Utopia By Numbers

Painting by numbers may not be the most creative experience for a painter, but the systematic step-by-step methodology gaurantees a relatively decent result. It may not be spectacular nor a killer-app but it works and is effective. If we can achieve utopia by numbers, it may not be spectacular with good sound bites for the evening news, but it will eradicate poverty from human society. That's good enough for me.

What is utopia by numbers? It is the top five percent of the richest people on earth, giving a little of their fortune, to provide micro-creadit programs with the seed money they need, to grow communities of entrepreneurs around the globe, helping the poorest ten percent of the world's population. Micro-credit programs are proven effective methodology that works. Not spectacular, just effective.

If a billionaire on Forbes' list should be interested in helping to eradicate poverty, utopia by numbers is simple. He only needs to donate $500,000 to help 1,000 people who would each get $500 loans from established micro-credit agencies. He only needs to follow-through by sitting on the agencies' board of directors, and evaluate the various programs to cross-pollinate best practices. With most of these programs having proven repayment rates of over 95%, the initial seed money will last a long time. In fact, the billionaire can make an annual donation of $500,000 and the magic of compounding will quicking turn his contribution into a billion dollar foundation. With government participation of tax credits, micro-credit can be a growing industry with significant financial returns on investment, as well as invaluable social returns.

Just like in painting by numbers, we don't try to paint all the numbers all at once. By simply following a boring step-by-step procedure to fill in one square at a time, one color at a time, a complex beautiful picture can be created. As it is said in the ancient Chinese proverb, "A ten thousand mile journey begins with a single step." So utopia by number begins with the first billionaire, the first micro-credit loan, the first government sponsored program. We are already well on our way to utopia. There remain many more numbers to fill, but there is time, and money. All we need is the will, not just political will, but personal will.

Utopia in Reality

It is encouraging to an optimistic realist that many other people besides myself have been contemplating the wisdom of leveling the playing field so that the poor have the opportunities to better their lives, and not be stuck hopelessly in ghettos or dead-end jobs.

Being a realist, I have been also encouraged by the many effective programs to transform the lives of the poor. For over thirty years, non-governmental organizations, through the coordination of international agencies, have done great work bringing hope and well-being to many people in the poorest countries in the world, literally the poorest of the poor living in a world of high technological plenty.

As a proposed solution, indeed, a challenge, to the thousands of billionaires from all over the world, not only in the USA, Germany, or the other G8 countries, but the ones in India, China, Poland, Russia, Brazil, and all the other countries with billionaires, I see a realistic first step towards utopia by utilizing the combined wisdom of those who have proven themselves to be wise with money, and the political authority of the democratic governments who have the power to bring change to their nations, as well as the self-preservation and entrepreneurial spirit of those most desperately needing hope.

In this first step, I see the billionaires providing what they can do best, and the governments providing what "they" can do best, to help the poor to do "their" best. It is a program that has been working for over three decades, in various small-scale. What I envision is a much grander and self-sustaining program that will help eradicate poverty in the world.

The key is micro-credit. Wikipedia has an extensive article on it, so I won't repeat the operational and logistical detail. It is clear that billionaires do not have the will, the patience, nor the talent, to administer these micro-credit loans to the poor. However, from tragic history, we also know that governments are not competent at the job either. Indeed, more money would be wasted by government agencies administering these micro-credit loans than the money working for the poor. The solution, as I see it, is for the billionaires to "invest" in a myriad of non-profit agencies that administer these loans, and "sit" as board members to advise them. We know that most billionaires are very wise in these area of investing and advising, and they can leverage all the people and passion in the non-profit agencies. To make it worth their while, and to encourage their philantropy, governments can legislate tax credit for the billionaire investment. However, to ensure that they invest their time and talent wisely (which they would naturally do so as part of their inherent nature) the tax credit can be speficied to take effect only as a percentage of the loan repayment rate. This will ensure that the microcredit loans are wisely distributed to responsible people who make good use of them, and not waste them.

The last few decades have shown that the repayment rate is highest for those programs where the participants are not simply given the money, but are mentored through entrepreneurial classes, as well as community support groups. Hopefully, there will be enough funding to launch thousands of these administering/mentoring/support agencies so that each one can experiment with some innovative methods to encourage success, which would be measured using whatever the billionaires devise, to ensure their return on investment can be maximized. For example, in addition to the repayment rate, we can measure the longivity of the businesses created using the micro-credit loans, or the change in standard of living in the people affected, or the size of the micro-credit community created by the agency. A sure sign of failure is a lack of customer. These are measures that billionaires can understand, governments can document, and everyone can benefit.

Governments should be generous with the tax credit legislation to encourage these program's creation because the benefits from these programs are not just to the billionaires, and the poor, but also the society at large. With a decrease in poverty, and a corresponding rise in the average standard of living in society, it can be certain that crime rate will decrease, medical cost will decrease, and unemployment will decrease. The cost to the goverment when NOT funding or encouraging these programs will be far greater than the miserly denial of tax credits to these programs.

I read recently somewhere in print, that the large ratio of rich to poor in today's global economy is a reflection of the meritocracy inherent in the information society. I was not impressed with this assertion when I first read it, and upon careful consideration, I have decided that it is wrong. To claim that the large gap between the rich and poor is a result of the global economy's natural meritocracy is to claim, equally falsely, that the large gap between the aristocracy and the peasants are a natural result of the meritocracy of military feudalism. It is true that intelligence, skills, and knowledge have replaced military might, and physical strength as the bargaining chips in the global economy. It is true that the brightest have been rewarded more than those that are mightest in the traditional measures of prestige. No longer does Might Makes Right; now the author of the above absured assertion is claiming Bright Makes Right. Revenge of the Geeks may be funny in the movies, but is tragically wrong in reality. Satyagrapha means that Right is always right and painful. It means the rich and mighty must sacrifice to make right the imbalance caused by the imperfect accounting methods we have to measure valued added.

As marriage and divorce laws from history have shown, not all the monetary rewards go to the rightful people who contributed to the value-added. Wives have been denied their rightful share of the reward of matrimonial in all cultures since time immemorial, just because the husbands have been the bread winners. The invaluable work of child-rearing, of educating the young, of caring for the household have been under-valued and under-paid, indeed, un-valued and un-paid, for most of human history. It is only in the last century that this has changed.

The same under-value and under-paid culture is prevalent is all societies against the poor. Marx condemned capitalism in part for this injustice. The burden of global warming caused by pollution from industries are equally on the backs of every individuals in the world, yet the benefits from the polluting industries only enriched a few individuals in a few countries. Life is not fair, and is imperfect, but to claim that the poor is poor because they merit their station in life is beyond injustice; it is falsehood. Marie Antoinette may have said the infamouse let-them-eat-cake as a wittism in jest, and probably did not deserve to have her head chopped off for it; but we have no excuse to ignore the suffering of the poor, and lest of all justify their suffering with a falsehood like Bright Makes Right.

Back to Reality

After weeks of reflecting, contemplating utopia and other abstract thoughts, reading the news brought me back to reality. A number of items, randomly brought together as I surf the web, gives me subtle warnings of the state of humanity. We are a long way from utopia.

Forbes again is report an increasing number of billionaires in the world as the global economy grew yet again over 2005, measured using traditional metrics of dolloars and cents. The new billionaires are predominantly from the US, with many Europeans, and increasing number of new faces from emerging economies, like India, Brazil, and China. All the billionaires together account for more wealth than the whole of Germany. All the European billionaires together account for about three quarters that of the Americans. In other words, all the billionaires in the world probably account for the wealth of the two countries in the G8 countries, maybe even three. That's comparing less than a few thousand individuals with a few hunred millions. The ratio in numerical term is roughly 1,000:100,000,000. In other words, one to a million.

The oceans of the world are dying as more species of marine life are threatened with extinction, and many more are getting sick and dying. Sea lions are getting poisoned from land-based toxins and infected by parasites from domestic cat feces. Fish and dolphins are dying from toxin poisoning. All the garbage that we dump into the oceans since the industrial revolution have accumulated to the level, as green house gases have accumulated, to the point where critical mass is near. Glaciers all around the world are melting at accelerating rates, while life is disappearing from the womb that gave birth to humanity.

One of the most online nation of the world, with one of the highest rate of broadband connection, South Korea is facing a new crime wave never before faced by society: cyber-bullying. It is not the same kind of bullying found in school playground, but multiplied by the power of the Internet. Instead of facing one or two, or even a dozen bullies at a time, a victim is now confronted with the all-prevasive crowd of the Internet, with thousands and hundreds of thousands of strangers who can see your picture, read rumors about you, and know little or nothing about you, yet is fanned to hot red anger at some accusations against you. News reports spoke of suicides from the pressure. It makes Columbine and other similar stories pale in comparison. The only difference is that words are mightier than bullets in some cases.

Is Schopenhauer right to be pessimistic about the future of humanity? Is there hope for a world so self-absorbed, each person living in one of the six billion odd individual world, of fantasy constructed using images borrowed from film and online games, living spaces? Is the dark world of "1984" merely postponed, controlled not by big brother, but by the "old boys club"? Will the red water and red sun described in Revelation a warning for the poison that we have been spewing into our living world? Will the new prophets of our culture, the revered economists, find a new measure to account for not only the wealth produced in today's economy, but also the hidden cost of ecological damage?

Germany began to find a solution through the urging of its Green Party by charging a form of Green Tax on many products with packaging etc. We need to do the same for those heavy SUVs and luxury vehicles that burn three four times the petroleum, not only at the pump, but also all the way back through the refinery and to the well. It is well know that the cost of production does not account for all the energy and values added to the process to create and deliver a product. That was the complain by Karl Marx against the capitalists. Although his solution was wrong, it does not mean his question was invalid. The Cold War merely postponed the day of reckoning when the capitalist economies of the world must face the truth of their own nemesis. Their success is poisoning the planet. Their wealth is destroying the means of production - the almost-free and essentially abundant resources they call commodity.

When the top five percent of humanity can find their way to balance on the side of light, of goodness, on the Solzhenitsen Line, and contemplate the wisdom within each and every one of their own hearts, to find the courage to change what they can change more capably than any other human in world history, when they can seek the wisdom of the Higher Power that has endowed them, through Grace, through the gifts of intellect, energy, determination, serendipity, and many other mysterious ways, and direct their lives to making the lives of the other six billions better, even by a little, then and only then, utopia is witin the reach of this generation.

Unlike Schopenhauer, I am an optimistic realist.

Contemplating Wisdom

Philosophers throughout the ages seek wisdom in different ways. A simple understanding of philosophy comes from the two root words that make up the word "philosopher": philo - love, and sophia, wisdom. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom. There are many kinds of love, and a philsopher's love is akin to a collector's love of antique or art. Philosophy is a collection of wisdom from various sources, collected seredipitously on a philosopher's journey through life, or laborously in a scholar's studies. Most valuable of all, in my humble opinion, is the wisdom revealed from a Higher Power.

M. Scott Peck made a life of contemplation the central theme of his book, "A World Waiting to be Born." In it, he asserted that a time for prayer in a Christian's life, is a time of contemplation, to allow the heart to be emptied, to be readied for the wisdom of God to enter. In a Zen Buddhist's ideal of contemplative meditation, the mind is also emptied, and the emptiness is the goal, the objective, without expectation of revelation or inspiration. The difference I find interesting between Christianity and Zen Buddhism is the contrast between the passion inherent in Christian evangelism, and the dispassionate intelligence central to Zen Buddhism. Yet, both are built on a life of contemplation.

Another difference between the two, as stated by M. Scott Peck in his book, is the level of intimacy in Christ's prayer to the Father, compared to a prayer in almost any other religion in the world. To me, the central difference between Christianity and all other religions, (and I trend softly and respectfully here), is the unique theme of Christ's death on the cross and the subsequent resurrection. As John said in the Gospel, God so loved the world.... There are many who claim to hear the voice of God, and many who claim to know wisdom to lead us to riches. Yet, it is Christianity alone that condemns its own church leaders for abandoning the sheep, feeding on their flesh, instead of binding up the weak and wounded. Christian doctrine, at it's most essential and spiritual, or mystical, transcends the worldly dogma that plagues all the great religious cultures of the world, including orthodox Christianity of all denominations. A simple book, a simple Word, binds together all the critical ingredients for utopia, like a mustard seed with all the DNA necessary to grow a mighty tree.

Contemplation is the time committed to listening to the DNA within, to find the intimacy with the Higher Power, to see the world not as we human see it, but as the Higher Power who cares not an iota about the mundane daily worries of our desperate lives, but the higher consciousness of our souls. It is not easy contemplating wisdom because we may not like to hear what is said. Not often are we given mighty missions as Ghandi was. Not all of us leading a life of Satyagraha will be a great leader. M. Scott Peck wrote in the book, "A World Waiting to be Born," that each of us has a different calling, a vocation. Not all vocations are earth-shattering or monumental. Some are simple. To follow our calling, whatever it may be, to be true to ourselves, is the wisdom that brings courage to change, and serenity to live.