From Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the poor, to Is there any hope for humanity?

From

The Muhammad Yunus articles.

Banker to the Poor,

To,

Is there any hope for humanity?

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been know to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.
Mohandas Gandhi

Muhammad Yunus, seems like a great person.

Although all people are great, it’s just that the greatness of most people doesn’t get much attention unless something that gets attention is done, like what M. Yunus. did.

Here’s the idea:

To lend money to the poorest, to receive a return, to profit, and to continue lending money to the poor.

It’s a great idea.

He deals with my topic, the topic I am most interested in. I believe that this is the most pressing issue on the planet, along with starvation, slavery, and disease.

“You cannot distinguish the person alive from the person dead because they look exactly the same”

“Dying of hunger is absolutely merciless”

I really like his approach, it reminds me of Buddhism, and the Dalai Lama.

“What good were all my complex theories when people were dying of starvation on the sidewalks and porches across from my lecture hall?,

That people need to be careful that all they do is talk.

Makes me want to be a banker for good, go straight to being some business/accounting major, so then I can be of a lot greater impact than if I go the psych route.

This is fascinating

That unlike normal banks with the Greenman,

“The less you have, the higher priority you become and if you have nothing you get the highest priority”

“Money that went to the family through the women brought much more benefit to the family than money going to the family through men”

“We will give priority to women”

Poverty, “It does not belong in a civilized human society”

“I believe that they will probably be angry at us their [our children’s] ancestors”

“I hope that our generation will be the last generation to see wide-spread poverty on this planet”

This would be the generation before mine

Unfortunately, I get the feeling that the goal of 100,000 million families reached, preferably through woman, wasn’t attained. I really should see the progress that is being made with micro credit, the situation now. That would be very helpful, and enlarge my knowledge of this (multiplication wise), not exponentially but the other one.

Yunus said that “ All we can say with a fair amount of certainty is that the speed of change will become faster and faster – it is very unlikely to slow down”

After some thought, what he says, rings true to me. M. Yunus says that and he wonders if that change will take “us closer or further towards desired social and economic conditions”

If I had to pick one, on a community psych final, if there was one, I would have pick that life will get worse. Of course, I could pick the opposite, knowingly full well that I’m wrong, but “I’m going to pick it, anyway”, but that’s just foolish, and really won’t help.

M. Yunus says that the first step is deciding where we want to be in the 2050,

I also believe that sometimes it’s good just to go in a general direction, and be content knowing that your going the right direction, b/c the more detailed destination might not be there. Also, the life is in the journey not the destination truth.

I agree on the topic of charity, charity is good, but it can also be bad in that in so many cases. “Charity only perpetuates the problem by taking away initiative from the poor.”

I imagine ¾ the people in this country don’t give to any charities. M. Yunus said that giving to charity appeases our consciences. It definitely does to a lot of people, but I would argue, that to at least half, it doesn’t but they give because its what they know what to do, and they are so wrapped up in their daily lives that, that just works out.

People always do what they are concerned with. People take care of what they are concerned with. Most Americans that can do anything about poverty, meaning who aren’t poor themselves, don’t bother with poverty, or other humanitarian issues, because they are too wrapped up in their own lives. American culture doesn’t value humanitarian interests, here and across the globe very much.

“Even today we don’t pay serious attention to the issue of poverty because the powerful remain relatevily untouched by it” M. Yunus

Rich people don’t talk about money because in a big way its taboo for them too.

This has been passed on from generation to generation. Kids are encouraged not to talk about money.

Very rich people don’t have to find work, instead they have to find something to do with their time. They then must find hobbies, or jobs that don’t have to be real jobs, just stuff to do on a daily bases.

Wealthy and powerful people are so much farther away from poverty than the middle class, and the middle class is far away from poverty itself.

The middle class sometimes has contact with the realities of poverty, and therefore they are aware of poverty so much more, than the upper class.

Much of the middle class has to severely struggle with daily life, and they see the whole time what it would be to be poor, they have the fear of being poor in front of them.

Rich and powerful people are above all this and they don’t even notice the amazing misery that exists.

“In a greed-based economy, obviously, changes will be greed driven. These changes may not always be socially desirable. Socially desired changes may not be attractive from the greed perspective” That is very sad to me. The world is run by G8, and all they do there is think and implement ways to be as successful as possible in being greedy, in taking the money from the poor and giving it to the rich.

That is horrible though, we live in a greed-based economy. And therefore in a greed based world. Our democratic capitalism is not about competition, but about the elimination competition.

I have always noticed this, from very early on in my life, the connection between the acquisition of money, and life. I saw this connection more so than other kids. We had tough times; and this taught me about money.

It is so clear, it can’t be more black and white, and that the vast majority of the companies in the US are so greed based it seems their evil. It seems that half of them actually are, evil. The other half is just existing in the world, responding to other markets, other companies.

But the bottom line is that

I’m not sure of the exact number but a CEO, earns more than 300 times that a entry level employee does. If that’s not greed I don’t know what is.

There is the argument that well, they earned it. No, they haven’t. The wealth is and will be passed on forever. And, when referring to the people that start the company, to the one in a 10,000 that starts a very successful company, there isn’t anything that they could have done to deserve this inequality.

They outsource everything, they downsize, they merge, they take over.

Newspapers aren’t liberal enough.

It seems that

In life, people think that governments and politics are more powerful than the economies, but that is not true, the economies have the upper hand.

The terms democracy, socialism and communism all refer to types of economies and not types of governments, like the vast majority of the public thinks.

Makes you wonder, if humanity

Since history, has humanity progressed morally, intellectually, concisely?

Because of science classes, physics classes, and attention to the current times, the only progress I’m sure of is the progress of technology.

Has it only grown in size, gotten older, accumulated more history, and has stayed pretty much the same intellectually, morally, and concisely?

Is there Political, Social, Economic, and Political and Global progress?

The earth is closer and smaller now than it has ever been.

All the history lessons I’ve had, US, World, the political classes I’ve had, the social classes, I seem to get the idea that the world is moving forward, but painfully, painfully slowly. It seems that people are treating each other slightly better in modern times, but that humanitarian treatment is the least priority and the very slowest for anything. It is a different world now, and hopefully things are like this because although we are smarter, the challenges presented are tougher

But, or

How can we say there is any progress, how can we say that people are treating each other more humanely when one looks at what’s going on, in the world now?

That doesn’t make sense,

the challenges throughout history were always about equal. And if we are better overall, then should there be less bloodshed, foolishness, greed, barbarism, backwardness, and ignorance.

But in the end does it matter? If our world is doomed, then we should still try to save it, if its not, then we should still try to save it.

If it is doomed, then the way to act is the same exact way to act as if it wasn’t. No, it doesn’t matter if the world is doomed or not. We should be smart and very eager for making this world better for everyone. By being compassionate and human toward every human being we meet.

It seems that many fundamentalists, extremists, terrorists, criminals, thief’s, the ignorant, all are like little children, the weak, the lazy, the stubborn, the closed minded, a

They are children, even though they are adults, they often behave more immaturely than children. They share some of the characteristics of children, but not all.

You don’t treat these people completely like children.

If this explanation doesn’t completely make sense, now it doesn’t completely click for me either.

But

Absolutely sure, is that these weak people, should be treated like people, like you and me.

They should be treated with the same strong compassion everyone else is treated. Their human beings, with all the same reflexes, emotions, feelings, needs. It should be always remembered and lived that what binds us is so much, and that we instead focus on what separates us too much, when what separates us can be so little.

There will be people that don’t share this view at all, and rather think that there is nothing in common. This does nothing negative towards the person that knows that is the biggest lie. Instead, it will be a lot easier handling that person, interacting with him, because, everyone recognizes compassion and respect. If that person is not to be approached, then you will know that’s how things are sometimes.

Whoever isn’t a fundamentalist,

The Muslim extremists and fundamentalist.