The economics of prostitution

Sex tourism is a direct result us being better off than them. A desperately poor family sends their daughter away to ‘work in the city’, a rich old American man flies across the world with a suitcase full of t-shirts and condoms. It’s the old story of rich and poor. We’re rich, they’re poor, so we get to buy their daughters. And as long as we’re buying, someone is sure to keep selling.

I use the example of sex tourism because it’s disturbing, yes even revolting, but it's not extreme. It isn't. It is practiced by millions all over the world. Most countries that I’ve been to have a prominent sex tourism industry – India, Thailand, Nepal, Ukraine. And Uganda’s sex industry, though relatively hushed, is still thriving. These countries are poorer than us rich countries, so we get to buy their daughters.

It happens in America too, poor women sell themselves to rich men. And we import. We buy the daughters of poor countries and have them shipped, over-nighted. Why not? We can afford it.

As I prepare to come back to America I'm thinking a lot of about economic disparity and I realize that it's more than that. It's economic injustice. Our wealth coupled with their poverty breeds injustice - like a sweaty sock breeds bacteria.

These thoughts crystallized while reading up on our presidential candidates. Each one talks about how to keep America at the top of the economic ladder, how to assure ourselves that our daughters won't be shipped away. And I can hardly blame them.

The problem is that as the reigning economic leaders of the world our protectionist policies don't just protect us. They inflict serious damage on the poor. Our economic policies are meant to benefit Americans, and only Americans, even if they are to the detriment of other countries and people, and even if the economic activities that they describe take place in those countries. Our power is so great that we can economically subjugate people in their own country. We can walk into their house and buy their daughters, as it were.

More about economic injustice to come.

As leaves...

"What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice and at length it falls from us without our notice as a leaf from a tree.”
- from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, via sift everything

Things that I want to fall from me as leaves...
*Great ideas
*Good ideas
*Encouragements
*Useful insights and analyses
*Solutions to problems
*Eternal truths
*Sincere conversations

You?

On the topic of...

...Socially Proactive Businesses, here are a few more that I can think of:

Apolis Activism: A luxury clothing brand designed to inspire liberty and support development.

Invisible Children's Bracelet Campaign: Sure it's nonprofit, but it's a business nonetheless. Providing employment and training to displaced people, proceeds support education in northern Uganda.

Tom's Shoes: For every pair you buy, a pair is given to someone in a poor country.

Edun Clothing: Founded by Ali Hewson (Bono's wife) Edun has made a bold commitment to selling only those garment created completely in Africa, from "grower to sewer."

These companies are pushing forward the idea of the Socially Proactive Business. I'm sure you can think of others. Leave them in the comments.

I'm coining it right now

I just wrote a post on Acholi Beads about what it means to be a "socially proactive business." Wondering if that term had been used much I Googled it. Only two hits, one of which is mine.

Consider it coined.

A blog post I'm partial to, but then, I'm biased

The link below will take you to a nicely written blog post about the Invisible Children Bracelet Campaign, which I've been running for the last 19 months or so. And I took the photos, too. So, well, I kinda like it. Sue me.

http://www.invisiblechildren.com/blog/2007/10/17/bracelets-an-interns-perspective/#comments

The art of boredom

Life gets monotonous. That, my friends, is a truth. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, whomever you’re with, life will become routine, boring. The borders of your life will begin to feel like bars of a cage, or the walls of a cubicle, especially if you're in one.

Perhaps the best way to enjoy such a life is to make art from it. Look anew at those things that you find stale and uninteresting and find the beauty, the humor, the stories beneath the stagnation. That is what the greats do.

I was reminded of this while listening to a free podcast called “The News From Lake Wobegon.” They are a weekly series of narrations from Garrison Keller, who draws on his long experience in America’s middle to craft simple and entertaining stories cherished by thousands. His subject matter is as mundane as it comes. But he makes art from it.

I am challenging myself over the next few days and weeks to find the art in my routines, my relationships, those areas of my life that taste stale. I dare you to do the same.

So what is art? Art is the transcendence in our lives. Art is the point at which the everyday holds hands with the eternal. Look for it long enough, even in your life, and you will find it.

A few stories go a long way

One of the many reasons that I enjoy meeting new people is that my old stories are new to them. That one about pretending to be Swiss while trekking in the Himalayas, or about the nice little old taxi driver in Singapore who turned out to be a pimp – they’ve never heard them before.

It seems to me that we only get a certain number of stories in our lives. And not just the fun ones that we tell over coffee or wine, but the big ones are limited too, even more so. The long arcs that we use to understand and describe our lives, or that others use to do the same – we only get a couple of those.

I heard a great quote from my old friend Apurva today – “Everything you will ever be, you are now becoming.” You only get so many stories. Write them well.

Outliving Yourself

Changing the world.

It’s about changing people, right? It’s about millions, even billions of people changing the way they treat each other. But then, all of them are going to die. And the world will be left with the next rebellious upstart generation that wants to change the world.

Maybe that’s the significance of the Biblical story where God knocks down the life expectancy from 900 to 90. Whether you take it as history or myth the meaning is the same: any changes that we make are erased in 100 years. We live in perpetual cultural upheaval.

So how do you change the world for generations? What lives on after people pass away? Two things come to mind – ideas and organizations.

There’s a lot of talk these days about viral ideas – ideas that spread from mind to mind the way that a virus spreads from body to body. Once it plants itself in a host, the host spreads the idea to others, almost involuntarily. The idea takes on a life of its own. Some even have the power to jump generations.

Organizations can also last – look at The Red Cross, Ford, the Mormon church. And it seems to me that the stronger the commitment to an organization’s ideas, the more likely it is to last. (And its ability to make money. That helps too, for a time.)

The collision of ideas and organizations is what gives religions their amazing longevity. They are organizations built completely on ideas, or perhaps they are ideas that people perpetually build organizations on. Either way, they have staying power.

The ideas that Jesus talked about were archetypically viral. Viral ideas have spreading mechanisms built in. Like an email forward that promises you a new iPod if you send it to enough people. The idea is spread by virtue of its contents.

Jesus’s ideas had a different spreading mechanism. His ideas were about life change, and his life was their first showcase. When they spread to a new host, I mean really took root in her like a virus, her life changed. And when people saw the life change they were introduced to the ideas in a powerful form. If actions speak louder than words, then a new way of life is a sustained shout. Jesus’s ideas were shouted from his and his followers’ lives.

The reason his ideas spread so powerfully in the years immediately after his death was that the change they created in his followers was overwhelmingly attractive. These hosts of Jesus’s ideas loved each other, provided for each other, transcended extreme difficulties with joy and patience. Who wouldn’t want to know more? The virus multiplied.

I wonder about today’s Christian church, though. Is it founded on Jesus’s viral, life changing ideas? Or are there new ideas at its core? Or is it more like an organization (or group of organizations) that propagates because it has learned how to make money? Perhaps, like one of my last posts, it's a mix.

Playing Me

Sometimes I think that the way we behave, the things we do in a given day, the responses we give to people and surprises, are more a product of habit than of decision. We do most of what we do because that’s what we’ve always done.

We are afraid to change, especially in front of those who have known us the longest. We don’t want to belie ourselves. We don’t want to break the person that we have so long built before them, or even for them. So we play ourselves.

Let’s not do that anymore.

The Mixing Pan

Random train of thought this morning on my way to catch a bus to Gulu: According to a new billboard the PAM Awards are back in Kampala soon. They are annual music awards, and this is the second round since I've been in Uganda. It's strange that annual events here are no longer new.

The PAM in PAM Awards stands for Pan-African Music. I was wondering if that meant all-African so I thought about other words with the prefix 'pan.' The first that came to mind was pantheism. The belief that God is everything, or everything is God. So, yes, 'pan' means all, and well done Uganda on hosting such broad music awards.

Then back to pantheism, and its close relation panentheism - the belief that God is in everything. Then I wondered at the distinction, what it actually meant. If God is in everything then isn't everything, in a sense, God? And if God is everything, then isn't God de facto in everything? And so I wondered if the distinction held any relevance in the actual beliefs of people. Hindus might say that God, or Brahman, is in everything, as might Buddhists. But they might also say that everything is Brahman, everything is a working out of God, and everything will eventually settle into its eternal state as Brahman. It seems that Hinduism and and the Buddhism that it spawned are mixtures or overlaps of the theoretical distinctions of pan- and panentheism.

And then I wondered about monotheism, the belief that God is unique and separate, and perhaps even personal. Could there possibly be overlap with the broad, transcendent God of Hinduism? I think there may be some, especially when Christians speak of being created in the image of God. If you listen to Christians talk about that heritage, you'll often find that it holds deeper meaning to many than just a family resemblance. You'll find that it imparts value, significance, unalienable rights, even glory. It's almost as if they believe that there's a little bit of God inside them, like the Buddhists.

So then I thought about all the theoretical distinctions that we make to order our existence, to make sense of the ceaseless variety of our experiences, thoughts, beliefs and wonderings, and I wondered whether many of those might mix and overlap as well. I thought they probably did.

Then on the bus, waiting for it to leave the hot, noisy Kampala bus park, I was reading Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope. He wrote in the first chapter about how the distinctions between Republican and Democrat are often more blurred than not in the minds of individual voters. Like the Christian mother who pays for her teen daughter's abortion, or the midwestern factory worker who favors tax cuts for the rich, because that's what he plans to be someday. My politics are similar. I haven't been able to work out which party most closely aligns with my own ideas, mostly because their polarized rhetoric doesn't seem to apply to daily decision making. There is no room in their politics for overlap.

As I write I'm reminded of Christian denominations - theoretical constructs with thin differences to which adherents align their beliefs. But I would guess that the actual (as opposed to rhetorical) faith of individual believers across denominations blurs as much as not, and is more similar than different.

I bet it's like that with a lot of beliefs - evolutionists who pray, Christians who sit cross-legged and meditate, republicans who don't mind same sex marriage, individuals whose ideas are more nuanced than the labels that they're stuck with.

It's okay to depend on friends

In my current field of work - nonprofits, NGOs, aid, development - there is a lot of talk about 'dependency.' The idea is that if one person helps a second person for some length of time, the second person will become dependent on the first person's help, and won't be able to fend for himself (gender bias unintended - another big NGO concern).

Here in Uganda I often hear that we should not give 'handouts' to 'locals' because 'locals' will become 'dependent' on 'handouts.' The prevailing wisdom says that my every interaction with a Ugandan will effect the 'stereotype' of the 'white man' giving 'handouts' to 'locals.'

But what about when 'locals' become friends? What happens when we're no longer 'white man' and 'local,' but just together, talking, relaxing? And what happens when my friend has a need he is too poor to meet and I have more money than I need to spend?

Then, my friends, I am happy to build dependency. Because then it's not the 'white man' that my friend depends on. It's his community, of which I am a part. And after all, that's what we all crave: A community that we can depend upon. Sometimes that means family, sometimes friends, sometimes religion, sometimes clubs and teams and gangs and book clubs.

So here's to dependency. I hope that someday you all find yourselves wonderfully dependent.

The Secret of Happiness

If you've never seen the TEDtalks, I'd suggest searching for them on iTunes. Interesting free talks from some very smart people. From a talk by philosopher Dan Dennett that I watched yesterday:

The Secret of Happiness:

Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

Portrait of a Bead Maker

This is the oldest bead maker working for us at Acholi Beads. She is a widow and takes care of several orphans. And, you'll notice, has a beautiful smile.

I wonder

I wonder if I can think something true that no one has ever thought before.

Sometimes when opportunity knocks it leaves a flaming bag of... well, you know

Have you ever wondered how some people consistently come up with great ideas? I think it's this: They allow themselves to consider more opportunities than the rest of us.

Ideas are opportunities - they are something to be believed and acted upon, or not. Let me give an example: One idea that I just came up with right now is claiming that I own a passing comet and selling its mineral rights to a greedy despot. Is it a good idea? Probably not. But it is an opportunity. I can do it, or not.

Ideas are just cleverly arranged strings of facts. And most facts, when strung together, are not coherent. So most ideas will not be great. And since ideas are opportunities, many opportunities are not to be taken. And so most of us, after coming up with a bunch of bad opportunities just stop thinking up new ideas.

I think those people who always have the next great idea let themselves consider many more opportunities than we do. Let me lay out a challenge for you. Pick a topic, something like: business, travel, the weekend, or maybe start with something as simple as dinner. Put a piece of paper on your desk and write out a bunch of ideas for that topic.

For instance, if you chose dinner you might write: cook chicken, go to Applebees, leftovers, etc. Now make yourself consider more options: French food, picnic, sushi... in Tokyo. Each one is an opportunity, and many might be bad opportunities. But you're never going to find the great ones until you get through the bad ones.

Once you've had a good (and creative!) dinner, move on to some bigger things. Let the opportunity abound!

(By the way, I decided not to do that comet thing.)

The Tube

I'm going to admit it now. I'm addicted to The West Wing. Yes, the mid-90's television show. (No, not the G-Dub White House.) We have seasons 1-5 on DVD at the IC house in Gulu. (Thanks Josh)

It's fast-paced stories and ironic dialogue have sucked me into a number multi-episode couch session. Which got me wondering, why television? Why do so many people tune in every night to watch fictitious strangers stumble through their humorous and or action/dramatic problems?

For me I think it's because television resolves itself. We can invest in these problems (however latently) and be confident in their prompt and complete solution by the end of the hour, or even the half-hour! Oh, how blessedly different from the problems that may await us at the office the next day, or those at the far end of a phone line, or the ones sitting next to you on the couch.

Hail to the Thief, Again

Everyone's favorite band to claim to like is giving us all more reason to claim to like them. Radiohead's next album, In Rainbows, which will be available October 10, will be released for download on their website. The price? You choose. Any price will do, according to Radiohead, including $0.00.

In a tip of the hat to the music sharing community, the band, whose contract with EMI has lapsed, is testing the power of the internet media revolution, and the good will of its fans. What price will you choose?

That's the question keeping media companies up at night, as all media becomes downloadable, shareable, free. What price will consumers choose? Only Radiohead may know.

from BBC News

When it's too good to pass

I usually stick to a certain (though winding) theme on this site, and though this might not relate directly, I think somewhere at its core, you know, at the meta-level, it all comes together.

We all know the George Foreman Grill, that most manly of housewares, used by the champ himself to keep all his little Georges satisfied. Well it looks like the champ is no longer undisputed.

Evander Holyfield is going toe-to-toe with the Foreman franchise with the release of his Real Deal Grill. Hit the link to read more. And no, sadly, I'm not making this up.

Social Revolultionaries

"Lots of people let themselves be wholly absorbed by militant politics and the preparation for social revolution. Rare, much more rare, are they who, in order to prepare for the revolution, are willing to make themselves worthy of it."

-Georges Friedmann, 1970

courtesy of my friend and Invisible Children cohort Kelly Shearon