Correspondence
MEAD, LAWRENCE M. & BLUMGART, JOHN D. & HURNI, DR. HANS & NEUFELDT, SUSAN
CORRESPONDENCE
Work for the poor?
New York, N.Y.
To the Editors: Jim Sleeper discusses William Julius Wilson's work quite thoughtfully ["The Resegregation of America," November 6]. Wilson and I have...
...I hope that Commonweal will publish more of Stevens's thought-provoking articles...
...Yet there is nothing we can do to speed a solution...
...I find myself praying all the time not to interrupt people's own problem-solving...
...Conservation of natural resources has become the legal obligation of the state, as well as the individual, in the recently accepted Ethiopian constitution...
...Stevens sees that the situation is too complex for easy answers, and I think I've learned that, too...
...Stevens for thirty-five years, and we have corresponded in recent years about the difficulties in Christian service to our fellow humans...
...Wilson and I have had a dialogue going for about a year on the main point in contention - whether jobs exist for the poor...
...Stevens wrote to me last year saying, "It's different for you . . . you actually help people...
...Occasionally I can interject something, if I don't hurry, that helps a person to illuminate an issue or see beyond the immediate, but I have to be quite careful not to become grandiose and propose what I think should be done next...
...Socially trained extensionists, discussing with peasants the need for conservation, and seeking with them ways to control degradation, have real potential...
...Stevens's description of the watershed, problem in Ethiopia makes this quite vivid...
...Henri Nouwen, in his book for ministers, The Way of the Heart, has said,"What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it...
...Continued on page 94) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 66) How strange and yet, of course, how obvious that neither of us can expect to look at the lives of our clients and deliver any very useful advice...
...Stevens might face the rapid decline of the Ethiopian watershed...
...Wilson and I have much in common, though we disagree about the main cause of the underclass...
...Nowadays, there is virtually nobody in Ethiopia unfamiliar with the conservation idea...
...In the first place, everyone's situation is far too complex...
...Nouwen reminds us that our task is not cure, but compassion, and a willingness to go with people as they sort out the answers to the problems that confront them...
...In the second place, only people who are living the lives we've come to assist are equipped to know what they can carry out and still remain true to themselves...
...JOHN D. BLUMGART I hesitate to judge Bern, Switzerland To the Editors: Douglas Stevens's personal perception of conservation in Ethiopia is a very fresh, creative, and provocative contribution to the problems and prospects he encountered...
...While those changes have occurred, they account rather for rising economic inequality among working people, not for the presence of a nonworking underclass...
...SUSAN NEUFELDT...
...CORRESPONDENCE Work for the poor...
...they didn't call in the "experts" until they had exhausted the most likely solutions...
...One tries at first to "help...
...To the Editors: In reading Douglas Stevens's article, "Ethiopian Landscapes," in your November 20 issue, I am struck both by his appreciation of the richness of Ethiopian culture and landscape and by his frustration with development efforts...
...As an ex-foreign aid official, I empathized with his thoughts, speculations, and experiences, having myself conducted countless "windshield surveys" in the rural areas of more developing countries than I care to admit...
...I would hesitate to suggest from outside better ways to achieve regeneration of "man and nature" in Ethiopia, because the problems are so complex...
...And, like Stevens, I often wondered whether my perceptions of local "realities" had not been so colored by my cultural and social filters as to completely distort their real meaning...
...However, one should not underestimate the positive lessons that conserved watersheds have given to local communities and political leaders, irrespective of the means by which these were implemented...
...So the work problem among poor and dependent people must have other causes...
...If one does not really understand the social, ethnic, and cultural landscapes of a country, the temptation to fall back on foreign aid rhetoric or untested assumptions becomes too great to resist...
...Maybe these projects have reached sufficient momentum to break the vicious circle of environmental degradation, famine vulnerability, and population growth...
...I face the imminent dissolution of a marriage...
...We can only listen to people as they clarify their own problems and devise creative responses to them, responses that fit their own lives and their own cultures...
...I had, of course, been thinking for years that I dealt in endless muddy situations of the psyche, while he was out in the world "helping" people with the nitty-gritty realities of economic life...
...LAWRENCE M. MEAD I was moved & troubled Bethesda, Md...
...HANS HURNI I am struck by Stevens Santa Barbara, Calif...
...What we both need is the ability to tolerate all that suffering so we can hang in there with people as they find their way out of it...
...Yet they illuminate the Ethiopian landscape for the reader like the flashes of a strobe light in a darkened room...
...As it happens, I have known Mr...
...The main violence Sleeper has done to me is to spell my name with an "e" on the end...
...I have wondered whether the particular project I was observing was making a significant dent in the problem it was meant to address or in improving the lives of its "beneficiaries...
...The real problem for those like Stevens and me, who are making an effort to minister to others, is that we can't stand suffering...
...To the Editors: I was deeply moved and troubled by Douglas Stevens's artic-le,"Ethiopian Landscapes" [November 20...
...Work-fare" could do much to overcome it...
...Aside from such general reactions, the article provides a poignant, troublesome series of images of life in Ethiopia under a new tyranny...
...Our graduate degrees from high-powered institutions have limited application...
...The evidence, I think, heavily favors the view that jobs are normally available to unskilled adults...
...The images are glimpses of a beautiful country and a hard-working people that deserve a better future...
...I think permissive public programs are more important than the economic shifts he emphasizes...
...Hanging in there with them is all they need from us, and it is the hardest thing of all for us to do...
...Stevens gives us a series of vignettes and observations collected over a brief visit to that country...
...He, in the area of third-world economic development, and I, as a clinical psychologist in a California coastal community, have both encountered the frustrations inherent in working with the pain of our companions in life...
Vol. 115 • February 1988 • No. 3
