Power and Saints: Conflict over the means of production in the charity industry.

Power and Saints: Conflict over the means of production in the charity industry. I am reading Allan W. Eckert’s “Wilderness Empire”. This seminal account of the Iroquois League demonstrates how little things change with the passing of fashion and technology. The same conflict between justice and rent seeking we find in the mission and development field today existed in the vast wilderness of North America as Catholic orders and European kingdoms wrestled for wealth and power. Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac's writing, below, explains the conflict between the Jesuits, Recollet friars, and the priests of the Missions Estrangeres concerning his plan to build a fort along the strait – or detroit, as it was termed – which separated Lake Huron from Lake Erie. This plan would bring civil administration into a region largely administered by the church and would “civilize” and “educate” the Indians, including efforts especially focused on teaching them to speak the French language. Cadillac wrote: “It is essential that in this matter of teaching the Indians our language the missionaries should act in good faith, and that His Majesty should have the goodness to impose his strictest orders upon them; for which there are several good reasons. The first and most stringent is that when members of religious orders or other ecclesiastics undertake anything, they never let it go. The second is that by not teaching French to the Indians they make themselves necessary [as interpreters] to the King and Governor. The third is that if all Indians spoke French, all kinds of ecclesiastics would be able to instruct them. This might cause them [the Jesuits] to lose some of the presents they get; for though these Reverend Fathers come here only for the glory of God, yet the one thing does not prevent the other. Nobody can deny that the priests own three-quarters of Canada. From St. Paul’s Bay to Quebec, here is nothing but the seigneury of Beauport that belongs to a private person. All the rest, which is the greater part, belongs to the Jesuits or other ecclesiastics. The Upper Town of Quebec is composed of six or seven superb palaces belonging to Hospital Nuns, Ursulines, Jesuits, Recolletes, Seminary priests, and the bishop. There may be some forty private houses, and even these pay rent to the ecclesiastics, which shows that the one thing does not prevent the other. One may as well knock one’s head against a wall as hope to convert the Indians in any other way [then that of civilizing them]; for thus far all the fruits of the missions consist in the baptism of infants who die before reaching the age of reason”. What I find striking is this notion of rent seeking and the conflict between benefiting targeted communities and meeting rather less sanctified needs that mission and development practitioners frequently experience. Even more alarming is the perpetuation of a state of dependency and subjection in the power relationship. Cadillac is demonstrating this internal contradiction of the mission and development industry; If target communities are empowered, converted or otherwise transformed, than the source of income is diminished. This is especially relevant in the mission and development field because the excesses are not as regulated or reported as in other spheres of society. There is an adage in the developing world that generals and preachers never go hungry. Working in the developing world, it is eye opening to see the modern financial kingdoms created by Central American Protestant families that control the levers of power for North/South Exchanges. Even more alarming is the wave of North American retirees moving to exotic, comfortable locals as modern day missionaries to spread the word and donated shoes, frequently taking up shop in tourist destinations where neither the need nor danger is great. This is not to mask the considerable sacrifices and struggles of the faith-based and development communities seeking justice and empowerment for communities marginalized by the powers of the day. Rather, understanding the historical examples of rent seeking by church hierarchies provides a needed historical context for establishing direct and transformational practices in mission and development.

Blame for the Victim and Praise for the Predator: Haiti in the Wake of Devastation

A recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by David Brooks demonstrates the worst colonial mentality of blaming the victim. In a piece titled The Underlying Tragedy, Brooks argues that the voodoo culture and poor work ethic are the underlying causes of the economic woes of the country. He postulates that other former colonies have been able to pull themselves up by the boot straps and ask why not Haiti. He proposes to fix Haiti by changing the Haitian culture through programs to teach hard work, responsibility and thrift.

Mr. Brooks is either ignorant or overlooks a critical difference in Haiti’s history. The Haitian people have struggled under a significant debt load since colonial times as a price for their “freedom”. The islands example of liberation has caused fears in Northern capitals for two centuries and to this day the island’s attempts at self rule are blocked by anxious outsiders worried by the example Haiti could represent to its neighbors.

Haiti became the third revolutionary republic of the modern era, joining the USA and France, when François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture successfully defeated the French, then the Spanish and finally the English to obtain liberation for the enslaved population of the island. This liberation was short lived as chains of force were replaced by chains of debt. While the United States initially supported the revolution through the policies of President John Adams, this was changed by Thomas Jefferson who feared an independent state of black people so close to the United would influence the South’s enslaved population. Jefferson went so far as to advocate the emancipation and colonization of American slaves to Africa to prevent another Haiti.

Haiti was left isolated after the revolution and had no friends in the colonial West. Besides slave holding United States, all of her neighbors were colonies that depended on slavery.

In 1825 Haiti was forced to sign a treaty with France to prevent another invasion and forced slavery by European forces. France’s king agreed to recognize Haiti's independence only if the new republic paid France an indemnity of 150 million francs and reduced its import and export taxes by half. By comparison, the United States paid France 60 million francs for the much larger Louisiana Territory.

Haiti was forced to borrow money from private European banks to pay the indemnity. The banks charged high interest and administrative fees that further increased the debt burden. The nation did not finish paying the French for their freedom until after WWII. The repayment of these loans has been a major factor in the continued invasion and occupation of Haiti by the United States. From the 1960’s and beyond, Haiti has suffered under International Monetary Fund management that has done little but assure that all GDP would be channeled to serving debt hosted upon the Haitian people by the governments imposed upon this people by governments acting on behalf of international banking.

While CNN commentators are praising the American response to this crisis, there seems to be little understanding of why we invaded Haiti so many times in the 20th century or the continued role of the United States in defending the interest of banks. There is even less understanding of the long term structural issues created by these policies.

From Dependency to Agency

The mission of the Highland Support Project is to promote transformational development. A term that often needs to be defined. In the simplest terms, we define transformational development as fostering agency to end cycles of dependency.

We view poverty as a complex process rather than a singular condition. Focusing on indigenous communities, it is arguable that the greatest obstacle to sustainable development is the colonial legacies that forced entire nations into states of dependency that continue to be sustained today.

Therefore, it is imperative to analyze the effects of development and charitable programming to assess the degree that these policies encourage dependency.

Do not be afraid to fail

One issue we find over and over again in our work is the fear of people to fail. As an NGO, we are judged by the success and failure of our programs. We also find that many of the folks we partner with are afraid to fail. I know for myself, posting on this blog that I am supposed to handle has been poor because I want it to be perfect. I am going to follow the advice provided here by Perter Bregman and just do. It will not be perfect, but it will be.

Peter Bregman How We Work

How to Escape Perfectionism

3:10 PM Tuesday September 1, 2009

According to the World Database of Happiness (yes, there is one), Iceland is the happiest place on earth. That's right, Iceland. Yes, I know it's cold and dark six months out of the year there. I'm just giving you the data.

The secret to their happiness? Eric Weiner, Author of The Geography of Bliss, traveled to Iceland to find out. After interviewing a number of Icelanders, Weiner discovered that their culture doesn't stigmatize failure. Icelanders aren't afraid to fail — or to be imperfect — and so they're more willing to pursue what they enjoy. That's one reason Iceland has more artists per capita than any other nation. "There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write," Weiner writes.

Which makes them incredibly productive. They don't just sit around thinking they'd like to do something. They do it. According to the psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, "It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have."

So if you think you're good at something, whether or not you are, you'll do it. The converse is also true: if you think you aren't good enough at something, you won't do it.

A friend of mine, Jeff, has wanted for some time to start a business teaching guitar*. But he hasn't yet. Why? When you sift through his various explanations and excuses it comes down to one simple problem.

He's a perfectionist.

Which means he'll never think he's good enough at guitar to teach it. And he'll never feel like he knows enough about running a business to start one.

Perfectionists have a hard time starting things and an even harder time finishing them. At the beginning, it's they who aren't ready. At the end, it's their product that's not. So either they don't start the screenplay or it sits in their drawer for ten years because they don't want to show it to anyone.

But the world doesn't reward perfection. It rewards productivity. And productivity can only be achieved through imperfection. Make a decision. Follow through. Learn from the outcome. Repeat over and over and over again. It's the scientific method of trial and error. Only by wading through the imperfect can we begin to achieve glimpses of the perfect.

So how do we escape perfectionism? I have three ideas:

1. Don't try to get it right in one big step. Just get it going.

   Don't write a book, write a page. Don't create the entire presentation, just create a slide. Don't expect to be a great manager in your first six months, just try to set expectations well. Pick a small, manageable goal and follow through. Then pursue the next.

   This gives you the opportunity to succeed more often, which will build your confidence. If each of your goals can be achieved in a day or less, that's a lot of opportunity to succeed.

2. Do what feels right to you, not to others.

   My wife Eleanor is a fantastic mother to our three children. Sleep is extremely important to her and in her early days of parenting she read a tremendous number of parenting books, each one with different advice on how to predictably get children to sleep through the night. Each expert contradicted the next.
   The only thing those books succeeded in doing was convince her she didn't know what she was doing. It was only after throwing all the books away that she was able to find herself as a parent. It's not that she found the answer. In fact, what helped is that she stopped looking for the answer.

   What she found was her answer. And that allowed her to settle into her parenting. It made her calmer, more consistent, more confident. And that, of course, helped our children sleep better.

   By all means, read, listen, and learn from others. But then put all the advice away, and shoot for what I consider to be the new gold standard: good enough.

   Be the good-enough parent. The good-enough employee. The good-enough writer. That'll keep you going. Because ultimately, the key to perfection isn't getting it right. It's getting it often. If you do that, then, eventually, you'll get it right.

3. Choose your friends, coworkers, and bosses wisely.

   Critical feedback is helpful as long as it's offered with care and support. But the feedback that comes from jealousy or insecurity or arrogance or without any real knowledge of you? Ignore it.

   And if you're a manager, your first duty is to do no harm. A friend of mine, Kendall Wright, once told me that a manager's job is to remove the obstacles that prevent people from making their maximum contribution. That's as good a definition as I've ever heard.

   And yet sometimes, we are the obstacle. As managers, we're often the ones who stand in judgment of other people and their work. And when we're too hard on someone or watch too closely or correct too often or focus on the mistakes more than the successes, then we sap their confidence. And without confidence, no one can achieve much.

   Catch someone doing seven things right before you point out one thing they're doing wrong. Keep up that 7:1 ratio and you'll keep your employees moving in the right direction.

These three ideas are a good start. Don't worry about following them perfectly though. Just well enough.