"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Losing Spark
I have followed with interest (and a lot of disbelief) the various reactions (losing spark, disillusioned, resignations) of various Agents following actions taken by EVOKE administrators against some Agents.
Why disbelief? Coming from a country with a history of political assassinations, detention of political activists, extra-judicial killings, and numerous human rights violations not to mention poverty and disease, I am an ardent believer in freedom of speech and the rights of individuals. I also come from a country (and a continent) full of resourceful and resilient people working everyday to improve our economic and social well being against great adversity. I have summarized below a day in the life of 3 African women to showcase some of my people. (Their full stories can be found on the WFPs blog. ).
Véronique Begimana
Véronique is 47 years old and from Burundi, an area hard-hit by last year’s heavy rains and floods. Veronique suffers from AIDS and lost her husband to the disease. She has 6 children and has lost a seventh child. "I live in a house that my husband built out of metal. The roof has now gone bad and has h***s in it. Every morning I get up at 5am and wash my head. I wash my wh*** body and clothes on Saturdays to prepare for church on Sundays. I don’t eat anything in the morning, nor do my children. When times were better we used to cultivate the hills and the swamp areas and this would feed me and my family every day. Now there is very little to eat. Sometimes we eat cassava leaves that are diseased and these give us diarrhea. It would be nice to have someone else’s life, to be able to give my children what they need, to wear proper clothes. I dream of finding a job that gives me enough food to feed us every day. I pray for myself and for my family."
Anasthasie Bodha
Anasthasie is 60 years old and was driven from her home in Fataki (Congo), by militia violence in December. She is now staying with a family in Bunia. Anasthasie has been married for 45 years and has 9 children, 4 of whom live with her. She wakes up at 6am daily. Her family does not eat in the morning – they have just 1 meal a day. She has a bath once a day, often without soap, because she doesn’t have any. She spends each day looking for work – it is hard to live as a displaced person. The entire family mother, father and all children sleep together on the floor on a mat Anasthasie made, and cover themselves with Anasthasie’s cloths. The question she asks herself all day long is, “How am I going to do to find food tomorrow? When I think about my life, my stomach hurts. ” She is scared her children will become street children then bandits.
Fatime Gassi
Fatime is 25 years old from Chad. Her husband and one child were slaughtered when militia attacked her village. She fled with her remaining 5 children and a bag of flour. In her new life as an Internally Displaces Person (IDP) Fatime relives this fear of attack every other day when she and a group of women go searching for firewood. The women collect water from a dried-up riverbed that fills up with water during the rainy season which is a one-hour walk from the camp. They need to go twice and sometimes three times a day – they cannot bring enough water for the wh*** day in one trip. In the afternoon the women sit together and talk. They sometimes wonder about faraway places and what life is like there.
Why disbelief? The above stories are not unique - this is the story of many Africans. They are not lazy people who sit around feeling sorry for themselves - as some are wont to believe. They certainly need help from you and I but they are not waiting around for a savior. They are courageously doing whatever little they can to survive every day.
Why disbelief? If all it takes for me to lose spark / be disillusion / resign is some tough action from EVOKE administrators am I really ready to save the world?
Views: 72
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Comment by Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys on March 31, 2010 at 6:23pm
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I can relate to the disbelief part. In Mexico it´s hard to belief in any government, institutions, media, political parties . . . So transparency is really important and that would bring a lot of trust. If you started playing without knowing the WB´s history you should go and googol it now. I don´t believe in black and white realities. I don´t believe the WB did all those mistakes on purpose, but I don´t believe either they had always the best intentions in mind. What I think is important is that the WB is finally creating with evoke a platform for social innovators (might be symbolic compared to the WB´s budget but it is a begining). Where we urgently need to work is to really LISTEN to the needs and dreams of the people that DON´T have internet acces, that DON´T have electricity, water and enough food. If we fail to do that then we are making the same mistakes the WB has done for years- trying to impose solutions and views of the world from the outside, without acknowledging the local cultures, dreams, expectations and dreams.
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Comment by Turil Cronburg on March 31, 2010 at 11:56pm
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Koshy, my own interpretation of that line goes perfectly with your own ideals. Is it wrong for the administrators to "disappear" someone that they don't like? Of course. Does it mean we should give up trying to make a better world, and a better community here, because of that wrong deed? HELL NO! :-) If anything, it should give you MORE spark, as we've now personally experienced repression and discrimination coming from an immature and ineffective "government", and that should be a huge wake up call to DO SOMETHING to make the world a healthier place where conflict is addressed in a far more mature and effective and respectful way.
So, yeah, I'm absolutely backing the statement: "If all it takes for me to lose spark / be disillusion / resign is some tough action from EVOKE administrators am I really ready to save the world?"
If you aren't prepared for crap to happen in an online game where you're completely safe, and have no reason for taking anything seriously, then you really aren't ready to jump into the real global politics of world changing social innovation.
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Comment by Ebert Rassenmussen on April 1, 2010 at 4:17am
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Micheal is right, the WB has a track record of creating social problems under the guise of kindness. There are countries who are virtually enslaved by the WB to pay back their loans. These loans are so large that the world bank is able to dictate unfair terms for labour and resources.
However, I'm fairly convinced that the designers and operators of this game actually do have a greater good in mind. It could be that in order to sponsor a game like this the world bank wanted something in return. Given the choice between not having a game, or having a game the WB can profit from, I would choose the latter.
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Comment by Shakwei Mbindyo on April 1, 2010 at 6:34am
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@ALL, one thing I know is that the only person I can change is me. Does that mean I should keep quiet if I do not agree with my government, the WB, etc? No, I should speak even louder. Does that me I should not work to influence their actions / policies? Certainly not. If they do not listen/hear, should that deter me from doing what I believe is right? No, I should do it with even greater passion. Just like them, I am far from perfect. As I work to influence them positively, I work to ensure they do not influence me negatively.
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Comment by Michael Texeira on April 1, 2010 at 2:23pm
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I think we are all in agreement with you on this Shakwei. For some people, that agreement will lead to deeper involvement with Evoke and this platform, and for some it will lead to the creation of reformed platforms, in the same way that this is a reformed platform, born of previous models but with new features and functions. My favorite part of this experiment is finding out what aspects of it seem to work and create harmony within the operation of the community, and which do not. Six-weeks later, the lessons learned from that may be the foundation of Evoke Mark 2, or something entirely different. So, maybe no one is losing their spark. Maybe some people are just bringing it elsewhere.
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Comment by Ezra Ho on April 1, 2010 at 2:40pm
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I agree with Michael. We need to look at the fundamentals of the system instead of the symptoms. While the WB/IMF, the Fed can be blamed for being so corrupt and causing so much of the suffering around the world, it isn't that they like causing people to suffer. That's just the way that people in positions of power are compelled to act. In a system where everyone is forced to engage in behaviours of self-preservation, so is it with the ruling class. Environmental destruction on the part of for example, Exxon, is not so much about deliberated polluting rivers and rainforest, but about surviving in the corporate world, ergo, raking in billions in profits.
But in any case, the question is not how do we get them to change, but about making the majority of the people in the developed world realise where we are and to provoke questions about where we are going.
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No, I did not state that nor intended to bring that message across.
What I meant was that we shouldn't be so preoccupied with the organisations that are seemingly the sources of the aberrations in the world. I am saying that the system itself, the monetary system and its corporate accomplices, feeds on itself. Getting rid of one isn't going to solve itself because either new corporate entities which commits similar crimes rise up or the world ends up like a dystopic novel. We have to transcend the system entirely and design a new one which allows current problems to be addressed at their root causes.
That's what I talk about here:
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/abolish-money-evolve-huma...
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/an-irrelevant-problem-in-a
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Comment by Megiddo Tell on April 1, 2010 at 7:30pm
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Great post and comments. BTW Shakwei, the post on the BSF is now up. Sorry it took so long.
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agreed...committing energy to alternatives and withdrawing power from the corrupt systems is key. not buying anything that puts money into Nestle shareholder pockets is an example. diverting resources and consumption patterns to be in line with supporting the parallel structures. that being said, at some point, the unsustainable system will collapse, and those elements which drive it to collapse will want to infiltrate and repeat the same process with the alternatives (as has been done before). what we need to figure out is how to include these elements without allowing them to alter the system back onto a course which is unsustainable.
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Comment by Comelia Tang on April 9, 2010 at 8:27am
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Great post Shakwei! Especially the part on the women in Africa and it's undeniable that women are the backbone of society who carry the heaviest load.
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