May 2012

Chen Kegui is the nephew of Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese activist who arrived in the United States recently. When the Chinese authorities were looking for his uncle and stormed his house partly to make sure Chen Guangcheng wasn’t there and partly to harass his father and himself, there was an altercation, one of the policemen died and Chen Kegui is now being charged with murder. Shakeel Alfridi is the Pakistani surgeon enlisted by the CIA to essentially run a phony vaccination program in Abbottabad so they could obtain DNA from relatives of Osama Bin Laden. He was tried away from the press and perhaps secretly, convicted of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison. We can be very glib about speaking about gratitude, but if our reasons for feeling or citing it do not include our freedom from injustice, then our gratitude is most likely shallow.

San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, who’s running for mayor, has a decision to make, whether or not to charge 88-year old Alan Purdy. Purdy who had sat there while his wife, Margaret, 84, took 30 pills and secured a plastic bag over her head, called the paramedics after she died. Her life had become intolerable due to constant pain which pills did not relieve, and he sat there because he said, he didn’t want her to feel abandoned, and die alone. In California assisting suicide is illegal, but was this a criminal act or as some see it an act of love? The issue is further nuanced by the fact he did not actually help her, but was only a witness. There are those who feel that not charging him opens the door to assisted suicide, to helping those who are not terminally ill or those for whom the suicide may have a financial interest. No doubt if assisting suicide were legal, there would be some who would abuse it. Murder is illegal and some commit it. Although laws applies to all, how a small minority might ignore them cannot be used as a reason against them. In this instance a far better gauge would be what would be do in Alan Purdy’s shoes? As far as I can understand, his act was not only one of love, but one of courage and compassion. Could we do as much knowing there would be consequences?

Esther Duflo, a MIT economist known for her data driven analyses of poverty, recently gave a provocative lecture at Harvard. Her data showed, she explained, that the absence of optimism plays a large role in maintaining people trapped into poverty. Hopelessness manifests itself in any number of ways. One for example is called pathological conservatism, where people forego engaging in certain behaviors for fear of loosing the little they have. In that way they may remain in a drought ridden village when going to the city could be a bus ride away. The lack of optimism is also reflected in attitudes about education or making small changes in the way poor people use fertilizers or use their energy, even if those changes could yield bigger rewards. We are increasingly aware that fighting poverty goes beyond the idea of aid programs. The more we can understand what it means to be poor, the more we can devise ways to conquer poverty—not to speak of developing the compassion needed to see the fight to the finish.