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Welcome to all of you for the second time today.
We had a fascinating discussion, I thought, this morning with the group of students
from NUS.
This is, this is great and I could get used to that
kind of style of,
of doing teaching and engagement across the time zones. It was great. It was great.
so we have a full plate of to offer you today,
including guest, who is with us,
Tony Hall.
And, so I will make my comments very, very brief
and then Doug is going to follow after me and after that Tony Hall
and then Tony Blair is going to completes the, the circle. So,
you know, what I wanted to just to briefly, briefly mention and highlight
that it seems to me, at least also from our reading throughout the course but this in particular
also for today's session,
it seems to me that both faith traditions
and the advocates of economic globalization,
they have interest. There's interest in improving the lot
of the of the poor, right. Both the
market economy, its version of economic globalization contains a promise
to lift people up out
of poverty poverty,
but also it kind of
has a history of betrayal
of the, of the poor, right.
History of either in the process of marching onward leaving people dislocated
unsure about their, their destinies and so forth or even if one looked
at the large map of the world
leaving certain even whole continents untouched
at least as of yet, one might say.
I think that's also true of the faith traditions, on the one hand, just about all the faith traditions
emphasize concern for the poor, for the needy.
That's at the heart of many, many of the faiths, not
necessarily
the
thing at the heart, but one of the most important things
the faiths are concerned with.
And yet as we've read also
in our reading for today
especially kind of critique from the liberation theologian side of things
there's also a long history
of betrayal of that mission of the poor and siding with those who are powerful
and kind of unconcerned with what's going on
on the ground where people, in fact, suffer.
And I think maybe it would be good for us to think
in terms of
up bubble both, both in the lives of both this promise
and also
a failure and betrayal.
To think, maybe, that for both faith and globalization,
it might be good to think that
the effects of both of these
to on the poor and on the week
are one of the criteria, important criteria
how we judge both faiths
and globalization processes. And I think the background for that might be,
a background presupposition might be
that and, and maybe that's controversial, but that's how I would put it,
that humanity
of a system
or humanity of a society
is measured by
how it treats
it's weakest members.
And if that's the case, that provides us quite an important,
a criterion is maybe too strong and too
a kind of clearly formulated,
but at, at least the guideline
in terms of how to assess
the performance (quote unquote) of both faith traditions and
and
economic side of globalization processes.
Second comment that I want to make
concerns
the notion of what it means to be poor
and what it means to be
wealthy.
That's, I think, among many other things, that faith traditions contribute to this
whole debate
is one of these things.
You can put it differently also. You can ask the question,
now you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll smile or laugh because you've heard me ask that question
many times:
What's the wealth for, right?
I asked the question what's the whole
economic system for,
but also what is
wealth
for?
Put differently, how it fits
into the larger account of what it means to lead one lives, one's life well?
And especially if we distinguish between,
say, if we say, that human flourishing can consist of, has two formal
components, as I said before, life going well for one
and life being led well.
Now, we can all agree that's it's hard to argue that life going well for one,
that life is going well for one
if they live on one dollar
a day, right,
or even less in many, many cases, no access to health and so forth.
So the concern for
reaching a certain threshold of
of wealth
so as to be able to be nourished, to be able to
have opportunities and thrive,
all of us would agree on this
in terms of constituting kind of poverty, kind of bottom line absolute almost poverty.
But I think it's very important for, for religious folks from a religious perspective
to think about
what constitutes then wealth and what constitutes poverty
above that threshold and I think
one can distinguish in most of the traditions
something like what I might call
the two types of people, right, one type of person is "not enough person,"
no matter what you've got
and how you, how you fare you, you just not enough. It's always needs
to be more
and
"always more than enough person," right.
Now, "always more than enough person" is really a funny thing to, to, to invoke in the,
in, in, in today, right, it seems counter too many of the
basic intuitions we have
about how the whole world and wealth creation is being run,
but in just about all religious traditions, there is something like that of "more than
enough kind of a person," I think that goes,
that's beyond some of the detachment ideas
in buddhism and hinduism.
That's certainly beyond the idea of contentment,
whether that's a stoic version of contentment or that's, that's a Christian version of other
religious versions of contentment.
And it would seeme to me that
something of that sort
needs to be there
for people
actually to be willing to engage in care for the poor.
If you're simply concerned about
yourself and if you see yourself as "not enough person,"
what will take you outside of yourself in order to reach out, whether that's reaching
out in giving others, whether that's reaching out
in creating conditions where they could thrive,
whatever that might be.
I think poverty alleviation
presume, presumes people who are,
well just about,
just slightly "more than enough people" at least, right,
who able to, able to give,
engage,
with the question and problem of poverty, whether that's
in large structural level
or very
small personal level.
I think that's all that I want to, want to say and
I'll pass it on now to Doug.