Globalization: Good for All?

The word Globalization has such a nice ring to it. It carries with a thought of oneness, of joy, and of all nations holding hands around a camp fire singing songs and having marshmallows while talking of how we could not love until we, as a human race, came together under this umbrella of oneness, trust, and mutual happiness. However, let’s look closer at the faces of our new friends around the fire. Their smiles look forced and their happiness a vial for all the cameras and media outlets there to relish in the moment and to send the pictures of happiness back home to us westerners. Therefore, for all the westerners, I want to paint a picture as to what is behind those forced smiles.

Imagine if you will you have some land. It is not the perfect land but it is yours and you are happy. Now, imagine if a company came in and said it would get you financing to improve your land and what is on it. They make you want what other countries have and though you have not needed it for years, you want it now because to have things is important. Furthermore, they promise you health care and financial security in this new fangled vision of your land. Sounds good, let’s sign up.

Now the fun begins, the loaning agency makes you use a contractor that is not of your land and therefore the money and economic prosperity leaves with every pay check. The contractor never really finishes the job and leaves a mess; however you must keep paying the loan even though the work was not done. The financer’s offer a solution to your problem and that is to start using the natural resources as a way of making money and paying back the loan. So you get your family and start toiling in your backyard trying to harvest these resources so you can make enough money to pay back the crushing loan that has left an unfinished mess in your yard. Now, you are limited in the methods you can use to extract the resource and can not possible compete on the global market against the highly subsidized resource rackets in the western world. Therefore, the price you get is lower and after paying off your loan payments you are left with 12 cents an hour pay.

Now you are going to the store to feed your family and you realize that food prices have sky rocketed because your neighbour down the road has made the same deal with the financers. You realize that what is left of your food and resource supplies are being fed to other countries at affordable rates for them but leaving nothing for you.

Now you go to your well to get some water after a hungry and exhausting day at 12 cents an hour and you learn that the leader of your land was forced to sell all the water to a company to continue making the payments and therefore you have to pay for it now; but hey, the pop is cheaper so you drink that.

So this is how you got to the campfire, waiving for the cameras and trying to put a good show on while holding the hands of the people that have ruined your land and economy for generations after you. All this is being taken in by the westerners who say, “ look at them and how happy the are, I am happy because I just got all the stuff I need to survive at an alarmingly great price at the store, 10 shirts for 12 dollars, amazing.” And they never look to see the truth on your faces because your forced smile mimics their own in so many ways.

In the west we would call that Fraud (charges would be laid if the person was not super rich), predatory lending (though we don’t really charge people for that anymore), human rights violations (again charges are optional), contractual dishonesty thus voiding the contract (wait no to that as well). So I guess the people of the west better grab some marshmallows and start stretching our dancing muscles because our apathy of what is being done in the name of Globalization is coming to your town soon.

God vs Science: A Losing Battle For All.

Some people are born with an innate ability to think and cognate. Others with the ability to work with their hands and fix almost anything, others can solve problems that are abstract and complex, while yet others can possess a drive for love and understanding that draws other people to them like flies to honey. My point is that neurotransmitters, and synaptic firing, and conditioned responses do not explain any of this to a certainty that would be considered significant in a coffeehouse chat much less the ever revered statistical significance of science. Now I want to make my position very plain so the understanding of my point is clear. I am not writing this as a Christian bashing science or as a scientist bashing faith. I am writing this to say that the two points of view are not mutually exclusive and that is the divide.

Imagine if you have a dollar bill ( a bill representing the views of a culture). On one side there is the scientific ideal, the other is faith. Some scientists don’t want to accept the faith side of the bill and some people who believe in God do not want to see the science side of the bill. Here is the issue; without both sides having currency than the bill is just a useless piece of paper and a culture divides holding nothing.

In my mind all the advances science has made about the brain makes it more and more likely that there has to be a higher power at play. On the other hand, the quest for scientific understanding of the human mind, and the world, is not an affront to God. If anything this persistent need to find the answers is exactly the power God has placed in humanity’s mental capacity. So why then do we need to control the answer? Why is the scientist’s work a threat to God and why is there being a God a threat to scientists work?

There are scientists that do what they know they can before they think if they should, and bad stuff happens. On the flip side there are faithful people that abuse that power to the detriment of those who believe, and again bad stuff happens. However, that is not indicative of all and to err is human and we are all very capable of the fall, and we do fall often. Science increases our understanding in every area of life and maybe we can understand God’s great work, in the creation of humanity and the world, through this medium.

Being taught in society that the two are mutually exclusive and that to be a scientist is to believe in no God or to be a person of God is to fight science is a battle that leaves us holding paper, not currency.

A cause is manmade but faith is divine. Should we not be happy that through the scientist’s work we see how truly complex God’s creation really is?

Your thoughts?