The Blue Sweater, Chapter 8, A New Learning Curve

We are made wise not by the recollection of the past, but for the responsibility for our future.
— George Bernard Shaw

If we could find a way to help the market actually work for poor farmers, then they could make their own investments...and repay when the harvest came in. They wouldn't be waiting for an agency to give them things...a mind-set beyond charity...they were market driven and deserved solutions that could help sustain themselves for years.

...the only way this will work is if they own it themselves, if they can see their own lives getting better because of their efforts and ability to control their own futures and not have to wait around for the government.

The developing world needed management skills. It needed people who knew how to start and build companies, not just people with good intentions.

...those who sought power and money made the rules; yet power alone could corrupt and corrode.

"Power without love is reckless and abusive; love without power sentimental and anemic."
—Martin Luther King

(So, in other words, the bottom line is money = power, but that power uses the world for its own benefit. power + love = changing the world for the benefit of everyone)

There had to be a way to combine the power, rigor, and discipline of the marketplace with the compassion in so many projects aimed at the very poor. Capitaslism's future rests on how much creativity and room for inclusion it can tolerate.

John Gardener, founder of Common Cause: ...community, what does it mean, how do you foster and build it. Humans thrive in relationship to each other and that communities in which each individual feels a sense of belonging and of accountability are key to our individual and societal success.

(Sounds like an article by Joseph Stieglitz in the latest Vanity Fair, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%":Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.")

Gardener: "...communities today transcend geography and you belong to multiple ones...but to be truly effective you must root yourself more strongly in your home's own soil. Only by knowing ourselves can we trult understand others— and knowing where you come from is an important part of knowing who you are."

Business is a powerful way to bring discipline and rigor to sokutions that could lead to a greater feeling of independence and choice among people too often treated as invisible...Everyone wants the same things. And low-income people the world over are challenged by many similar constraints.

Peter Goldmark, President, Rockefeller Foundation: "...giving away money effectively can be much more difficult than making it...philanthropy can appeal to people who want to be loved more than they want to make a difference.

"...philanthropy could effect systemic change...dare to dream big...large sums of money don't always translate into big dreams or big results. (lack of accountability)

"How can you help those who are interested in doing something important with their wealth?

"The one thing for you to teach is that the most important skill needed is listening. If philanthropists don't first listen, they will never be able to address issues fully because they will not understand them. Second, philanthropists should focus on supporting others to do what they already do wel, rather than running programs themselves...ego is a powerful burden.

"... philanthropists should find innovations that release the energies of people. Individuals don't want to be taken care of— they need to be given a chance to fulfill their own potential. Too many projects create dependence that helps no one in the long run.

"...Think about community. People need to feel responsible to one another. Otherwise, we will breed successful individuals who don't feel connected enough to the greater society.

"...the intellectual elites who run society often have very little empathy for people with less. And when they do think empathically, they focus on the pooerst of the poor and not on the lower middle portion of society, though it is so critical to societal change."

Maha Ghosanandra: "If you move through the world with only your intellect, then you walk on only one leg. If you move through the world with only your compassion, then you walk on only one leg. But if you move through the world with both intellect and compassion, then you have wisdom."