The case against missionaries
February 9, 2010 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Health and Happiness
Without getting too political, the whole “Haitian Incident” involving the American missionaries really rubbed me the wrong way, particularly the people I’ve heard defending their actions – ‘they had some parents’ permission’. And that makes it OK? If a van pulled up in rural Appalachia and offered to take kids to a ‘better place in Mexico with opportunities’ Americans would demand that they be arrested and any acquiescing parents be investigated by Child Services. Why on earth does anyone expect Haiti to have a lower standard for its children? Poverty, even extreme poverty, is no excuse to break up a family, a culture and a country. Poverty is not abuse.
Unfortunately it’s not an uncommon attitude. I see it in my fellow volunteers working with foster kids too. Surely ballet lessons with a middle class adoptive family should trump street dancing in the projects with her recovering birth mother? The problem is, it doesn’t. Connections with who and where we come from are some of the most powerful on Earth. Which is why we are somewhat inclined to believe that helping someone else means bringing them into our world and our connections; we value them that highly. But if we do it at the expense of someone else’s points of contact with family, culture, language, food and their world we are doing more harm than good.
Value your connections, your food, your culture as unique to you; special, not better.
Have a different opinion? Share it in the comments…
How useful is ‘useful’ anyway?
December 1, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Other
In the last week I’ve gotten email from some pretty reputable sources trying to get me to buy a pretty expensive online course (expensive as in over $1000). Both emails proclaimed this to be a very useful product coming from a market leader. Problem is that when I checked into it, that market leader wasn’t living up to his own hype regarding the “free” stuff he had made available. Not that uncommon a scenario but here’s the thing – I don’t think any of them are lying. Instead they’re telling their version distorted by their own investment in the outcome. They probably wouldn’t think the product was so useful to me if there wasn’t a financial incentive to me buying.
It seems that ‘useful’ is a highly subjective word. I once attended a seminar where the ultra-slick speaker said there was no need to take notes because he would email the notes to every attendee after the session so just pay attention to the speech. I did get an email; as I recall it has his name at the top and the title of the speech. That was it. The thing is I think this really was how he took notes in high school and college (as in he didn’t).
My point is that in this season of gift buying as well as people creatively searching for careers that don’t require an interview, make sure you can adequately test drive whatever it is you’re considering. “You get what you pay for” isn’t quite as true as it once was – there’s more great stuff for free but it’s still pretty easy to hand over more cash than it’s really worth.
