When Good Intentions Go Wrong
While I was a senior in high school one of my ‘socially conscious’ friends became concerned about global hunger. Now the only time we went hungry was when we were to busy to eat. But still, I’d had cousins in Eastern KY that had known the bite of hunger; their dad was a periodic drunk. So who wouldn’t like to do ‘their’ part to help alleviate world hunger. My friend was much more tied into the political scene then me, and hooked us up with YWD, AKA “Young World Development”.
An innocent enough name.
We organized a local ‘Walk for Hunger’ where (mainly) junior and senior high students would get sponsors to donate so much per mile. We managed to organize about 3,000 students in our first ‘walk’.
The walk was ~26 miles long, perhaps there was some connection to the dreaded Marathon. Anyway the walk was a ‘huge’ success.
I graduated high school, and had a year to go in the Electronics program at the local Vocational School.
(I drove my high school career consular insane, while I insisted on taking vocational school (1/2 day) during my junior and senior year, I also took College Prep [Toady AP] courses in Chemistry, Physics, Trig, and, Geometry)
While finishing up Vocational my friend asked me to help organize another “Walk”. OK, no problem. It was interesting getting all the little details in order to make it happen.
Flash forward 3 years. My first class in college was “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology”. While I was on the ‘Physical’ track, I still had to take my share of cultural ‘nonsense’.
The professor’s specialty was Ethiopia. He started with a broad overview of the geography of the area, and then touched on the high points of current and historical culture(s). At this point he stopped and addressed the class. He told us about the damage ‘well intended fools’ had done to Ethiopia. How YWD had bought and distributed diesel powered pumps, how this helped in the very short term, but drained the aquifer, and when the water ran out, entire villages, entire cultural sub-groups were wiped out. He showed us some slides of one dead village. There were bloated dead bodies laying ‘everywhere’. He then explained how very difficult it was to ‘help’ less technologically sophisticated cultures.
The next class he used examples from Australia. This is not a slam at any folks down under, God knows we messed up. At least they didn’t intend to destroy entire aboriginal tribes.
For countless millennia before Europeans arrived many aboriginal tribes were ‘ruled’ by strong ‘head men’. They controlled the few stone axes. Control of the axes gave them a lot of political power. As could be expected from a close look at European history, many men with power abused that power.
Some of the early Christian missionaries were distressed (disgusted!) by this abuse and sought a way to stop the abuse. They ‘studied’ the system and realized that if they passed out iron axes then the headmen would lose their hold on power.
Such a simple way to get rid of horrible abuses.
Within 10 years the aboriginal tribes who had been ‘helped’ by the missionaries had ceased to exist. The social cohesion necessary to bond or to hold a group of people together was lost. Tribes fragmented along clan, then along nuclear family lines.
One man, or family by his, their, self is very weak. Strength comes from a group of people. Now in some environments it is possible for very small groups, say family sized, to survive, but in the areas inhabited by those aboriginal tribes, it took enough people, doing a lot of different tasks, for everyone to survive.
Once the village ‘imploded’ the few survivors were forced to find other means of survival. Now for many reasons, tribal folks generally don’t want a whole lot of new people moving in. This isn’t quite as silly, or mean, as it might appear at first glance. Tribes are complex social organizations. Political power is both clearly defined, and vague. The last thing needed for political stability is for a bunch of outsiders to intrude, outsiders that will have their own ideas on who should be in charge and how things should be done. There was a ‘lot’ of intermarriage between tribes, but the newcomers were limited in number and were forced to adjust, or comply, with the existing power structure.
So where did the surviving families end up? They found their way into white, er European, villages. The men had no skills to sell, but the women had certain natural assets to sell….
Yep, indirectly those well meaning Christian Missionaries created the conditions that forced ‘native women’ into prostitution. Again, this is not a slam, and I am most certainly not blaming anyone.
In the long run it didn’t make a lot of difference. As soon as Europeans arrived in Australia the Aboriginal way of life was doomed. The land they ‘owned’ always had something the new invaders wanted. The invaders had guns, horses and the will to use violence to achieve their goals.
But Dr. A hammered facts in us to force us to understand that any interaction, any well meaning ‘messing’ around with >ANY< aspect of a ‘primitive’ culture would have unforeseeable consequences. In part he hammered us so hard because most of the students were not going to be Anthropologists or Sociologists, this might be the only ‘social science’ course they took. And he wanted to make them aware that action, every action, has consequences, and that the most well meaning action could have the most dreadful consequences.
I had Dr. A for 3 other classes. I never had the nerve to tell him that I was one of those well meaning fools who killed entire villages, entire unique ways of life. I was too ashamed to ‘own up to my crimes’.
Shortly before graduation he called me to his office. He was retiring and just wanted to talk with me. I was not your typical Anthro major. He knew I had no intention of trying for a Masters, then a PHD so that I could teach, he knew I was going back in to the comfortable world of electrical engineering and he didn’t hold it against me.
I almost fainted when he asked why I hadn’t mentioned that I had been active in YWD, and the Walk for Hunger (Or as I called it after I knew the facts, the “The Walk For Death”). I told him that I was simply too embarrassed. That on that first day as he described what me and my fellow nimwitts had ‘accomplished’ that I almost got up and dropped out of college. He laughed and told me not too worry; he always did some research on incoming Freshman who declared an Anthro major. He knew my friend’s dad and had quickly found out that I was a ‘ring leader’. He told me to forgive myself because truth be told they were already ‘dead’, that they just hadn’t quit breathing yet. I was puzzled and asked him what he meant.
Then he went in to the “dark and dirty reality” that none of my professors had ever addressed.
After WWII, as medical science advanced it became clear that ‘we’, the west, could vaccinate ‘primitive’ peoples and reduce if not eliminate many diseases that killed millions of children world wide. Between us (US) and them (USSR) we offered, bribed, cajoled many ‘primitive’ people into accepting modern health technology. Sometimes it was as simple as teaching people about basic sanitation. Sometimes it was some vaccine.
He said, “And that was a good thing wasn’t it?”
I hesitated, and then said, “If more children survive, they will in turn have children, and eventually their numbers will overload their food production technology and then mass starvation would set in.”
He congratulated me and told me that my 4 years of college hadn’t been wasted. He told me that the then Dean of the College of Anthropology had helped the US State Department and UNESCO ‘reach’ numerous ‘primitive’ societies, that he (Dean) had been instrumental in developing techniques to convince village elders into accepting our vaccine. And that this paragon of civic virtue, shaper of worlds, was not able to understand that by increasing the population he was dooming the very people he intended to help into catastrophic consequences.
This was in 1978 and Dr. A spent an hour explaining what was really behind the continent wide civil wars in Africa. While the US-USSR cold war didn’t help, and the mess left by colonizing European powers made it worse, in many cases western health technology had increased the population to the point that traditional food production technologies couldn’t keep up. That the increased population created serious political instability.
Ever since then I have been very leery about “Save The World Schemes”. Even if there is no graft, a rare situation, even if money isn’t diverted to arm some group of freedom fighters, the basic idea is so fraught with risks that I couldn’t participate. After I reentered the work force this presented some complications. The university had a strong outreach ethic. They felt that those of us who had been ‘gifted’, had an obligation to help the down trodden. I was always very careful to conceal my heretical beliefs, they didn’t quite burn non-believers at the stake, but they were well down that road.
I am not posting this to slam any Christian Missionaries, or any group that is trying to alleviate ‘third world problems.” I just thought that it might be worth the few moments it would take before writing that check to think:
“Will this really accomplish what I want it to?”
and
“What will the unintended consequences be?”
I mean on the one hand it sounds pretty damn callous to ignore starving and ill children, but on the other hand, it we feed and cure those children, what happens when the food runs out?
Why does anyone think we have so many people from Mexico coming to the USA?
Consider their population growth. If you had a choice between staying home and starving, or coming to the land of 'milk and honey' what would you do?
Don't get me wrong, I think we aught to do all that we can to discourage such invaders. Everything from live landmines to armed troops with shot to kill orders.
Yea, I am that nasty!
Terry
While I was a senior in high school one of my ‘socially conscious’ friends became concerned about global hunger. Now the only time we went hungry was when we were to busy to eat. But still, I’d had cousins in Eastern KY that had known the bite of hunger; their dad was a periodic drunk. So who wouldn’t like to do ‘their’ part to help alleviate world hunger. My friend was much more tied into the political scene then me, and hooked us up with YWD, AKA “Young World Development”.
An innocent enough name.
We organized a local ‘Walk for Hunger’ where (mainly) junior and senior high students would get sponsors to donate so much per mile. We managed to organize about 3,000 students in our first ‘walk’.
The walk was ~26 miles long, perhaps there was some connection to the dreaded Marathon. Anyway the walk was a ‘huge’ success.
I graduated high school, and had a year to go in the Electronics program at the local Vocational School.
(I drove my high school career consular insane, while I insisted on taking vocational school (1/2 day) during my junior and senior year, I also took College Prep [Toady AP] courses in Chemistry, Physics, Trig, and, Geometry)
While finishing up Vocational my friend asked me to help organize another “Walk”. OK, no problem. It was interesting getting all the little details in order to make it happen.
Flash forward 3 years. My first class in college was “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology”. While I was on the ‘Physical’ track, I still had to take my share of cultural ‘nonsense’.
The professor’s specialty was Ethiopia. He started with a broad overview of the geography of the area, and then touched on the high points of current and historical culture(s). At this point he stopped and addressed the class. He told us about the damage ‘well intended fools’ had done to Ethiopia. How YWD had bought and distributed diesel powered pumps, how this helped in the very short term, but drained the aquifer, and when the water ran out, entire villages, entire cultural sub-groups were wiped out. He showed us some slides of one dead village. There were bloated dead bodies laying ‘everywhere’. He then explained how very difficult it was to ‘help’ less technologically sophisticated cultures.
The next class he used examples from Australia. This is not a slam at any folks down under, God knows we messed up. At least they didn’t intend to destroy entire aboriginal tribes.
For countless millennia before Europeans arrived many aboriginal tribes were ‘ruled’ by strong ‘head men’. They controlled the few stone axes. Control of the axes gave them a lot of political power. As could be expected from a close look at European history, many men with power abused that power.
Some of the early Christian missionaries were distressed (disgusted!) by this abuse and sought a way to stop the abuse. They ‘studied’ the system and realized that if they passed out iron axes then the headmen would lose their hold on power.
Such a simple way to get rid of horrible abuses.
Within 10 years the aboriginal tribes who had been ‘helped’ by the missionaries had ceased to exist. The social cohesion necessary to bond or to hold a group of people together was lost. Tribes fragmented along clan, then along nuclear family lines.
One man, or family by his, their, self is very weak. Strength comes from a group of people. Now in some environments it is possible for very small groups, say family sized, to survive, but in the areas inhabited by those aboriginal tribes, it took enough people, doing a lot of different tasks, for everyone to survive.
Once the village ‘imploded’ the few survivors were forced to find other means of survival. Now for many reasons, tribal folks generally don’t want a whole lot of new people moving in. This isn’t quite as silly, or mean, as it might appear at first glance. Tribes are complex social organizations. Political power is both clearly defined, and vague. The last thing needed for political stability is for a bunch of outsiders to intrude, outsiders that will have their own ideas on who should be in charge and how things should be done. There was a ‘lot’ of intermarriage between tribes, but the newcomers were limited in number and were forced to adjust, or comply, with the existing power structure.
So where did the surviving families end up? They found their way into white, er European, villages. The men had no skills to sell, but the women had certain natural assets to sell….
Yep, indirectly those well meaning Christian Missionaries created the conditions that forced ‘native women’ into prostitution. Again, this is not a slam, and I am most certainly not blaming anyone.
In the long run it didn’t make a lot of difference. As soon as Europeans arrived in Australia the Aboriginal way of life was doomed. The land they ‘owned’ always had something the new invaders wanted. The invaders had guns, horses and the will to use violence to achieve their goals.
But Dr. A hammered facts in us to force us to understand that any interaction, any well meaning ‘messing’ around with >ANY< aspect of a ‘primitive’ culture would have unforeseeable consequences. In part he hammered us so hard because most of the students were not going to be Anthropologists or Sociologists, this might be the only ‘social science’ course they took. And he wanted to make them aware that action, every action, has consequences, and that the most well meaning action could have the most dreadful consequences.
I had Dr. A for 3 other classes. I never had the nerve to tell him that I was one of those well meaning fools who killed entire villages, entire unique ways of life. I was too ashamed to ‘own up to my crimes’.
Shortly before graduation he called me to his office. He was retiring and just wanted to talk with me. I was not your typical Anthro major. He knew I had no intention of trying for a Masters, then a PHD so that I could teach, he knew I was going back in to the comfortable world of electrical engineering and he didn’t hold it against me.
I almost fainted when he asked why I hadn’t mentioned that I had been active in YWD, and the Walk for Hunger (Or as I called it after I knew the facts, the “The Walk For Death”). I told him that I was simply too embarrassed. That on that first day as he described what me and my fellow nimwitts had ‘accomplished’ that I almost got up and dropped out of college. He laughed and told me not too worry; he always did some research on incoming Freshman who declared an Anthro major. He knew my friend’s dad and had quickly found out that I was a ‘ring leader’. He told me to forgive myself because truth be told they were already ‘dead’, that they just hadn’t quit breathing yet. I was puzzled and asked him what he meant.
Then he went in to the “dark and dirty reality” that none of my professors had ever addressed.
After WWII, as medical science advanced it became clear that ‘we’, the west, could vaccinate ‘primitive’ peoples and reduce if not eliminate many diseases that killed millions of children world wide. Between us (US) and them (USSR) we offered, bribed, cajoled many ‘primitive’ people into accepting modern health technology. Sometimes it was as simple as teaching people about basic sanitation. Sometimes it was some vaccine.
He said, “And that was a good thing wasn’t it?”
I hesitated, and then said, “If more children survive, they will in turn have children, and eventually their numbers will overload their food production technology and then mass starvation would set in.”
He congratulated me and told me that my 4 years of college hadn’t been wasted. He told me that the then Dean of the College of Anthropology had helped the US State Department and UNESCO ‘reach’ numerous ‘primitive’ societies, that he (Dean) had been instrumental in developing techniques to convince village elders into accepting our vaccine. And that this paragon of civic virtue, shaper of worlds, was not able to understand that by increasing the population he was dooming the very people he intended to help into catastrophic consequences.
This was in 1978 and Dr. A spent an hour explaining what was really behind the continent wide civil wars in Africa. While the US-USSR cold war didn’t help, and the mess left by colonizing European powers made it worse, in many cases western health technology had increased the population to the point that traditional food production technologies couldn’t keep up. That the increased population created serious political instability.
Ever since then I have been very leery about “Save The World Schemes”. Even if there is no graft, a rare situation, even if money isn’t diverted to arm some group of freedom fighters, the basic idea is so fraught with risks that I couldn’t participate. After I reentered the work force this presented some complications. The university had a strong outreach ethic. They felt that those of us who had been ‘gifted’, had an obligation to help the down trodden. I was always very careful to conceal my heretical beliefs, they didn’t quite burn non-believers at the stake, but they were well down that road.
I am not posting this to slam any Christian Missionaries, or any group that is trying to alleviate ‘third world problems.” I just thought that it might be worth the few moments it would take before writing that check to think:
“Will this really accomplish what I want it to?”
and
“What will the unintended consequences be?”
I mean on the one hand it sounds pretty damn callous to ignore starving and ill children, but on the other hand, it we feed and cure those children, what happens when the food runs out?
Why does anyone think we have so many people from Mexico coming to the USA?
Consider their population growth. If you had a choice between staying home and starving, or coming to the land of 'milk and honey' what would you do?
Don't get me wrong, I think we aught to do all that we can to discourage such invaders. Everything from live landmines to armed troops with shot to kill orders.
Yea, I am that nasty!
Terry
