Here is a case of getting seduced by the numbers and sucked into the wrong thinking. This article is looking for interesting ways to measure the growth of the global middle class. It does a generally poor job of it. The whole article is a bit of a dodge. Using made up numbers to render a quantifiable mark for an abstract concept, concluding in a blithe statement about a billion car pile up.
But the money quote I think is in the conclusion, about what this materialist and upwardly mobile trend in the world says:
The people of this burgeoning middle class also expect their governments to be representative and accountable, and they are sure to put increased pressure on the nondemocratic systems in many developing countries. Seen in this light, the rising incidence of protests and dissent in China, Russia, Thailand, and the Arab world is not surprising.
Which is actually interesting. And a little understated. Because I think one of the implications of the growing “middle class” is the fact that the world can become much more connected through alternatively mediated means. You have power and water, a mobile phone and an internet connection and you join a very interesting club, globally speaking. Furthermore, people can not only demand accountability from their own governments but from governments whose foreign policies affect them. I mean, look at the famous photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the Vietnamese girl running scared and naked from her village, which had just been napalmed. 40 years ago no one could do anything about this situation. These days, photos like that could provoke a massive decentralized response of outraged middle class people. Such people might learn how to fly planes, for example. Or leak documents. Or go all Anonymous.
On a smaller scale, the growing middle class can use its material wealth to do things other than buy cars. For example, a newly middle class Egyptian could buy food to support an occupation of a park in New York. The new models of philanthropy can be many to many, inverting the idea of “giving to the poor.”
The article has a pretty narrow and outdated view of its own subject (“First World” – really?) and it ignores the deeper, dare I say, foreign policy implications of a middle class that may yet reach the critical mass needed to slow the 1% and redirect that serious wealth to needier parts the rest of the 99%.
In the rest of the world, I wonder if this is what the new middle class is doing. In North America we do a whole lot of “I’ve got mine.” Class mobility in this continent is woeful, and class nobility, especially among the local 85% (of which I am a member) even worse.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how many of us there are. It matters what we do with these numbers.
Stunning weekend here on Bowen Island. Yesterday was 25 degrees and clear and Aine and I went walking along the south shore of Cape Roger Curtis, watching cruise ships sail and surf scoters dart by. Today it was a late brunch, some football at the artificial turf field and lunch at Artisan Eats with the kids and then relaxing on the sleeping porch in the cool afternoon breeze.
Nothing remarkable, and yet it is this miracle of stillness and relaxation that I live for.
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I’m about to board a flight from Toronto to Vancouver and I had the thought this morning that I might share this flight with the Vancouver Whitecaps FC my local football (soccer) team. I am a huge fan of these guys, a member of one of the supporters groups and a seasons ticket holder. And I was dreading sharing the flight with the team.
The reason? The Whitecaps absolutely blew the best chance they have had in years of inning the Canadian Championship cup final last night. They came out against Toronto FC – a team that has lost its first 9 games of the season, a team that one of heir own called “the worst in the world” – and they lost. They needed a goal to go ahead in the second leg and they failed to score. They put on the most dismal performance I have ever seen them play. They didn’t link up, they didn’t have a shot on goal, they stood in against a crappy team that was determined to foul them, waste time and destroy the pace of the game and they caved in.
I can only imagine this morning the heartbreak and disappointment they must be feeling. I have had days like that – when nothing goes right despite your best intentions. When something that seems easy and straightforward gets completely overtaken by circumstance. When complacency creates a cascade of effects that tips the system towards chaos and there is nothing to do but retreat and hit reset.
There is no guaranteed results in sport, and football is one of those sports that will always surprise you. There is never a guarantee that even the easiest of tasks in the most favourable of circumstances will work out. Disappointment is an inevitable part of working in the unknown. Heartbreak is a possible outcome.
So live it and move on. There is nothing else to do but host yourself through it and realize that, in the game of complex outcomes, the next possibility has arisen right now.
Go Caps. We have a derby against Portland on the weekend. Reset and kick some ass.
“Conversation demands equality between participants. Indeed, it is one of the most important ways of establishing equality. Its enemies are rhetoric, disputation, jargon and private languages, or despair at not being listened to and not being understood.”
– Theodore Zeldin
To sit in the presence of one another, to open to each others deepest longings, o host the space that makes room for silence and the most earnest murmurs of the heart. To see another as they see you, to pay respect to the story of a human being who sits with you and who is curious about your own.
All this is the greatest practice for restoring our humanity and our relations to one another. And this practice should not be deferred to some future time when the conditions are ripe. To sit in the present act of conversation is to be creating the preferred world now.
Working with 8 programs in the state of Minnesota this week, all of whom are putting together projects in local communities that work on acute health issues by creating upstream solutions. This is the third residential retreat with the 8 propoenent groups. all of whom are engaged in a year long planning process through which they are learning participatory leadership practices and are getting soaked in the Art of Hosting.
There are two things going on here. First is the design of an actual project that will move “upstream” and tackle one or more social determinants of health. For example, a group working on indigenous health and nutrition issues is building an indigenous food network that aims to bring people into better relationship with food through growing and cooking while addressing the need for available healthy food. While there is a program aspect to this there is also a capacity building aspect to it too.
Alone, small projects that are are linked to social determinants of health don’t stand much chance of long term success, especially if the long term sustainability of the project is anchored to a three year implementation grant. But a key piece of the work we are doing is also teaching hosting practices. Our cohort last year began work on their projects around creating healthy communities but have since been using participatory methods to organize in the community. They have been tackling racism, systemic abuses in the education system and saying no to arbitrary policy decisions. One hundred people in the community are signed up for Art of Hosting training in the fall which will probably also result in 25 new projects – safefail probes if you like – activated to effect changes in the community.
I’m skeptical about any given project to make a difference, but projects that are led with the purpose of learning how to lead help to develop practices that launch and spread leadership throughout the community. To me this is “there” to get to from “here.”
Now if only evaluators would catch up.