Building Blocks

This is an old story. We have heard it many times before. You know the one – if you give a person a fish, they eat for that day; teach them to fish and they can feed themselves for a lifetime.  We probably first encountered this story in a Sunday sermon, or Sunday school class. Perhaps a grandfather told you that tale or maybe a teacher in an elementary grade shared the lesson.

Whenever you first heard it, the lesson is valid.

Here is an updated version of the same story!  You know someone had to fiddle with it. Let’s see if it is as true as the original.

            “If you give someone a fish…they eat for a day.

 If you teach someone to fish…they can feed themselves until the water is 

 contaminated or the shoreline is seized for development.

If you teach someone to think critically and be politically conscious…then whatever the challenge, they can organize with their peers and stand up for their interests.”       ~Anonymous

Perhaps your first reaction is that the updated version is not very snappy. It is too wordy and the meaning gets blurred. After thinking it over the last lesson simply poses more challenges. What does the author mean ‘they can organize with their peers and stand up for their interest’? Sounds much too much self centered to me!

First off who are the peers? How narrowly defined are they? By age, socio economic background? Shared neighborhoods, political ideology? You get the idea. The more you think on this point the worse it gets.

Think Tea Party. How did they get to where they are? Their minds appear to warp around every issue in a fresh odd way. And I do mean warp, NOT wrap!  Wrap is snug and conforming to the body being embraced. Warped means oddly skewed and mis-shapen.

Can’t think of a better way to describe the Republican Tea Party!  Warped. Odd. Narrow-minded. Self serving. Eliminating people who don’t agree with you. Actively fighting those who see the world a little differently than you, and ever so little differently! Little become large. Annoyance becomes death grip. Compromise is out of the question. Central principles morph into totally different propositions. How very odd.

If these people lived on an isolated island they would find ways of being different among themselves and start a class warfare. They would not rest until they had separate themselves into hierarchical castes of influencers, decision makers and king makers. And kings. Most likely not queens. Men, you know, are better at this; they ought to control the show; women ought to follow.

Hmmmmmm.

The original lesson contains these life lessons in my mind:

-Feeding another is a good act; but it solves the problem of hunger temporarily

-Teaching another to fish solves the hunger problem; maybe a bland diet or at least boring! But the student can take care of his own hunger.

-Feeding another is a social action; teaching is a social action as well but more complicated; it requires cooperation and collaboration. Two parties working together for a common cause that helps each other.

The updated version goes in another direction. It robs the community of common cause and leads toward specialization of view and selfishness. Self serving ends. Ever narrowing self serving ends. Special interests.

You see the parallel in today’s mixed up conditions? Oil interests over public health. Old world views versus new science. Lower taxes and dumping the poor out with the trash? Reducing health care for the elderly so they will expire sooner and simplify public spending? Avoidance of parental responsibility and heaping those duties on public schools? Tollways built in urban areas while public dollars pay for rural highways? Urban areas subsidize rural areas in funding public education? Tax cuts for the rich because they pay so many more dollars, but a lesser portion of their income than poor people?

The warped-ness of this sort of thinking easily transports us to unplanned destinations. It slowly changes our views on many principles we once held dear. 

How did we get the lessons so wrong? How did we allow ourselves to get here?

More importantly, do we really see where we are and how far off target it is with our long-held values?

Even more importantly, how do we get back to where we belong?

Odd. That will take cooperation, collaboration and group thinking. It will really require us to avoid the self-serving, self-centered thinking illness. It is too easily acquired. It is too destructive of community.

We must remain unified and committed to living lives we can be proud of. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  How simple is that really?

Can’t we try a little harder to get it right?

October 4, 2013