I am honestly not sure what this post is going to end up being about. I have not posted in quite a while, although I have had plenty of ideas of things to blog about. I don’t know why I do that. I just don’t sit down and write until I have a complete train of thoughts in my head to write. But that is stupid because when does that ever happen? Never. It never happens. I promise to be better about posting. I don’t even know if anyone reads these anymore but to those that do or to whoever happens to stumble across this post, I am promising YOU that I will be better about posting.
Something I have been thinking a lot about is global poverty and ways of alleviating it. I am taking Global Ethics right now and have read quite a few essays written by various philosophers and economists about different takes on poverty and its causes as well as solutions. There are just so many ideas floating around that all seem to make sense! On the first day of this class I got really excited because I thought that by reading all of these theories I would be able to come to a conclusion, or at least a coherent opinion, on topics like poverty and gender inequality and war. But I am finding it increasingly difficult to do that.
Ever since I read the book “When Helping Hurts” by Brian Fikkert and Stever Corbett, I have been super cautious when giving my opinion on foreign aid and foreign participation in other nations’ domestic issues because I don’t want to back something that in turn hurts the people it is trying to help. But I feel like every theory I read about or hear about has a bit of that. So where does that leave us? It is extremely frustrating for me because I just want to be able to give my opinion and feel confident in it.
However, I am beginning to realize that while it is a great idea to learn about different aid theories and study policies and their consequences, it’s all purely academic. Talking about it and writing about it theorizing about it is beneficial but these ideas are just theories and are applied to theoretical circumstances and predictions of a rapidly changing world. Maybe I should not form an opinion at all until I see these theories put into practice and watch them bear fruit, or attempt to.
I really have no idea where this pressure I feel to have an opinion on things like this comes from. I think I assume that when I tell people I am a Global Studies major and want to do international aid work, everyone will expect me to already know everything I think and feel about all things aid related. That is ridiculous. I doubt anybody really expects that from me. I just really want that for myself.
So there is that. Not terribly exciting but I will have more interesting things to come.
with love,
j.
The Patio 