Top 10 Reasons To Become a New Radical

I have recently re-organized my blogging, and articles that were previously posted here can now be viewed at http://compassionate-jim.blogspot.com.

This blog will be constrained to exploring "The New Radicalism". The term sprouted from the evolution of micro-loans and other financial incentives to help the poor find ways to help themselves.

I am taking the liberty of expanding that definition, as there are many ways in which we who are not involved specifically in Wall Street wheeling and dealing can nevertheless make profound differences in the lives of the poor.

Our professions and trades have every bit as much currency as currency itself does, and my personal experience with the truly desperate is that getting in the trenches and shoveling dirt carries a message a micro-loan does not. Both are useful, and both are required, I believe.

Author and pastor RichardBolles (What Color Is Your Parachute) insists that the elusive, profound meaning in what one does to earn a living, is found precisely where God's needs and your satisfaction with what you are doing is so great that you lose all sense of time...intersect.

Author Julia Moulden gives these "Top 10 Reasons To become A New Radical" as originally posted on The Huffington Post.

01. You will change someone's life.
02. You will change your own life.
03. Your skills are needed.
04. You will discover the power of synchronicity.
05. Your view of the world will change.
06. You will influence those around you.
07. You will meet exceptional people.
08. You will feel connected to something bigger.
09. You will play a part in saving the world.
10. You will die happy.

I cannot imagine a more satisfying way to find that elusive meaning in what I do to sustain myself, than to give to those who so desperately need...

What I have.

You can read about the little boy whose short, sad life inspired me, in this blog - or in my sister blog, http://compassionate-jim.blogspot.com.

Regards,

Radical Jim

Richard Garriott vs. Florencio et al

On Sunday, November 2, 2008, the Austin (TX) American-Statesman published an article by their staff writer Lilly Rockwell, covering an interview with Richard Garriott, who calls Austin home. Mr Garriott, called a video game guru, has become one of the latest in Austin's long history of virtually deifying those among us who have hit the economic jackpot. Mr. Garriott spent some $30,000,000 for a 10-day jaunt to visit the space station. In nearby Honduras, a child dies for want of 30 cents worth of rice and beans, and this post is about that staggering disparity. Here is the link to the story. If the article is subsequently moved to the archives, please search www.statesman.com under prior Metro & State section.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/
11/02/1102garriott.html

What follows below is my Radical Response in which I have phrased my satirical disgust with Mr Garriott's self-indulgent largesse by re-phrasing the Statesman article in the memory of young Florencio.

"Is there much noise as you ascend into heaven?"

"It's actually not terribly loud at all. Part of that is because I died in a forlorn, sparsely inhabited part of Honduras, near the Guatemalan border, and there were not many people around to witness my departure. It was quite a shock, though, but I have no bumps or bruises or pain of any kind, except that just before I died all of my joints hurt, and it was very painful to swallow, as death by starvation is actually death from dehydration. So that part was really worse than a 30-mile-an-hour car crash, for example.

"I understand you were sick for much of your trip".

"Actually, the sickness began before the trip started. I had not eaten for quite some time as my parents had not enough food for all of us children, and I, being the smallest and youngest, did not get to elbow up to the table as briskly as my brothers and sister. Some might think of me as the "runt of the litter" and that hurts my feelings. With a little more to eat I could have grown up big and strong, too. At first the hunger was on my mind constantly, but after a while, the distress of being perpetually hungry actually went away, but like I said before, it was replaced with that awful pain.

"What was the biggest thrill about arriving in heaven?"

"It's hard to say, in part because I was only a very small boy when I made the trip, so I never developed the vocabulary necessary to explain it. You hear people talking about the view from above. I was skeptical, but it is absolutely true. the blackness of space is beautiful and unique, but when I look down at the earth, I get a completely different perspective. I can see how it is that a few people are so incredibly happy down there, but many are suffering every day of their lives.

"Were there any scary moments?"

"Yes. When the trip started, because I new that I could never return, and I was only a little boy, remember, accustomed to clinging to my older sister, or being held by my mother, and this time I was going to have to make a trip of unimaginable dimension all by myself. It is a very scary experience for a little boy I can tell you. Some people claim they can return, and that sometimes a return trip goes very smoothly, and other times it is terribly bumpy, but as far as I can figure it out - remember I never had the chance to go to school and learn about these things - nobody every really does return. But I wish I could because I miss my mother and father and my family. Especially my mother. I believe she, too, made the trip here a little while after I did. Somebody said she chose to make the trip, and maybe she did because she missed me as much as I missed her. I think if I cry out her name she may hear me and come to me. I hope so.

"What was eating and going to the bathroom like?"

"Well, like I told you, I didn't have much experience with eating, because although I probably would have survived if somebody had helped with a few Lempiras for some rice and beans. But if they did have some money, they didn't help us out with it, so I just never got much experience at eating. I have no idea what a hamburger is, much less what it tastes like, and ice cream is something I just don't understand. Of course, when I was even younger than when I died and went to heaven, my mother nursed me, but since she didn't have much to eat, either, the meals were not very nourishing. Toward the end of my short stay on Earth, going to the bathroom was no an issue, since I had nothing to eat or drink anyway.

"What about sleeping?"

"Sleeping? I don't know how it would be possible to sleep when every joint in your body hurts and your head aches constantly, and even swallowing is painful, so to answer your question, the only sleeping I remember was closing my eyes and dreaming of something to eat or drink.

"When do you think such travel will be accessible for people who are not rich?"

"Rich? I don't have any grasp of what you mean by 'rich'. Our family has known nothing but poverty from the day of my birth and before, but I will guess that within the next 20 years, we will see thousands and thousands of little boys and girls like me make the same trip I have made. But look at it this way; the cost of my trip was almost nothing. There were no funeral expenses, no concrete vault, no casket, no flowers, no hearse, and no embalming, either. My point of departure was a simple excavation in the woods, where I lay for a few days, covered by enough earth to keep stray critters from bothering me while I prepared for the journey. So if you think about it, anybody who is dirt poor can make this trip, at no cost to anybody."

A note to the reader:

Florencio was a real boy, born in rural Honduras near the border with Guatemala. His parents were, like he, born into a life of abject poverty, with few options but to try as best they could to eke out a living from the earth. Unable to feed all they had given birth to, Florencio was allowed to die of hunger that the others might live. That is a level of brutal poverty we do not comprehend in this country, and it is my growing awareness of the plight of the little ones like Florencio that lead me to the conclusion that flights like Mr Garriott's are an excess bordering on the obscene. Further, it is my belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with an economic system that leads to such stupefying wealth for the lucky few while the middle class in this country disappears and little children like Florencio in Honduras die for want of a handful of beans and rice. That is my opinion, and I am sticking to it.

For those of you who may wish to reply to my blog, I offer these remarks.

1. If you are going to promulgate the myth that Mr Garriott earned his vast wealth all by himself and is therefore entitled to it, don't waste your keystrokes. You probably believe in the tooth fairy. I have not read of any benefit to anybody other than Mr Garriott himself, and there is certainly nothing in it for Florencio. It was a mind-numbing venture into self-indulgence, and nothing else.

2. If you would like to jump in the trenches with a growing number of contemporary radicals who are evolving new and more effective ways of helping the desperately poor achieve a level of sustainable self-sufficiency, stay tuned. I am developing more and more contacts, and it is both surprising and encouraging to know that I am not alone. There are countless ways you can help, I am learning, and if you're willing to get in that tight place where the rubber meets the road, this evolving blog could be a place to get started.

Best regards -

Radical Jim