At 65

Today is the 20th of January 2014. It is my birthday. I am 65 and officially retired - with a state pension to supplement my personal one. I will make some time to reflect on how I have fitted in to the ongoing development process of changing minds.

My actual birth day was the 20th January 1949. That was the day that United States President Harry S. Truman announced his Point Four Program for aid to poor countries:

"we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.

More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.

For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve suffering of these people. The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we can afford to use for assistance of other peoples are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible"

65 years later, to the day, an Oxfam paper is released to coincide with this year’s World Economic Forum (22-25 January) – a meeting of the world’s richest and most influential people at the luxury resort in Davos, Switzerland.

The Oxfam paper notes that almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population and that the bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world. This is possible because of political capture by the rich and a fast increase in economic inequality. This is worrisome because, as US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both”.

The Oxfam paper systematically lists the problems that need to be addressed and the policies and practices that might help to overcome them. The paper suggests that the trend can be reversed. It gives examples of the US and Europe in the three decades after World War II, and also several Latin American countries that have reduced inequality in the last decade through more progressive taxation, and an increase in public services, social protection and decent work.

I spent most of my early working life (1974-85) influencing education systems in tropical countries. Then, in my later years, (1981-2009) I worked on social development. This involved popularising the policy making process by presenting materials in plain language.

As I got older I came to realise that (a) the key to everything developmental involved changing minds – my own and those of other people, and (b) being rational and evidence-based is not enough – there is need, especially amongst the key shakers and movers, to change beliefs and values.

Wise people appreciate that their worldviews are conditioned by nature, nurture and serendipity and that they can be changed – it is never too late to change your mind. Wise people do not pollute the environment, operate sweatshops or go to war.

So the key question. “What is involved in changing minds?”

Answer –

• trumping cleverness with wisdom
• expanding your horizons by studying ‘big history’ (beyond parochial xenophobia)
• noticing what you notice and thinking about your thinking
• bearing silent witness to the thoughts and feelings that arise from the unconscious, pass through the attention centre, and then go back to the unconscious
• developing a practice of quiet sitting – on your own and with like minded others
• developing the ability to ‘flow’ and thus to experience the mental state that is non-egoic and outwith space and time (the peace that passes all understanding)
• renouncing feelings of greed, hatred and anger and replacing them with feelings of peace, compassion and joy (in time the renunciations come ‘naturally’ and effortlessly)

SO – although I am retired from the cuts and thrusts of the development institutions I remain active in pursuing the concept of changing minds where the blast of the existential trumpet shouts ‘let it begin with me’.

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References:

Truman’s Point Four Programme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Four_Program

The World Economic Forum - http://www.weforum.org/

Oxfam (20 Jan 2014) WORKING FOR THE FEW - Political capture and economic inequality http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-summ-en.pdf

George Clark’s blog about “Changing Minds” http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/ and the earlier one on “Existential Soft Rock” http://dodclark.blogspot.co.uk/

George Clark’s web site “Let it begin with me”. http://www.srds.co.uk/begin/