Do Yous Know Yunus?
Beep! Beep! has tagged me on a Feminism string. The actual meme is "5 Things Feminism Done For Me" and I've been hesitant to approach it since my bottom line understanding of Feminism is that it simply means that women have the right to be treated as Economic Equals to men. At some point, I think I'll be able expound on the details of the Feminist advance. For now, I really think Beep! has done a beautiful job with her own post, and my emotional take on the topic will remain - not exactly closeted - but left to the reader to extrapolate from my posting in general.
We are incredibly different, one sex from the other. It's kinda helped ensure our species' continuity throughout millenia of evolution in all sorts of environments, so I'm always hesitant to condemn either men or women who exult in those differences and are strongly adverse to movements that minimize some of them.
What can't be tolerated in free and dynamic socioties is economic dominance of one sex over the other. No man may have any rights - any economic opportunities - which are not functionally shared by women.
Muhammad Yunus has taken on the culture of his most important clients AND THEIR FAMILIES and brought an incredible semblance of Gender Equality to one of the poorest, most sexually segregated countries on the planet.
Despite reactionary tendencies and a general aversion to massive social change, Homo Sapiens are extant because of our intelligence. I believe that Historians of the future will look back on the Nobel Prize committee's selection of this Bangladeshi Banker and Teacher as a turning point in our species' ability to set the past aside, and approach the future - and our opportunities for prosperity - with more open minded acceptance of the empirical Equality of the Sexes.
We are incredibly different, one sex from the other. It's kinda helped ensure our species' continuity throughout millenia of evolution in all sorts of environments, so I'm always hesitant to condemn either men or women who exult in those differences and are strongly adverse to movements that minimize some of them.
What can't be tolerated in free and dynamic socioties is economic dominance of one sex over the other. No man may have any rights - any economic opportunities - which are not functionally shared by women.
Muhammad Yunus has taken on the culture of his most important clients AND THEIR FAMILIES and brought an incredible semblance of Gender Equality to one of the poorest, most sexually segregated countries on the planet.
Despite reactionary tendencies and a general aversion to massive social change, Homo Sapiens are extant because of our intelligence. I believe that Historians of the future will look back on the Nobel Prize committee's selection of this Bangladeshi Banker and Teacher as a turning point in our species' ability to set the past aside, and approach the future - and our opportunities for prosperity - with more open minded acceptance of the empirical Equality of the Sexes.
[Link] (T)his man, who won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, had taught (these rural women typically take a backseat to men) to stand up to their husbands by giving them small loans that now put them in the driver's seat.
"The first hostile person to our program is the husband. We are challenging his authority," Yunus said as we walked around Kashipur, where water buffalo lumbered down dirt paths alongside women barking Bengali into the cell phones they had bought with small loans from his bank."In the family, he's a macho tyrant," Yunus said. "He starts to see that she's not as stupid as he thought. He says, `Now she cannot nag me about money, because she understands now how hard it is to make.' The tension eases and they become a team."
yea, the Grameen Bank has done it's job very well. For a nation like Bangladesh where poverty still rules with an iron fist, Yunus' idea offers a definite ray of hope. Good on the committee for choosing him.
ReplyDeleteI really like the way you wrote about him. i did a post on him too at thepeacetrain.org.
ReplyDeleteI like the slant on this.
Great job, you silly human, you ;)
ReplyDeleteIt's just such a great story, isn't it. One of those that makes you think being a human might not be such a bad thing after all.
ReplyDeleteBeep tagged me too, and like you I keep thinking about it.
You know, I really liked your post today. Just wanted to let you know that.
Good post. I'm ignorant as far as economics goes, but I do try to figure things out anyway.
ReplyDeleteAnybody fighting the good fight is to be praised. Glad he got the Nobel.
Ditto, on the nice job!
ReplyDeleteHowdy all.
ReplyDeleteI'm really glad Mr Yunus won this Peace Prize. As you've all noted, I'd not heard of him 'til now either, but the type of lending choices he has contracted are, IMO, precisely what Banks must do for the communities in which they operate.
My wonderful country is sinking fast because of Mergers and Acquisitions which send Top Management beyond the sphere of their communities. Those folks become Owned by their shareholders, which focus utterly annihilates their Legal Reason to exist.
Banks are a means to community growth. Without that motivation, they are merely a means to Aristocratic Hegemony of wealth.
It is sad, sick and definitionally selfish AND self-destructive in the long run, to put the Capital Providers ahead of the purpose for raising the capital in the first place.
And the only excuse our mega-corporate money men can use in their defense is that they have a right to make money.
NOT at your societies expense A-Holes. Spewing such intellectual excrement can only result in Anarchy and a civilizational collapse of Roman proportions.
Against such insanity do I live my public life.
And I don't care if that sounds arrogant or inflated in its importance. It's simply freakin' true. I just hope I'll be able to do more in support of that pursuit over the course of the rest of my life. If I can't, because I don't gain more education or credentials or self-esteem, then, like the women, families and communities who have benefitted from Mr Yunus' campaign, I'll just do it for my own piece of mind and count myself as lucky to have such a great group readers; no matter how small the number.
And unlike the self-deluded by their wealth-earning potential, I won't be wasting resources which could be growing and maintaining my society, my species and my planet.
Thanks all!
MB, you should be reading MaxSpeak (http://maxspeak.org/mt) regularly
ReplyDeleteThanks, AIF. Yah, I scope Max occasionally. 've even left a comment now and again; like today (thanks to you) for example.
ReplyDeleteUsually, they get too arcane for my brain to be able to tell who's the BSer and which are shootin' straight, though.
None the, thanks for remindin' me of the site.