The Uncultured project is totally useless!

[Kubuguy]

So I was watching this Shawn doing all these awesome things and I admire him for that but then I realized ... what he is doing is totally useless. It isn't going to change a thing!

I read this under the Ucultured section:

"With no formal plan, training, experience, or real budget, Shawn has been helping combat malaria through bed net distributions, providing disaster relief after Cyclone Sidr and monsoon flooded, and has helped rural families and children through scholarships, school supplies, and even materials for home reconstruction."

So he is giving them all kinds of things. "Things" being the key word, what when (not if) they brake, when the water is drunk, nets become torn and notepads for children are left with no more blank pages? Is he going to supply them with more for his whole life? What he is doing is conditioning them that they're at mercy of others, other wealthy nations. That's plain wrong. And quite frankly I was disgusted when he rolled out the US flag. It's a symbol of suppression all over the world. But that aside, while I'm sure he doesn't realize that and has only good intentions at heart, it's very brave and awesome what he decided to do but useless nonetheless. This is what he and others inspired byt him should realize and try to offer real solutions instead.

As the saying goes, give man a fish you feed him for a day, learn him how to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime. What these people need to do is to start their own "businesses", to grow their own food, to take back their natural resources, to get rid of the greedy foreign corporations and their corrupt governments. These people are not lazy, they're not stupid, they can perfectly take care of themselves you just need to show them HOW. It's not that these people can not develop, they're not ALLOWED to develop. That's the key, you achieve absolutely nothing by giving them "aid". There are how many millions of them? How many mosquito nets he gave them? I mean ... just think about it.

[Schizo]

The government and all the companies and factories in those lands are the problem. What you said is true, but these peole actually know how to live by their own. The best thing humans could make would be: leave them alone, I mean witout government or companies that destroy their land. There is the problem, companies use their lands to make products, the aids that are given to them are made by materials of their own land, they are buying something that could actually be already of them.

[Brandon Skylar]

They don't know how to live on their own to a large extent. The United States tends to force its democratic and capitalistic ideals on people's all over the world who have been living one particular way of life.

However the Capitalist world is already "setup" for Western Nations mostly. There is little chance for developing countries to get a "piece of the pie" with massive multinational corporations having so much power.

This complied by the Inhumane acts committed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund make it clear two things: something is very wrong - Capitalism isn't working.

[john]

It’s working as in it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing.– ironically this doesn't represent like 99% of the worlds people…

[Mark]

Kubuguy: I just thought about it. You make some good points, but I think you have also exaggerated some claims. Whether or not you mean to be hyperbolic, I think it is important to clarify this issue. I think that what Shawn has been doing IS, in fact, useful and (perhaps more importantly) inspirational. Now, you make a number of arguments here, some of which are a bit tangential in relation to Shawn's charity work, but I think I can summarize the main idea you are trying to convey (correct me if I am mistaken): offering "things" is a short-term solution that fixes the symptoms of the problem, but not the disease ("greedy foreign corporations and their corrupt governments") itself.

I agree with the bulk of your sentiments. If we really wish to make permanent changes, we DO need to fix the economic and social fixtures (corrupt governments, broken/nonexistent industrial frameworks, misinformation, etc.) that underlie the symptomatic problems (illiteracy, poverty, disease, etc.). However, providing temporary relief to these symptoms is NOT "totally useless". What Shawn is doing with The Uncultured Project directly influences the well-being of many people in a positive (albeit short-term) way. If we were to extrapolate the implications of your claim that this influence is "totally useless" to their fullest extents, we would have to conclude that there is no point in helping people at all, short or long term. I doubt this is what you meant. Instead, I think we can agree that even though it seems proportionally meaningless, Shawn's symptom-treating charity work IS useful.

Having established that Shawn's admittedly temporary improvements ARE in some capacity useful, we can now take into consideration the "inspiration factor". What I mean by this is the positive effects of Shawn's charity that aren't immediately apparent. Will Shawn's work inspire millions of people to do what he has done and go around handing out nets and water? No. Is this even desirable? Probably not; but it's all he can do. Shawn has taken his resources and made the best out of them to help other people. THIS is what we can learn from him, and what makes him inspirational.

[Kubuguy]

OK, you essentially confirmed everything I said except one major thing and one minor one which I was not clear enough about being that you claim that his work is not "totally useless" and that inspirational factor is meaningful.

I respectfully disagree on both of them LOL
Let me explain.

You said: "What Shawn is doing with The Uncultured Project directly influences the well-being of many people in a positive (albeit short-term) way."

First of all, define "many people". Bangladesh has a population of around 160,000,000. How many of those he managed to "help" in some way? I put help in quotes because it's not really a help anyway, sure he makes a lot of people feel good, may make a lot of friends but will he help them? Nope. The moment he is gone, they're where they were sooner or later. And that my friend is a definition of "totally useless" and I mean TOTALLY. It's not an exaggeration. Sure if you look at it from personal level, it's great thing to do, awesome but when you take the bigger picture into account, totally useless nonetheless ;)

"If we were to extrapolate the implications of your claim that this influence is "totally useless" to their fullest extents, we would have to conclude that there is no point in helping people at all, short or long term."

This claim is simply false. You misunderstood the point and made some unfounded assumptions. First of all the claim that if we extrapolate what I said we would have to conclude "that there is no point in helping people at all" ... why the hell would you conclude such a thing? As I said he is not really helping them, that's the point. He may have pure intentions to help, he may believe he does, he may feel good about himself but that doesn't make it so. It's not IF you want to help what counts but HOW. If he would take another approach, one that actually has potential to change something, that would be different. But he has not, that's the point.

The last thing you mention is the "inspirational factor" whuch is equally as useless when it inspires people to do usless things. It's like when you inspire people to give money to a charity which ultimately uses the money to just enrich themselves. Good intention, good inpiration but useless result. Totally useless that is ;)

I just want to reiterate that I admire Shawn for his dedication and bravery. It's not my intention to criticize him but to inspire him and others to do something which actually matters.

[Mark]

It's too late for me to re-defend my side, so I think we'll have to agree to disagree :P.


A semi-humorous side-note: does the fact that his charity work triggered this discussion help my argument?

[Kubuguy]

A semi-humorous side-note: does the fact that his charity work triggered this discussion help my argument?

haha, yeah ... good point :)

It kind of does. It's not that useless from the perspective that it makes people think and promotes discussion. So yeah, but it's still pretty useless unless someone decides to actually do something about it.

[Kubuguy]

It's not useless after all!

I just realized what the most valuable aspect of this project is and that's that is inspires people to make PERSONAL action. Many people just give a few dollars to some charity and feel good about themselves even when they forget about starving children a day later. They do it just to not feel so guilty.

What this project does is to motivate people to get involved, to donate their time not money which get misused anyway. Methods are still useless lol but inspiration is not :)

So I just thought I would correct myself on that point.

[aaa aaaa]

importance is determined by scale when discussing an issue thats key element is a huge population that could benefit from development, and i dont just mean the population of a city or india- the whole world can benefit from it, enriched by the food and art of an expanded percent of global population being good intelligent benevolent people. I mention this as my opening because i beleive that point of logic is a good cornerstone, a contradiction to the logic of personal finance that makes us wonder about 'giving away aid' individually, thinking 'will it work? will i get anything that i will like better than what i would buy alternatively?', in the minutes of wondering the moment passes and no enlightenment occurs unless a thought is there to replace it.

whether uncultured is effective in this macrocosmic factor of scale remains ot be seen. while maybe its early to write if off, I also compeltely agree it is useful and crucially necessary to criticize it like you have, to insert reality, theory, and dialog into the presentation, increasing the number of cracks and trap doors that the overriding logic of peace and development can seep into.
-also remember that even in the weird structure of democracy capitalism, people's emotions and half-baked ideas are soemtimes precisely what is crucial in pointing a huge tool of investment at a problem - all the money in the pot filled by taxation. whether it was created morally or not we can use it in any way we want, within the autocracy of demonstrated political will. votes and outrage, symbols, images on the news, they all are ammunition that can be multiplied in effectiveness when used skilffully

[circonG]

I agree for the most part. What Shawn does is give food to people who are not able to feed themselves {Because of African drought} temporarily keeping them alive however allowing them to reproduce making the problem twice as bad next generation thereby only ever worsening things. We need to let them reduce to a population in which they can sustain themselves without any foreign aid. Letting impoverished population multiply is going to be horrible during the upcoming oil crash {For those who believe in the oil crash}.

[Kubuguy]

Oh snap! I'm quite sensitive to the horrible proposition you just made, it makes me mad and agressive but I'll try to contain myself as I believe you didn't mean to.

"allowing them to reproduce making the problem twice as bad" ???!!!!

This is quite common misconception fueled by western propaganda and people fall for it like stupid sheep! There is nothing wrong with them "reproducing", the land could sustain twice as much people as there are now. Do you realize the horrible consequnces of what you just said? If we would want to "reduce population" we would have to either kill them, let them starve to death or put under unvoluntary control. All of it is happening right now.There were propositions by US gov which came to light that we should control their food and let the majority to starve and control the population by food. And this is exactly what is being implemented if you're informed in the area. They're not allowed to grow their own food, their farmers are being intimidated, their fields destroyed, the US even destroyed a dry milk factory under the pretense that there were "chemical weapons" (not in Bangladesh, elsewhere). Of course there was no such a thing. There is an active war against their agriculture. That's their problem, not "overpopulation". That's a myth to excuse killing them by starvation.

The same thing is now being implemented in US and other countries. They're destroying independent farms in favour of huge corporations of which food is proven to be poisonous. Be prepared for food crysis in US and all over the world ... deliberately manufactured just like the economic one.

[circonG]

I actually havn't heard this idea anywere I can recall, I thought of it. I would appreciate it if you would be able to source your claim that their land could sustain twice as many people as there are now. From my understanding the reason much of Africa is in poverty is because they were sustaining themselves but then drought hit, land degraded, they ran out of land due to ever increasing population, and/or there was a massive influx of immigrants. This reduced their capability of feeding themselves but leaving their population and ever since foreign nations have had to feed those that can no longer feed themselves. I should point out that much of the troubled parts of africa are quite lawless, and if at all possible starving people will grow their own food. Malthusian principle...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe