:: The Blurst of Times ::

:: 8.24.2004 ::

The Flip Side of the Coin

Wow, $25 million. That’s a lot of bucks. If you take all the money I will make during my lifetime, if I didn’t spend a single penny from now until I was eighty - maybe even a hundred - if you take all that money I’ll make it might barely get to a million dollars. Maybe. So you take my entire college class and tally all of us up and if I make par for the course of what everyone in that class makes, the whole class isn’t going to make $25 million. That’s a difference. That guy is making a huge difference in the lives of those kids. And that’s great.

But we have to get away from the idea that money is going to be the most direct route to the solution. Yes, it’s a big deal and it’s what makes the world go ‘round (unless you listen to Huey Lewis and the News) and all that jazz, but is it more noble for that guy to give $25 million, or for some other guy who makes $12.50 an hour as a filing clerk to spend a couple Saturdays a month building houses for the poor? It’s great that someone cares enough to put that kind of money into a cause and not just back into his pocket, but the fact is that money only works when there are people who are willing to put the sweat and guts into it.

When he gives $25 mil to the kids, he’s probably got someone (or a bunch of someones) working with those kids or dealing with those issues on a day to day basis. If he’s the kind of guy who made all his own money, he’s probably still got that business to run - if he inherited it he may have other interests or he might spend time on that project, but I still have to imagine there are other people working for him on it. Those people are doing just as much, if not a more, to get this project off the ground and to the point where it is making a difference. Those are the people who are dedicating their lives to working to solve the problem, not just dealing with it peripherally. Those are the people I admire the most.

There has to be a change in mentality when it comes to solving the world’s problems. The idea of money being the biggest factor (or the only factor) must be laid to waste. Granted, you have to make money, but to make a profit is a whole different story. If said benefactor worked for profit for forty years, then donated $25 million to charity, how much was lost in those forty years? You can’t shit in the well your whole life, then retire to a crusade of purified drinking water. We have to start putting real human resources into these battles.

In education: We need more and better trained teachers - that requires money, but it also requires people who would make excellent teachers but decide to do something different with their lives, they need to want to be teachers. The environment: We need more sustainable resources, better waste management, better design solutions - again, still looking for money, but what about oil companies who keep putting money into finding more oil, or people still using styrofoam containers instead of recyclable plastics, or designers who just keep drawing the same old shit because they have been doing for fifty years now. In urban sprawl: Redevelop greyfields and brownfields, focus energy in mass transit instead of super-highways, stop making so many fucking strip malls and suburbs - well that’s what people are buying, so the developers and everyone on down are losing money if they stop with this practices. Money, again. But what if we could teach the people a different set of values? What if someone didn’t measure their success by their bank account or their car, but rather by the happiness of their neighbors, or better yet, by the happiness of people they didn’t even know. And not ‘what if someone’, but ‘what if everyone’ started thinking like that. What if it wasn’t pulling teeth to get people to recycle their newspapers or redevelop a downtown abandoned warehouse (not for luxury, gentrified lofts) - what if that is what people did because that was all they wanted to do? What then.

That’s what I want. I want to know that at the end of my life I have made the world a better place for the majority of people. I want to change it, make it better, make a difference by changing the way people think, act, and live. It sounds stupid and trite and petty, but when I’m dead and gone, there’s still going to be a lot of people trying to scrape by - what if I could make that scrape easier for them? I’m not talking a life of abject poverty or martyrdom, but I would welcome the opportunity to dedicate the vast majority of my life to fixing the problems I see as most poignant. I just have to find the right place for me to do that. And it will probably be in the private sector, somewhere.

“Don’t take money, don’t take brains, don’t take no credit card to ride this train...”

:: Freddy F. at 10:49 PM [+] ::

Comments:

But I'm saying that you should get compensated for it. Teaching is possibly the most important profession on the planet, but society takes it for granted. I'm saying we need to change the paradigm that places education adn funding on lower levels than military, profits, and big houses and nice cars.

# posted by  Fred : 8:17 PM

 

The stink of the situation, I believe, begins a lot with the parents and un-parents (for lack of a better word - the adults that don't like kids or education). There are lots of people out there that agree with both of you...the problem is there are a lot of people too that agree with you, at least until it gets them a vote, support, or money - but the last thing they care about is the kids. And as far as good morals, new values - they don't care about those because they don't have kids, don't love them, or don't support the educational syster - or any system for that matter because they would rather just annoy people and degrade, argue, and bash the educational system. Whether they are right or wrong, many times they don't care, they just want to get a rise and be a thorn in our sides. I know many of these parents and people first hand as I am getting into teaching first hand. It's sad I know...I wish things could be different but we can't talk about a world that doesn't exist - you just can't. We live in this world. Rarely do I see messed up kids - what I see is whacked out adults who are raising even worse kids...there are lots of reasons for all of this. We need answers and it is a tough road. As a techer I refuse to give up and I take very seriously the importance of modeling the behavior I expect. I think one place to start is teachers and people working with kids that model the type of behavior they expect at every possible moment. For instance, if you don't want kids talking during assemblies, don't talk to other teachers in the back of the assembly yourself. We need real people who care about kids. this could go on and on...I agree with you BP - there needs to be a change...hopefully I can help change all the little minds and eyes I see everyday, hey we all have to start somewhere, and my little ones give me new hope each morning because I know they care, let's keep them caring!

# posted by  andebos : 12:12 AM

 

That's exactly my point. You change the way of thinking. Trust me, I know you, we sat in Mick Charney's class and made fart jokes for christssake. But you changed your mindset. You'd never let your students hear about your little drinking incident with Scott because you understand the impact of your example. Forget the money - all I'm saying is that everyone needs to understand that they are not the only ones existing in the world. The underlying problem is selfishness - I like to call it manifest destiny, a carryover from days when it was possible to be the only person for miles. We no longer have 'infinite' lands to expand upon, but our attitude of 'my way or fuck you' lingers. If we were to start a mentality of 'acting beyond our noses' I think we'd start to see a change in the world.

# posted by  Fred : 9:26 PM

 

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