Bonsai People

[Sapphire Blue]

Muhammad Yunus
The Nobel Peace Prize 2006

Nobel Lecture
Nobel Lecture, Oslo, December 10, 2006.

(excerpt)

We Can Put Poverty in the Museums

I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue.

Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which under-estimates human capacity, by designing concepts, which are too narrow (such as concept of business, credit- worthiness, entrepreneurship, employment) or developing institutions, which remain half-done (such as financial institutions, where poor are left out). Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.

I firmly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we collectively believe in it. In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums. When school children take a tour of the poverty museums, they would be horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They would blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition, which existed for so long, for so many people.

A human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take care of him or herself, but also to contribute to enlarging the well being of the world as a whole. Some get the chance to explore their potential to some degree, but many others never get any opportunity, during their lifetime, to unwrap the wonderful gift they were born with. They die unexplored and the world remains deprived of their creativity, and their contribution.

Grameen has given me an unshakeable faith in the creativity of human beings. This has led me to believe that human beings are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty.

To me poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a flower-pot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil-base that is too inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on. All it needs to get the poor people out of poverty for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.

Let us join hands to give every human being a fair chance to unleash their energy and creativity.


Continued @ http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/yunus-lecture-en.html

Video of the Nobel Lecture: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/yunus-lecture.html

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. The problem with the analogy is...

That bonsai are cultivated. They are not stunted by accident, or through the vagaries of fate. Rather, they are created specifically for the enjoyment of the idle, wealthy class, who stunt them in interesting and aesthetic ways.

Think on that for a bit.

[SmokingJacket]

2. Not so far off, though.

One could argue that the rich *have* cultivated the poor by deliberately underpaying them and undervaluing their work so that they remain powerless and dependent.

[Sapphire Blue]

3. "Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on. "

[malaise]

13. Nothing to argue about that n/t

[Tanuki]

4. From the headline, I thought the article was going to be about

the little girl with developmental disabilities whose parents are stunting her growth surgically so she will be easier for them to care for.

[annabanana]

6. me too.. and then I thought

Well.. maybe smaller people would be less of a strain on the environment...

[eridani]

14. Poverty is cultivated as well.

The analogy extends rather than fails.

[EFerrari]

19. I think that is the point, TechBear

:(

[rman]

39. "It has been created and sustained by the economic and social system that we have designed

for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue."

Poverty clearly is no accident.

[porphyrian]

5. I like that, althought I believe the systemic problems are due to people...

...corrupting the concepts and changing the systems intentionally to be exclusive, just like institutionalized racism, for example. Blaming the system would be like blaming a screwdriver, and it gets you just about as far. Removing the corruption from the system, and perhaps putting corruption-proofing in place at the same time, is the solution.

[Sapphire Blue]

7. IMO, Yunus isn't "blaming the system"; rather he is holding accountable those who are responsible...

... for the system.

"It has been created and sustained by the economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue." - Muhammad Yunus, from the Nobel Lecture

It is the system... and the system includes those responsible for it.

Regarding the screwdriver - it, too, was created by people... if the screwdriver is faulty, whoever manufactured it is responsible for any defect.

[porphyrian]

8. I can accept that. - n/t

[TahitiNut]

15. Indeed! My career has been systems. It's a discipline of its own, imho.

Our economic systems are not 'natural' - they're man-made and man-damaged. It's not really a problem understanding when a man-made system is malfunctioning. All we have to do is look at the results. Altogether too many look at the results and don't ask "is that what we want?" They pretend that the system is perfect and the results are, therefore, just. Who'd say that about cars running into trees? Who'd say that about a heating system that spews carbon monoxide? Do they say "well, if people died of carbon monoxide poisoning then it must be God's will?" No. They fix the heating system. The time to fix our economic systems is long overdue. We're killing our kin.

[xchrom]

17. darwin himself condemned using nature as an analogy

for human society.

i.e. ''the law of the jungle'' -- ''the survival of the fittest'' --

the poor are created by the system -- whether we like it or not.

and we don't.

[bobbolink]

9. "Poverty In Museums" !!

This is such a great phrase, and an even greater concept.

The Dems now have the power and opportunity to make this a reality.

Will they?

[Sapphire Blue]

29. It can happen.

We are the Dems. We can do it. We have the power!

[Porcupine]

35. We call them homeless. It's poverty as cultural art.

Every little burg in the US has hundreds of storage lockers but generally nowhere for homeless humans to sleep out of the weather. We deliberately force them outside to wither and die publicly as a threat to the rest of us.

The message is very clear...."This is what will happen to YOU if you don't conform."

Minimal housing, sanitary facilities and food for every homeless person in the US would cost us peanuts. The truth is that the powers that be WANT them out there freezing and starving as a lesson to the rest of us.

[bobbolink]

42. The Coalition For The Homeless says $4 Billion would solve homelessness

That *is* "peanuts", in your terms, compared to what we throw away on silliness.

I'm going to put it bluntly---it will only happen when we all decide to make it happen.

Why isn't this $4 billion being spent? Because it's not considered important. Period.

And I don't want to hear that it's all the fault of the RW!! NO WAY! Homelessness has been a big factor since Raygun in the '80s. The Dems have been in power since then, and...... nothing.

Homelessness keeps getting worse. The DEms (all of us) finally have to accept accountability for that.

I still hear DUers say, "But nothing is as important as the war."

There you have it. Until DUers, and all DEMS decide to do something, it will continue, and we have to look at ourselves.

Just for starters, make some calls about poverty to your reps. Ask your friends and relatives to do the same.

And the next time the budget rolls around, please heed Sapphire Blues pleas for calls and letters!!

This can be done, if all Dems decide to do it.

[Cleita]

10. Great post.

Poverty can be a thing of the past once society recognizes the need to redistribute wealth.

[Sapphire Blue]

36. Thank you, Cleita!

:hi:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

11. I'm willing to believe

This could be a reality.

[Cleita]

12. The poor are penalized by society for being poor. For instance

I had a savings account at a bank. It never had more than a thousand dollars in it at anytime. I saved what I could out of my income, but I had to dip into it for emergencies so sometimes it got pretty low. However, about six months ago, my bank started charging me $3 a month every time it got below $250. I mean I was only getting pennies in interest to begin with and it didn't offset this sudden bank fee that appeared out of nowhere. I closed the account, but this is one of the many ways that the poor get nickled and dimed by the present system that the rich don't have to deal with. We need laws giving everyone the same rights as the wealthier among us.

Also, the rich do not pay their fair share into Social Security. This needs to change and would be a bonanza for the stressed Social Security and Medicare system.

[EFerrari]

20. The poor pay more for everything, from financial services to produce.

The stores in their neighborhoods charge more because the poor aren't very mobile, they are captives to their local retailers. And on and on and on.

[Cleita]

16. kick

:kick:

[EFerrari]

18. K&R

:hug:

:grouphug:

[Sapphire Blue]

30. Thank you, sfexpat2000!

:hi: :hug:

[me b zola]

21. k&r

[Sapphire Blue]

31. Thanks, me b zola!

:hi:

[Solly Mack]

22. K&R

:)

Much enjoyed

[Sapphire Blue]

32. Thank you, Solly Mack!

:hi:

[nam78_two]

23. K&R.nt

[Sapphire Blue]

33. Thanks, nam78_two!

:hi:

[Reterr]

24. k/r

[Sapphire Blue]

34. Thank you, Reterr !

:hi:

[struggle4progress]

25. The lecture is politically smart but analytically weak. The poor are often poor, not because ..

.. they are lazy or never had a chance, but because the system has been designed to exploit them to enrich others. And their misery is often worse if they have had the misfortune to inhabit a place of great natural resources, that others covet. Eduardo Galeano once discussed this "human poverty as a consequence of the wealth of the land" brilliantly in his classic book "The Open Veins of Latin America":

INTRODUCCIÓN: CIENTO VEINTE MILLONES DE NIÑOS EN EL CENTRO DE LA TORMENTA

Internationally, "division of labor" means some countries specialize in winning and others in losing. Our region of the world, today called Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing since those early times when the Renaissance Europeans hurried across the sea to sink their teeth in its throat. Through the centuries, Latin America perfected its function. It is no longer the kingdom of the wonders where reality defeated fable and the imagination was humiliated by the gold deposits and mountains of silver, which were the trophies of the conquest. But the region continues working as a maid. It still exists to service other people's necessities, a source and reserve of petroleum and iron, copper and the meat, fruits and coffee, raw materials and foods for the rich countries that won and that consume ...

Las venas abiertas de América Latina.
(Introducción y 1ª Parte)
http://usuarios.lycos.es/politicasnet/galeano.htm

[Sapphire Blue]

38. I've read your comment & reread it... & don't quite know what to make of it.

Perhaps you might reread Yunus' lecture. Here's the link for the entire text: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/yunus-lecture-en.html & the video: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/yunus-lecture.html .

[struggle4progress]

40. "... I am very unhappy about the conceptual restrictions imposed on the players in the market ...

Our theoretical constructs should make room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away ... We have remained so impressed by the success of the free-market that we never dared to express any doubt about our basic assumption ... Even profit maximizing companies can be designed as social businesses by giving full or majority ownership to the poor ... To me, globalization is like a hundred-lane highway criss-crossing the world. If it is a free-for-all highway, its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies. Bangladeshi rickshaw will be thrown off the highway ... We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us ... Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which under-estimates human capacity, by designing concepts, which are too narrow (such as concept of business, credit- worthiness, entrepreneurship, employment) or developing institutions, which remain half-done (such as financial institutions, where poor are left out). Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people ... Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on ..."

According to such statements, poverty results from a theoretical oversight on the part of the free-marketeers: a failure to value the human abilities of the poor. Such a formulation does not threaten the established order because it does not recognize that, in fact, the supposed oversight actually represents a deliberate choice of those who have power to create and exploit an underclass and to mystify this choice by stereotypes about who the poor are and why they are poor.

Yunus has this picture upside-down: he thinks that the poverty results from the stereotypes and that attacking the stereotypes is a route to ending the poverty; this is, I think, politically smart, since it does not offend the powerful. But since the actual role of the stereotypes is to obscure the underlying exploitation, Yunus' view is analytically weak: as long as the structural exploitation exists, the stereotypes will be reproduced in an automatic fashion as part of the justification of the existing order by the consuming classes; no matter how hard one fights against the stereotypes, they will continue to reappear because they serve a critical role in perpetuating the structure of exploitation.

This is not a criticism of the hard, valuable, and honorable work Yunus has been doing for decades: he clearly deserves the prize which the speech marks. I merely note the limitations of the view he expounds. Microlending appears to be an excellent tactic; but its large scale impact is likely to be limited (although many particular poor individuals certainly benefit) because --- the consuming societies of the world remain willing to manipulate economies (as Nixon's allies did against Allende's Chile or as the US continues to do with its economic war against Cuba), to destroy countrysides (as the US did in Vietnam), to murder labor and community activists (as, for example, by Reagan's death squads in Guatemala or El Salvador ), and generally to do whatever is necessary to limit the free development of people outside the spposedly "regular" context of the international free market.

[calimary]

26. Bwaaahaaahaaaaa! To the Greatest Page with thee!

The real value of threads like this, with OPs like this is, well, this (awkward as that sounds):

We've had a lot of threads here on DU, and lots of assorted discussions, about poverty. Everybody weighing in has a different take on it, a different way of thinking about it, a different way of wording their thinking about it. ALL of these, in their excellent variety, are welcome, useful, and valuable.

Here's a slightly unrelated example to illustrate:

I called several Congresspeople/Senators today, mainly about the war. Making the same points I've made before, and that I'm sure MULTITUDES of others, from here and all over the country, have made. I called Feinstein to get her onboard with Ted Kennedy's latest moves, per a MoveOn email I got, exhorting just that. And then it occurred to me (and probably to quite a few others, too - it's not just me) that Feinstein is and has been a businesswoman. That's a language she speaks and understands. So how 'bout let's put the issue at hand in THOSE terms, to meet her on her level, her mentality, speaking in her language, and in an arena in which she's already comfortable? Consider: if you're in business, and you have an employee who is flagrantly and repeatedly insubordinate, if you have an employee who is a rogue - whose actions and decisions threaten to bankrupt that business, foul its reputation in the marketplace, and ruin its stockholders, WOULDN'T THAT EMPLOYEE BE FIRED????

I put that to the young male staffer I reached in Dianne Feinstein's office. His reaction? "That's actually a really interesting way to put it. I never thought of it like that before. I will be sure to pass that along." His tone of voice told me he was sincere and that a small lightbulb had gone off in his head. THIS might be a really good way to reach someone like her. PARTICULARLY if someone like her, a Dem, has spent too much time cozying up to republi-CONS in the past. republi-CONS, mind you, who more often than not, sing the praises of the idea of "running the government like a business." It hits people like that square between the eyes, and in their "hearts" or "gut," from which they operate and develop or endorse policy.

Think of other ways to put what WE want, in ways and language that exploits or plays to the mentality from which some of these people come. If you're gonna make 'em understand you, you have to put your argument in such a way that THEY can understand it.

The good thing about all these different takes, rants, posts, complaints, beggings, naggings, etc., is not just the repetition of the same basic points. It's HOW they're expressed - ESPECIALLY to someone who's on the fence, who has yet to be slam-dunk convinced. Ninety-nine of 'em will be along the same or similar lines. Yeah, okay okay we've heard that before. Doesn't really speak to me. BUT, along comes the 100th version - from a slightly different point of view - and it hits 'em straight where they live. Suddenly, they're sold, and they're OURS. It might be that 100th version that is worded or expressed JUST THAT LITTLE BIT MORE CLOSELY to their own comfort place. That one just might speak their specific language, and be the ONE arrow among many others that hits the mark.

We have to be sensitive to that mindset, and try to strategize, out-think, out-psychoanalyze, and try to figure out WHAT WILL SPEAK TO THEM, if they're not yet locked in, in lockstep, with us already. Maybe they haven't heard the one, single, irresistable argument yet, from the one, single, irresistable frame of reference that speaks directly to them.

With this one particular young man, I got a very definite sense that he'd just received a different way to look at it, one that - at least to him - made a lot more sense, in line with where he was coming from.

I think you can win ANY point, provided you find the correct and best-targeted way and words with which to argue that point.

[Sapphire Blue]

27. Yunus : "I became involved because poverty was all around me, and I could not turn away from it."

More from the Nobel Lecture...

Grameen Bank

I became involved in the poverty issue not as a policymaker or a researcher. I became involved because poverty was all around me, and I could not turn away from it. In 1974, I found it difficult to teach elegant theories of economics in the university classroom, in the backdrop of a terrible famine in Bangladesh. Suddenly, I felt the emptiness of those theories in the face of crushing hunger and poverty. I wanted to do something immediate to help people around me, even if it was just one human being, to get through another day with a little more ease. That brought me face to face with poor people's struggle to find the tiniest amounts of money to support their efforts to eke out a living. I was shocked to discover a woman in the village, borrowing less than a dollar from the money-lender, on the condition that he would have the exclusive right to buy all she produces at the price he decides. This, to me, was a way of recruiting slave labor.

I decided to make a list of the victims of this money-lending "business" in the village next door to our campus.

When my list was done, it had the names of 42 victims who borrowed a total amount of US $27. I offered US $27 from my own pocket to get these victims out of the clutches of those money-lenders. The excitement that was created among the people by this small action got me further involved in it. If I could make so many people so happy with such a tiny amount of money, why not do more of it?

That is what I have been trying to do ever since. The first thing I did was to try to persuade the bank located in the campus to lend money to the poor. But that did not work. The bank said that the poor were not creditworthy. After all my efforts, over several months, failed I offered to become a guarantor for the loans to the poor. I was stunned by the result. The poor paid back their loans, on time, every time! But still I kept confronting difficulties in expanding the program through the existing banks. That was when I decided to create a separate bank for the poor, and in 1983, I finally succeeded in doing that. I named it Grameen Bank or Village bank.

Today, Grameen Bank gives loans to nearly 7.0 million poor people, 97 per cent of whom are women, in 73,000 villages in Bangladesh.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/yunus-lecture-en.html

Muhammad Yunus is living proof that one person can make a difference.

[calimary]

28. YES. One person CAN make a difference.

Another example - on another front: Cindy Sheehan. Another: Princess Di. Another: Oprah. Another: JP2. Another: Mother Teresa. Some did it with money and prominence, and others had little more than the shirts on their backs.

[Sapphire Blue]

37. Wonderful examples of 1 person making a difference... each one an inspiration!

Each one of us leaves an imprint upon this world. Doesn't matter how big or small it is, what matters is what it is and that it is!

[G_Leo_Criley]

41. k & r

Inspirational!

:kick:

glc