Big Lie, Fraud and Christmas

The case of one man who duped governments, banks and private investors to create another shock fraud of astronomical proportions makes our economic system look like an episode out of a comedy show. The only difference is that this is too real and biting – as seen in the fall of shares, in charities suffering and banks/private/investors losing billions – to be considered a joke.

How could such a scam go undetected? What kind of mind could have engineered this? Who are the people or groups of people who could have been duped into participating in such a fraud? Mr M’s hedge fund and advisory business tactics could not have succeeded had people, who ought to know better, used greater discernment to invest their and other people’s money. Yet, what this highlights is the extent to which greed and wanting to make huge sums of money quickly and with ease on the part of both the one who dupes and the duped have taken over our lives. Why some things and some people are above stringent regulatory measures is another matter that needs serious rethinking and action.

Faced with this fraud and then that of a dictator, another M, who robs a whole country killing its people in a variety of ways, I ask myself: what is the difference between one who defrauds by guile and through sophisticated ways (Mr M and his hedge funds) and the other M (a megalomania PM) who robs, defrauds and kills by force? For me both should be hauled before an international court and tried for crimes against humanity. One can even argue that all those responsible for our economic woes, because it has a world impact ,should be dragged before such a court. This, of course, will not happen, except for the megalomania PM who happens to hail from the wrong part of the world.

Perhaps in our impoverished, anxious, despondent and screwed up state, the story of Christmas may come as a significant interruption bringing hope to our spiral of decline and bad news. There are all the elements of our present predicament and signs of hope in the story: census, statistics, predictions, a dictator, people in need, wise pundits in need to direction but sensible in the end to change their route, parents and child displaced because of an evil king, and a child at the heart of something that will make a transforming difference.

Indeed, the Divine do find interesting and insignificant ways to point us beyond our imploding world of lies and frauds, if only we can discern with new eyes, ears and hearts. There is hope if we are willing to practice and live faith honestly and with integrity.

© copyright Jagessar December 24, 2008

Brain Tests and Teaching Happiness: What Next?

Reading through news items and newspaper columns these days is not for the lighthearted. I have lost track of the numerous times I have despaired, become cynical and felt numb by the items that make news and the analysis of experts in the opinion columns of newspapers and media websites. It is crisis, more crises and one cannot help but wonder – what next? For some friends and colleagues who have lost their jobs, houses and more, my feeling is merely intellectual!

Notwithstanding, a couple of insignificant news items caught my attention recently. The first is a US research that suggests that the brains of children from low-income families process information differently to those of their wealthier counterparts. The researchers discovered that “normal” (what their definition of normal is we are not told, but can deduce) 9 and 10 year olds from wealthy and poor backgrounds emit differing electrical vibes in that part of the brain (prefrontal cortex) linked to problem solving. This finding, we are told, ought to be a wake-up call for social deprivation plaguing rich nations. For their test an image, that the children were not briefed on, was flashed on a screen and their brain responses were measured. Mindful of previous researches (with racist overtones) that tried to prove that peoples far from the ends of Europe were not as civilized as enlightened Eurocentric folks, I wonder what the images used were and how they were selected. Certainly such a selection will not be neutral, as it is the privileged doing the selecting and the research!

We are told that children from low socio-economic background are not getting full brain development! While common sense ought to suggest that all those who live in economically deprived contexts are certainly disadvantaged, and that these children may not have the opportunity to develop their brain the way rich and privileged children’s brain cells are pampered, I am keen to know how these researchers arrived at their method to carry out the test. Would the world and images of the deprived be their yard stick? I wonder, for instance, what would be the response if the images that were flashed would have derived from the underprivileged world and their socio-economic experiential contexts!

The other recent news item that caught my attention is the proposal that primary school pupils should be taught how to live happy and healthy lives – as a way of preparing children for life outside school. Among other things, the idea is that such re-direction in learning, especially on emotional well-being, social skills, and on more space for play, will make responsible citizens out of our children. While these are all common sense strategies (supposing that happiness can be taught!) for which we do not need to spend huge sums of money to put into reports that people will not read, what all this reflects is the way society has degenerated and is disintegrating all around us and how we are actually clutching at straws.

The bottom line is that no amount of brain measuring and happiness teaching in schools will make a difference, if we do not address the fundamental flaws especially as they pertain to our economic life and life together in community. In spite of our demise, which offers an opportunity for a radical overhaul, we are pumping more liquidity into insolvent financial structures and encouraging people to go in more debt and to shop till they drop. We continue to wrap our lives around a wild neo-liberal and crassly individualistic economic life.

One can be cynical enough to ask whether it is those folks with the developed prefrontal cortex, highly geared for problem solving, who have landed us is this economic mess, the inability to think out of the box, and in the process have turned us into less happy and irresponsible citizens. Sure as hell they are unable to get us out of this mess! We may just need those under-developed children who use their prefrontal cortex less – yes, those from low-income families - to get us out of this mess or tell us how to operate our economic lives. Perhaps, they should be running things! And it may be, we will also learn a thing or two from them as to what happiness is all about, what it means to give us all an equal stake in strategies to regain direction and make sense of our lives. It is time to measure "common" sense - an endangered gift!

© copyright Jagessar December 13, 2008 Image Credit jagessar