Saturday, March 27, 2010

"God Has a Dream" by Desmond Tutu

This book took way to long to read, in fact, my borrowing privileges at the library have been suspended. Oops!
Once I sat down and just read it, I realized what a powerful writing and speaker Tutu really is.

I'll just write some powerful fragmented ideas that have stuck to the inside of my brain.

We make people inhumane when we remove their moral responsibility for some action. 

All people are family.

Our fear of failure drives an ugly competitiveness which often leads to putting down other people.

"Love is more demanding than law. No law tells an exhausted mother who wants nothing more than to collapse in exhaustion that they must get up in the middle of the night to comfort their baby, walking for hours until their child calms down, but this is what she does, because this is what love commands" (p. 36).

Valuing strength over weakness is a philosophy which leads people to despise weakness and weakness in others. "We can love others, with their failures, when we stop despising ourselves, because of our failures" (p. 39).

Prejudice is ridiculous, no matter what it's based on.

"Theologically, biblically, socially, ecumenically, it is right to ordain women to the priesthood" (p. 48).
"Ending sexism and including women fully in every aspect of society not only ends its own great evil--the oppression of women--but also is part of the solution to the rest of the world's problems" (p. 49).

"Confession, forgiveness, and reparation, wherever feasible, form part of a continuum" (p. 57).

Change and growth almost always occur through some pain.

Love is an action, a choice of will, not a feeling, or at least not always a feeling.

I can be a center of love, an oasis of peace.

Children are small people.

Death is physical. The mental/spiritual part can be overcome.

The physical can be truly spiritual. It can be transformed from the profane into the sacred. All Hellenistic dualism has sought to refute this idea, making the physical principally antagonistic to and alien from the spiritual. 

Tutu is on to some Quaker principles with his emphasis on stillness and contemplation and on all of us being able to hear God. 

An authentic spirituality is subversive of injustice.

I am waiting for a leaders "who are willing to take risks and not just seeking to satisfy the often extreme feelings of their constituencies. They have to lead by leading and be ready to compromise, to accommodate, and not to be intransigent, not to assert that they have a bottom line. Intransigence and ultimatums only lead to more death" (p. 119).

"So remember you are a moral agent, capable of creating a particular kind of moral climate that is impatient with injustice and cruelty and indifference and lies and immorality" (p. 123).

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Verbose verbose verbose.  Man o man, way too many words, too many details, too many words. Did I say there were too many words in this book?

Quite a beautiful story of a mountain climbing nurse turned school-building-community-empowerer.

I was inspired to continue my study of languages and never forget the interlocking importance of health and education which form the foundation for justice. Or the other way around. Chicken and egg.



Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki

I was thrown off by the casual writing style and poor editing, but there were some good points.

Rich people think about money differently than poor people. This is pretty obvious, but it was interesting to think about some of the reasons behind this and the effects of these attitudes. It is good that Kiyosaki is concerned about the growing gap between rich and poor but his concern stems only from self-preservation instincts. He does not cite the injustice of this gap but rather the danger to our "empire".

I dislike that Kiyosaki...

1 believes that paying taxes is bad. He states repeatedly that most people "work from January to mid-May for the government just to cover their taxes". This is not working "for the government". Those tax dollars provide services create the conditions necessary for having a job in the first place. Try making money in Afghanistan...

2 forgets about the peace of mind that forgetting about money can bring. Decisions to 'buy' or invest in such "liabilities" as art, academic knowledge and love are the foundations of happiness. Education is an asset!

3 assumes that the government is somebody else, somehow separate, not made up of people

4 his constant differentiation between rich and poor which begins to imply some intrinsic difference within people themselves.

5 assumes that only profit fosters creativity.

6 thinks of money working for him. It's not his money that works for him but other people's creativity and hard work that adds value to his investments. He completely forgets about the human aspect of financial growth.

7 considers buying a Porsche some kind of accomplishment (what a looser)

8 brags about pre-tax "expenses"

9 Kiyosaki describes being a landlord and what happens when somebody does not pay. "The court system handles that" (p. 119). Yet this is the court system funded by the very taxes which Kiyosak intends to avoid. 

It's very interesting how Kiyosaki...

1 separates your profession vs your business

2 knows that "the rich are not taxed" (p. 95). It is enlightening and sickening to know how people can use the legal structure of a corporation to shelter their assets from taxation (p. 98).

3 Realizes that government fails when it does not incorporate good business principles such as efficiency.






Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Native Son by Richard Wright

How much of this book was influenced by Crime and Punishment?
Brash and forward, an economy of words that I would like to emulate.
Wright expressed with power that exceeded the extreme situations described in the book.
Spectacular.