Channel Surfing for Truth

Perhaps my maleness or perhaps my ADD forces me to move from channel to channel, leaving programs midway, sometimes returning and yes, always trying to avoid those repeating commercials unless they happen to be a new version of some of my favorites on the TV, seemingly in search of something. I’m not even sure why, so I keep trying to figure it out and recently I hit upon the high minded purpose of truth seeking.

While doing so today I saw part of the GPS segment on CNN. No, I don’t think CNN is the Chavez News Network, although they and others do seem to frequently give free publicity to those who have sympathies I can not quite understand. But that does give me a chance to question some of my biases, after all biases are hard to change and not synonymous with the truth.

Dambisa Moyo was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria and she spoke in support of her views that foreign aid to Africa, her basic message being that it has failed to help the citizens and the countries to progress. I could not agree more with her on that point so that must mean I found “truth”, right? Of course, when someone says something I already believe, it is so reinforcing and harmonizing as to bleat out for the top level moniker of truth.

She says we know what has not worked and that we know what does work. Well then, could politics somehow interfere? How about government corruption, either by government, political agendas or selfish business interests inside of the foreign aid provider or the same inside the recipient country or an axis of evil between all of those on both sides who know how to benefit from the process and therefore are loath to change even to achieve the higher purpose so often stated and demanded by so many? And by the way, hoped for by the likes of me.

Probably one of the things that lit up my agreement meter the most was her POV that ultimately foreign countries, aid providers, non-profits and other third parties are not responsible for the success of any sovereign country or the progress of it’s people, unless of course they have truly colonized it and retain real colonial power. Not that those third parties can not be helpful tools in support of the citizens and their government.

But here is the thing: She says the governments and the people are responsible. If they have a vote in the UN, well, they are just like any citizen of the US, ultimately they must take responsibility for themselves and how they respond to life’s ever present unfairness. The responsibility to pursue their own happiness is inherent in every living human being and every sovereign nation no matter how bad their luck is.

OMG. That sounds like something I want to support. I want to support people to help themselves, not just to sustain them a few more years in their misery.

Another woman was also in the interview and due to my surfing addiction, I did not pick up her name but did notice that when she had a chance to focus on things that help create circumstances for real progress which is sustainable, she seemed to want to mostly protect current AID efforts only. She argued that the discussion should not become one of “aid or no aid” and to put some teeth and emotion into her fears, she cited a major disease and it’s real destructiveness. Those efforts  seemingly are only able to at best slow down the disaster, but do nothing to prevent it other than provide sources of money to be skimmed by various opportunists.  She seemed more concerned with saving lives for misery than for finding ways to help stop the misery by enabling, in some manner, the local governments to enable the people to solve their own problems.

Helping sometimes does not help.