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| A Larger View |
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A Bi-Monthly Newsletter of the Inner Outer Partnership |
| Volume V Edition 4 |
July/August |
2000 |
More Than Our Own Pain
Not long ago during the space of a few days, I received several pieces of bad news,
each interfering with my goals and aspirations a little more. As I endeavored to keep still
and reevaluate options and alternatives, another wave of bad news hit. This time it dealt
with people close to me, one had cancer, another was undergoing a rather serious MS
episode, my father was diagnosed as suffering from Alzheimer's, and as his illness led to the expected family problems and complications, consequences of my sister's 5-year old
paralysis were manifesting through her having to endure digestive and respiratory problems. It was quite clear, the pains of others are often harder to bear than our own.
Parents quickly learn this, lovers know it and many of us, if not most of us, have somehow experienced sympathetic pain. It is after all a part of love, and yet a part we often either forget or do not understand.
Love takes us out of ourselves, teaches us that we are bigger than the limits of our own
consciousness, more than the sum of our own atoms. It opens links to others and as it
does, opens channels through which the individual self can reach beyond itself. But the
experience is not limited to those who are close to us through friendship, personal love or
family. Being spiritual siblings enables us to tap into the pains - or joys - of almost anyone. We often call it compassion. The words matter not, the phenomenon is the same.
True, there are those for whom experiencing empathy is difficult, but there are many more
whose ability to tap into spiritual love manifests itself through experiencing the pains of
others including those not known to us. It does not have to be pain, of course, but
somehow feeling the hunger of someone in Ethiopia, the fear of a captive in the Sudan, or
the hopelessness of an AIDs victim in Zimbabwe, is something that hits us with far greater
impact than feeling the joy of a new mother somewhere in the jungle. While our inner
spiritual mechanics enable us to feel or experience what others do, it is love and spiritual
development that allow us to experience those feelings as if they were more important than our own, not because we have suddenly become so noble or so divine, but because
when we do, we are inevitably lost in the inescapable reality that we are bigger than
ourselves, larger than our seemingly solitary selves.
Of First Accounts and Payday Loans
President Clinton is proposing $30 million to help low income people open low~cost
basic bank accounts. These First Accounts are meant to help 10% of U.S. households - some 10 million people - who do not at present have accounts due to bank closures in
poor neighborhoods or high fees. Banks would get subsidies for either expanding teller
services or expanding Internet banking and tax incentives to offer no frills accounts.
While the final outcome in Congress is not yet determined, Frank Torres, legislative
counsel for Consumers Union put it succinctly, "it's a shame that we actually have to pay
the banks to do this."
People without bank accounts are often the prey of check cashing services, and
increasingly of an offshoot of this industry, the payday loan business. There are some 9000
such businesses in the country, of which more than a third are in California. This prompted
two bills in the California Legislature to address measures meant to alleviate this growing
problem. Often people are advanced money at an interest rate that averages 485% a year.
The legislation would prohibit pay lenders from loaning more than 25% of a paycheck and
by limiting interest to $12 for a $100 loan.
While it is indeed a shame banks may have to be paid to do what they ought to do
anyway, it's a far cry from making money off people who do not have it. That, we
unabashedly consider obscene. Measures such as those being considered by the California
Legislature may have worth and yet for many of us, they raise a question: Does settling for
what may end up being the equivalent of putting a band aid on a wound not in itself skirt
the obscene?
The $40,000 Flower Show
Actor Pierce Brosnan, a.k.a James Bond, Thomas Crown and Remington Steele,
postponed his wedding to Keely Shaye Smith until his teenage son could fully recover
from the injuries suffered in a car accident. The Flowers - $4O,000 worth - which were
being prepared for the occasion, including 100 live rose bushes, will respectively be
donated to children's hospitals and be used to create a garden for a still undetermined
charitable organization.
A good thought and a nice gesture, no doubt appreciated by the florists, designers and
nurseries involved not to mention the recipients of the sure to be beautiful arrangements.
The couple, after all, made the best out of a difficult situation, they could just as well
have canceled the order. But that's not the point. They have the right to spend as much
money on flowers for their wedding as they choose. If one believes in the trickle down
effect of any economy, perhaps even a duty given their income level. But that does not
change the disparity between those who can't afford bank accounts and those who can
afford to give away in flowers what several poor families combined earn in a year.
How Democratic Are Initiatives?
Each election in several States it is now customary to vote on a bevy of initiatives, a
grass roots effort popularized by the success of the now infamous Prop 13 in California in
1978. David Broder, a long time Washington journalist is addressing the phenomenon in a
thought provoking book, "Democracy Derailed, - 1nitiative Campaigns and the Power of
Money." Broder tells us that the process has become "alien to the spirit of the
Constitution" and is implemented in such a way it undermines our system of representative
government. He writes that "It has given the United States something unthinkable - not a government of laws but laws without government."
Several people can live under one roof, that does not make them a family. Being a
family creates bonds, gives purpose and direction, and generally adds meaning. In the case
of initiatives, laws, government and - the problem may not come from the
initiatives in and of themselves - the idea has many merits, but from the fact that special
interests now dominate. Anyone with a large bank account or with access to one can
sponsor an initiative and make his or her point of view prevail. In fact it has become a
status symbol among new millionaires to do just that. While the idea that anything without
government is good has its adherents, it often omits the reason why governments were
created and able to endure. Haphazard laws strung together through the priorities - or is it
might - of a few cannot hope to equal the coherence of laws passed within the confines of
a given country's mandate, in the case of the U.S. as it comes down through the
Constitution. Democracy as the will of the people, in our case usually the majority, cannot
be supplanted by an imitation of itself seen through the eyes of a few with the means to
essentially commandeer the process through their preferences, biases or bank accounts.
The implications of all this are not only daunting, they are frightening if the greatest
good is to prevail.
Free Air Time
As political campaigns spend more and more money including the buying of more and
more air time, stations expect to earn $600 million this year through federal, state and
local candidates as well as through advocacy groups, roughly double what was spent in
1996. The Wall Street firm of Bears, Stearns & Co. estimates that such air time will
constitute 9.2% of general TV stations revenues. In 1992, it was 3.2%.
The increasing cost of air time and the unavoidable pressure it brings for candidates to
raise money has led several including former anchor Walter Cronkite to call for free air
time. Though called free air time, what is requested is for stations to set aside more time
for issues to be discussed. Now a White House panel of broadcasters and good
government groups has joined the fray and issued recommendations calling on stations to
provide five minutes per night of free air time to candidates for 30 nights preceding an
election. Of the 1400 stations in the U.S., thus far only about two dozen have pledged to
meet the panel's recommendations - While revenues are certainly a factor, a key argument against giving free air time centers around the question of control. The government,
some say, has no right to tell stations what to do.
As is often the case, the issue is not an either/or proposition. Even when candidates are offered free air time, they often do not avail themselves of it. Either it does not fit within
their strategy or plans, or the format proposed does not fit their schedule. And when they
do, said Stan Stratham, president of the California Broadcasters Association, they use it
to bicker with each other by means of sound bites. Here too the question of control
surfaces since candidates would rather not fit within the format set by the stations.
Buying commercial TV time is seen as a way to compensate for the lack of news
coverage about politics. During the 1998 Governor race in California, for example, stations devoted less that 0.5% of their newscasts to the race during the 3 months
preceding the elections. While political ads can be a means to inform, they are far from the
objective presentation of the facts news coverage aims for.
The present system way have developed its own expediency where stations profit and
candidates seem to have few incentives to change the status quo. The public, however, is
short changed. And if an informed democracy is to be a backbone of a good society, then
the cause of both is being hurt.
Seed Thought
"I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So 1 am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind."
Freeman Dyson
A physicist and member of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., Dyson is
the winner of the 2000 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion
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