FROM IMPOVERISHMENT TO EMPOWERMENT 2 JUN 2014

FROM IMPOVERISHMENT TO EMPOWERMENT: fulfilling our potential by a godly realistic spirit. This post is to confront people to deal with the damaging domino effect of traumas that has led to widespread cynicism.

EVERY TRAUMA HAS A LIE ATTACHED TO DAMAGE ONE’S FAITH. There is a feeling of hopelessness & cynicism that pervades modern culture & disables us. Cynicism has a reason, a history. It is a response to the World of deceit that leads us into contrived wars, gives us false flags, scandals like Watergate, & empty political promises. It feels let down. Cynicism incapacitates folks from trying new ideas for success. It poisons our relationships, for the cynic looks for hidden meanings & hidden intentions as he questions others. Cynicism turns events into a misperceived manufactured crisis. The cynic is so busy questioning everything he will fail to see a real friend. The cynic finds himself fault finding, having contempt for whatever good is proposed, & in general rejecting much of the joys of life. Modern TV programming & radio encourages cynicism; the sitcom characters are rude & insensitive, & the talk show hosts encourage people to voyeur into the private lives of others and then encourage cynical responses. Cynicism destroys human connections & community. It crowds out the spiritual attributes of hope, faith & love. Cynicism is a natural reaction to being let down, but it is not a godly spiritual reaction.

CYNICISM HAS 2 SIDES. The recognizable side of cynicism is pessimism. The other side of it is unrealistic optimism. Unrealistic optimism thinks that history promises success. Listen to the two sides at a business meeting: “This firm is moving way too slow, we need to progress faster! We need to update.” And the other person, a wet blanket, argues, “All these decisions for change are crazy, these new ideas don’t work.” Now both can be cynical towards each other! There are limits to flesh & blood…even though the unrealistic optimist would think & tell us otherwise. Hope is not this kind of optimism. Hope will hope for the best, yet prepare for the worst. Hope realizes that we will have disappointments in the future. Success does not automatically come. Hope believes in answers…part of the value of prayer is to prepare us for recognizing God’s answers. One can see answers better if one believes in answers. Without Hope we have a defective love & faith.

SO HEAVENLY MINDED, HE IS NO EARTHLY GOOD. With an Armageddon Rapture mentality, some Christians refuse to even acknowledge that there are resources to improve the world. Why worry, the world will end soon. But the Word encourages Christians to do good until the end, & tells them they are left here for a purpose. Christians can mitigate, that is soften the blow, for the disasters facing us. Japanese pilots in WW 2 often did not wear their parachutes even though they were issued. One can take the attitude, I am going to hit the ground anyway, why wear a parachute? Because it softens the blow goofy. Shall we cont. to use the excuse that bad things are going to happen, so why do anything? What lame thinking. You know what the Japanese pilots gained from not wearing parachutes? A higher mortality rate. Things are bad, if we don’t do our best to improve them, then they will get worse!

PAST REALITY. The British did little in 1943, and allowed almost 3 million Indians to starve in the Great Bengal Famine. Classical Athens, facing a violent revolt of the poor, did land ownership reform & began a program where the sons of dead vets got their education paid by the govt. Revolution was averted. Japan, So. Korea, & Taiwan, their nations in ashes at the end of WW 2, successfully took their nations from poverty to wealth. They emphasize education w/ science based learning & achieved universal literacy. They did land reform (which increased productivity), and built roads to the rural areas. The govt.s invested in infrastructure. They decentralized their industry. In contrast, Somalia spent 5 times more on their military than they did for both education & health combined, and it led to poverty, starvation & death.

PRESENT REALITY. Whose reality? The elites’? The poor? The rich can have sensitive rapport & valid insights, but there will always be shortcomings in their view of poor people’s reality. An analogy to this was prison guards…during training guards would be locked in a cell for a short time, a few hours to give them a real taste of being an inmate. NO, it is different when you are locked up with no end in sight, plus you have no idea when you are coming out, and you are in there for days. And the people who put you there hate you like an ex-wife. One has to be destitute & powerless and vulnerable to abuse to know what it is to be poor. The police will hound the poor while the white criminals in the nearby building operate unmolested while they steal millions. Poverty is a jail cell with the time of release unknown. On the other hand, I have seen the govt. shower money on the poor, and once they unwisely blew it they were back to being poor. Here in Portland, like other locales, we have Gleaners, where people can get food that will be wasted and share it with the poor. The Amish & Mennonites use mutual help in their communities. There are migrant workers in many lands. There are micro-loans in India, for instance for a poor farmer to buy an ox for the plow. All these little things can add up to success for someone. People reach across borders to help others. A woman today showed me the letter she got from the child she sponsored in So. Amer. The World’s economy is operating below its potential. Food distribution is failing. Soils are being degraded, toxified, eroded & the water for them poorly managed. Humanity is muddling through, when there are better answers.

SEEING THE FUTURE REALITY. One thing the govt. can do is encourage small businesses. Small entrepreneurial firms have great potential to create new jobs. They are doing this worldwide. And a self-employed entrepreneur has freedom, and his work ethic and excitement inspire others. Interestingly, as I contemplated what I would do to help the World in preparation to write this post I came up with some ideas, and then was pleased to see that today’s result in the Bilderberg Mtg. surprisingly mirrored my ideas, except for the low carbon step. (Did they read my mind? Just joking.) Here is what they decided upon today:
1) The Bilderberg strategy will deliver economic growth that is important.
2) To be implemented by more effective investments coming out from companies, education, research and innovation which will be more sustainable, 
3) A decisive move towards a low-carbon economy. 
4) The Illuminati under the eye of Mr. Van Duyn will inclusively invest with a strong emphasis on job creation & poverty reduction. The strategy contains five ambitious goals: employment, innovation, education, poverty reduction and climate/energy.

Will they succeed? The cynic will say, “NO, it is all a trick. They have evil intentions.” The unrealistic optimist will say, “Just visualize it and claim it. It will happen. Just think positively.” The realist will say, let’s hope for the best, and be aware that there are limits to what can be accomplished. Is it possible that it is a fake agenda. It’s possible, but why assume the worst, when it is just as possible that these items are being implemented to do what they say they are doing. Shall we be ruled by cynicism?? Shall we allow the wrongs of the past to domino their negativity? One wrong does not deserve another.