of Romney voters believe global warming is a hoax

-          6% of voters believe Osama bin Laden is still alive

-          21% of voters say a UFO crashed in Roswell, NM in 1947 and the US government covered it up. More Romney voters (27%) than Obama voters (16%) believe in a UFO coverup

-          28% of voters believe secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order.  A plurality of Romney voters (38%) believe in the New World Order compared to 35% who don’t ...

A Theology of Work by One Businesswoman

Ampersand Photography: Thursday Q & A // Theology of Work

It’s Thursday! Time for another Q & A post!

A question someone posed to me a few weeks ago (I’m sorry, I forgot to write down who asked this…):

“I am a fellow photographer desiring to make a business and have been thinking through things such as: What is work according to God? What does it look like? What does rest look like? How have these two been redeemed by Christ? What are they going to look like for my life? … I would love to hear your mission statement: the reason you work and the way you should work.  I would also love to hear any edifying words you have for someone starting a photography business.

This is such a great question, and a necessary thing for any person to think through, whether Christian or not— regardless of whether you are an artist, a businessman, a homemaker, or a student. I’m going to answer this in points, that could, perhaps, be an entire blog series, but I have so many other questions to answer that I’m just going to do this all in one shot. ...

1. Defining Work

What is work according to God? What does it look like? What does rest look like? How have these two been redeemed by Christ? 

Answer: work is an expression of God’s character. It’s original purpose is the “advancement of human flourishing to the glory of God.” We were made to work, because we were made in th image of God, who is a Worker.

I attended The Gospel at Work Conference back in January. The opening session was entitled, “The Theology of Work,” and is to date, one of the best sermon’s I’ve ever heard. You can download the message here (and I highly recommend that you do so… like, NOW). A few basic points from that message: ...

Read the whole thing. You may not agree with her at every point but I love how she is wrestling with a practical theology of work in her in own context and being intentional about integrating her life.

Saturday Links

Have a wonderful Easter weekend!

1. Rewriting the story of polarized debate: He got Tea Party and Occupy to talk

Nabil Laoudji's Mantle Project puts citizens on stage to tell stories of the experiences that led them to their positions on tough issues. That's how he got members of the Tea Party and Occupy movement to speak on the same stage in a civil – and entertaining – exchange.

2. Next Reformation presents Barna's six reasons young Christians leave the church.

3. Forbes: The Happiest And Unhappiest Jobs In America

4. Mozambique: From Marxism to market

British journalist Paul Fauvet came to Mozambique in 1980 just as the country was plunged into a civil war. He has witnessed every key event since. Here he describes the transformation of his adopted country from revolutionary Marxist state to embracing the market and the exploitation of its resource riches.

5. Poor Americans Are Driving The Evolution Of The Banking System

We’ve reported on how people in emerging markets residents are opening bank accounts and paying for things with their mobile phones, transforming business in those countries. 

But the US Federal Reserve would like you to know (pdf) that the changes aren’t all in other parts of the world.

Poor people in the US are some of the most avid users of mobile banking and mobile payment systems. ...

6. One In Four Teens Plan On Relying On Mom And Dad Till Age 27

7. Gen Y Isn't The 'Entrepreneurship Generation'

We all keep hearing that Gen Y’s are the “entrepreneurship generation,” but new research states otherwise. I worked with Monster.com on a new study focused on multi-generational worker attitudes to uncover the state of entrepreneurship through the eyes of different generations of workers. The report found that 41% of Gen X employees (ages 30-49) and 45% of Boomers (ages 50-69) consider themselves to be more entrepreneurial, compared to only 32% of Gen Y workers (ages 18-29 years). ...

8. Work Is More Than a Means to Evangelism

As already discussed, Matthew Lee Anderson’s recent Christianity Today cover story on “radical Christianity” has been making waves. This week at The High Calling, Marcus Goodyear offers a healthy critique of one of Anderson’s key subjects, David Platt, aligning quite closely with Anderson’s analysis about the ultimate challenges such movements face when it comes to long-term cultural cultivation.

Focusing on Platt’s latest book, Follow Me, Goodyear notes that, despite Platt’s admirable efforts to get Christians “off their seats,” he often “emphasizes the great commission so much, it overshadows all other teachings of the Bible.” ...

9. I don't know if I'm convinced but here are The 21 Principles of Persuasion from Forbes.

10. Mental Floss with a great list of 30 Things Turning 30 This Year.

11. Few People Understand The Difference Between Risk And Genuine Uncertainty

What are the odds that your new idea will succeed?  If it does, what will the return to you be?

One of the problems that we have in business (and life!) is that we often can’t know the answer to questions like this in advance.  And this drives us nuts.  Consequently, a lot of people invest a great deal of effort into reducing uncertainty.  There are two problems with this approach.  The first is that we often don’t understand uncertainty very well, and the second is that profitably opportunities only exist where outcomes are genuinely uncertain. ...

12. Christopher Hitchens wants to now Has militant atheism become a religion?

... In my interactions with religious and nonreligious people alike, I now draw a sharp line, based not on what exactly they believe but on their level of dogmatism. I consider dogmatism a far greater threat than religion per se. I am particularly curious why anyone would drop religion while retaining the blinkers sometimes associated with it. Why are the “neo-atheists” of today so obsessed with God’s nonexistence that they go on media rampages, wear T-shirts proclaiming their absence of belief, or call for a militant atheism? What does atheism have to offer that’s worth fighting for? As one philosopher put it, being a militant atheist is like “sleeping furiously.” ...

13. Econbrowser has a detaild analysis of Declining U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

14. David Shukman wants to know Why such a fuss about extinction?

What is wrong with extinction? I realise this question is the conservation equivalent of a landmine - or an elephant trap. And that it is likely to ruffle a lot of fur.

But I ask because I am merely wondering whether we sometimes forget a grim reality of the story of life on Earth - that extinction has always been with us.

In fact, it has quite often been good for us. ...

15. Is Google Maps Changing Our Behavior?

... The people who used the digital navigation device demonstrated pretty good route recognition and rather poor survey knowledge. By comparison, the paper map users scored better on the survey test and almost perfect on the route test. What's happening here, Münzer and colleagues argue, is that pedestrians who use computer navigation fail to envision, encode, and memorize the cognitive maps they otherwise would have. The cost of convenience, in other words, is spatial orientation. ...

16. 18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style