Thursday, November 6, 2008

Agree Purport Motivate Act Change?

Sachs’ dig on Easterly, who makes a “phony” charge, is convincing and harsh. So much of what produces change has to do with the attitude of leaders and how they choose to reflect or inflate or state the facts. It is a clash of attitudes and therefore a difference in reported facts between the two authors which makes for comparing them difficult yet entertaining. By focusing on the successes of foreign aid efforts, Sachs does a necessary good for people who tend to follow examples—which in my opinion is everyone. Though Sachs rejects the market view as being able to solve nagging problems such as carbon emissions, the economist in him is helpful when calculating the numbers to put Easterly’s arguments to shame. Easterly’s arguments are overly Washington-specific. There are examples such as Japan where aid was given and at least small successes took place.
There have been complaints that Sachs’ book lacks the amount of psychological reflection which some think is essentially necessary to discuss and sort of psychological stance it might need in order to make real recommendations for change, but I believe that the psychological aspects are implicit and obviously embedded within his ideas. For example, he has extreme faith in democracy, viewing our leaders as those who follow the citizens in a sort of backwards but sensible manner. He does not underestimate the importance of “public awareness and engagement.”
By focusing on positivism amid what seems like doom, Sachs has done a wonderful job in working toward his positive vision of possibility and future opportunity. Even if on the inside he doesn’t think that we will be able to quell the problems facing humanity today and that the lifeboat we are all in is about to sink taking us all under, at least he purports to follow this line of thought and is consistent in that—trying desperately to creat a self-fulfillling prophecy of attitudes, harking back to Gladwell’s The Tipping Point where there is a point in time where change becomes unstoppable. Can one do that through words? Through motivational stories? Through well-written inspirational books that focus on debunking those of other academics as well as displaying the worries and hopes of our time in a succinct intelligible way? Time will tell us that answer—and there is not point in speculating but rather all our efforts should be in…searching?!

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