What We Can't Ignore

I often get frustrated with people who think what they have achieved is all through their own efforts and is somehow a validation of themselves and their moral superiority. I'm perfectly well-aware that what I've accomplished is a to a large extent a function of the parents to whom I was born and the education I received.

While I don't believe education is a cure-all, I do believe that all people have the capacity to develop themselves through it and the right to receive it. A perfect example of the efficacy of education was borne out for me in the fact that all of the students in the matriculating class at Oprah Winfrey's school made it through and are going to university.

Now the school has had problems, by all accounts, but the point is that these 72 girls could have stayed in township schools and maybe some of them would have gotten an exemption to university and even fewer would have gone. Now, all of them have a shot at a better life and a life that allows them to give back.

What Triangle?

I like blogs as a way to untangle one's thoughts and reasoning on various issues. Having to put these thoughts into a quasi-public forum means I have to lay it out more systematically than I do when I scribble in my diary. It also can create a log of ideas, thoughts, articles and so on. I very seldom find blogs that intersect with all the issues I'm trying to puzzle out for myself so I thought I'd put my thoughts out there.

For me the triangle consists of three issues that I'm passionate about:
- poverty, social justice and human development;
- the environment and its preservation; and
- my faith.
These issues aren't necessarily antithetical but they can interact in interesting and confusing ways. I thought I'd start a blog to track my progress through these intersections for my own purposes and perhaps for the interest of the occasional others.