Posted by hyperfocus on September 23, 2011, at 0:08:59
In reply to Liberal Christian, posted by shes_initforthemoney on September 14, 2011, at 21:34:05
Well I'd say it's 50-50. You'd find bad people and good people mixed in the same proportion in a Calcutta slum as on Wall Street. I think one major reservation I have about the whole social justice movement is this silent assumption that people of the East are sort of morally superior to the capitalists and technocrats of the West. This is not the case. If you think corruption is bad in the U.S. you should visit India some time. If billion-dollar infrastructure projects or disaster-relief programs were shutdown every month because most of the funds were siphoned off by the government officials and company executives assigned to run them, all hell would break loose. Imagine 10 AIGs or Solyndrass. But this is what happens in India and Pakistan and Nigeria and so many resource-rich countries whose citizens have been living in desperate poverty for more than a hundred years. It's a really sad thing reading about Indian women committing suicide because the micro-finance programs designed to help left them from grinding poverty are turned into exploitation schemes by local business men.
I'm not saying that everyone in the rest of the world is like this - there are good people and miracles of achievement and self-empowerment taking place all over the world, just as in the U.S. But it is not the case that Western political and economic theories are any more exploitative or less moral than anywhere else. I do agree with you totally about Jesus' identification with the poor and sick and downtrodden though.
C-PTSD: social phobia, major depression, dissociation.
Currently: 300mg amitriptyline single dose at night.
Also: Allegra, 1000mg Vitamin C.
Improving.
poster:hyperfocus
thread:996797
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20101230/msgs/997613.html