The Eye of the Needle (Why I am an Abolitionist)

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.' When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, 'Who then can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'" - Matthew 19
  

"Friends of Goodwill, be dissatisfied with your work until every handicapped and unfortunate person in your community has an opportunity to develop to his fullest usefulness and enjoy a maximum of abundant living." - Edgar James Helms, Founder of Goodwill

 This post is dedicated as a letter, specifically to my friends and future friends in Washington DC, Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship.  My hopes that the mere words I type into the web can somehow spread from here to others, and tell why the issue of Modern Slavery is important to me. 

Dear Friends,

As people of the 21st century, and most notably as people at AU, you are no doubt bombarded by thousands of ways to be charitable.  In a globalized world, there are now more than a million countries, projects, schemes, and funds that you can devote your time and finances too, whether its people peddling bracelets on the quad or human rights films in the Tavern.  As the issue of modern slavery just appears as one in a million, you may ask why this issue deserves your attention and effort.

As far as I am concerned, I would hardly be any person to lecture anyone about optimistic change the world schemes.  I have been a hardened cynic most my life when it comes to those who spout goals of ending poverty, achieving world peace, and ending world hunger ("but arent they going to just get hungry 4 hours later?).  Even as a Nietzsche totting agnostic until the follower of Christ I find myself to be today, I have never been a dreamer of that sort.  I always thought it impossible, until freshman year.

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle"

I saw a film about sex trafficking in the Phillipine Islands two months into college, put on by some people from Chi Alpha.  I remember very clearly all the images on the screen, of 12 year old girls with sunken eyes and desperation dancing in every word of their speech, of the slums stretching for miles and miles and the dimly lit street corners littered with little girls soliciting every car that rolled by.  The images stuck in my head for days, and Im not sure they've ever left me.

For many people, this is where the story ends.  The images are disgusting, the reality is ugly, but for most it will fade back with the rest of the images we've been bombarded with of pot bellied children in Africa and never find their way to resurface.  The issue of sex trafficking has been a huge issue for many years, the fact of slaves has existed since the dawn of humanity itself.  What makes any of us think that it can ever be stopped?

"they were greatly astonished and asked, 'Who then can be saved?'"

Many of us will shove this issue back in our mind, choosing to live in blissful ignorance of something so horrible because, as human beings, we hate the fact that it has no clear cut solution.  We want a snap ending, not an indefinite problem.  But we were not called to ignorance, but rather truth; and all of us have a duty to respect it, no matter how ugly it is.

However, the story doesnt end here; believing in Christ, whether I like it or not, makes me an idealist, even an optimist.  Despite my cynicism I firmly believe, with all my heart, that we can see an end to human trafficking within our lifetimes, and this is why:

1. Slavery was stopped once, it can be stopped again.
 When one British man dared to challenge the status quo and demand an end to the Atlantic slave trade, there was no good reason for anyone to believe him.  Slavery has existed nearly as early as humanity can remember, and anyone demanding an end to such a time honored practice might as well have been demanding an end to hunting and gathering: its simply something mankind has done for survival, and will likely always do.  As one historian put it, the question is not why did slavery continue, but why did it end.  Despite everything against him, William Wilberforce, driven recklessly by his own Christian idealism, dared to demand what no one else thought possible and, shockingly enough, brought one of the most decisive steps against slavery in the history of mankind.  In our world today, we not only must finish what Wilberforce started, but also confront the oldest profession in the world.  It wont be easy and may even seem impossible, but we have a reckless duty to try; without Wilberforce's reckless duty, who knows where slavery would be today.

2.  This is a backyard problem.
Unlike many charitable causes, this is as much an American problem as it is a Filipino or Cambodian problem.  You dont need to go to a foreign country to see the horrors of slavery and sex trafficking: simply look in your own backyard.  The United States Justice department recently recorded nearly 17,000 people being trafficked into the states a year.  10,000 of our population are forced laborers that we know of, and the number is probably much higher.  Atlanta, Washington DC, and New York all rank as cities with high levels of human trafficking activity.  Its happens in our cities, it happens in our restaurants, on our very streets.  This is not someone else's problem, this is our problem.

3. Awareness Matters.
Its a known fact that in America the most popular charitable causes are the ones that require the least amount of commitment; also known as "raising awareness" and waiting for the problem to go away by itself (see: Stuff White People Like).  However, human trafficking is one of the few causes where awareness is one of the principal challenges and the principal way of defeating it.  If human trafficking really happens in the house next to you or in the back alley of your route home, then one of the principal ways of bringing people to justice is simply to be aware of it and report what you see.  Many people in forced labor or prostitution are waiting for just one person who is concerned enough to call the police.  As simple as it sounds, awareness is no easy task as most people have trouble coming to terms with the fact that it happens in such a civilized country.  Therefore, the challenge begins with yourself: educate yourself, educate the people around you.  This is in no way the ultimate solution, but its the most practical step that people can take to clamping down on the problem.

For me, these are the three most convincing reasons why human trafficking, out of all the causes we are bombarded with, deserves your support and attention.  As a generation of millenials, we are in a unique position that no generation has ever been in before to effect change.  As Mordecai says to Esther: "who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?"  The only question is, will you be part of the solution?  What legacy can we leave to our children: a legacy of ignorance, or a legacy of reckless duty to truth?

 So my advice is this, similar to the advice that the founder of Goodwill gave:

Do not be content.

Do not be content with what is happening in our own cities
Do not be content with what is happening in far away nations
Do not be content with the millions suffering
Do not be content with apathetic empathy

And above all, do not be content with only trusting man for the solution; trust the One who gave you the idealism and the spark, trust the One who gives a truth to fight for, and trust the One who can do more than we can ever ask or imagine.

"Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'"

~Jared

The Age of Inundation

"When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power." - Mark Zuckerburg

“Over the course of the last generation or two, a variety of technological, economic and social changes have rendered obsolete the stuff of American social capital.” - Robert Putnam

Im sick in bed today, without much hope of doing anything else rather than express my opinions from a computer.  Regardless, trends in social networking and social capital have always interested me, and I feel that the recent changes in Facebook, an incredibly powerful company in this day and age, start to really reveal what it is people desire in both social networking and in social capital in general.

First of all, we should ask what is social capital.  Social capital, as defined by Collins English Dictionary, is "the network of social connections that exist between people, ... which enable and encourage mutually advantageous social cooperation."  Simply put, social capital is any and every way that people interact and build relationships with each other.  Social capital is anything from playing cards with neighbors to lending someone money, and the capital that we build is theoretically used just like any economic capital is used.  Its incredibly simple, despite any sort of technical jargon you add to it, but its role in development and poverty studies has only recently been realized and really respected.  Today, we actually begin to look at social capital as something as incredibly necessary as any sort of basic good. 

Leaving theory behind, the real question is what role social networking is playing in social capital.  Well, it sort of depends on who you ask.  Robert Putnam, a distinguished political scientists, wrote a whole book titled "Bowling Alone" to argue that social capital is on a steep decline in the United States and that technical advancements in social interaction through the internet is partly to blame.  Though he doesnt explicitly mention Facebook in the book (from what I can remember.  been a very long time since Ive read it), one can only imagine what he would say about thousands of college students and young professionals maintaining nominal relationships through their computers and doing less of actual social interaction.  For people of our generation and age group, more and more social interactions are taking place online instead of in person, and this is perhaps worrying to some people (including myself) but also supported by others who view it as augmenting social capital, not destroying it.  So which is it?

Electronic savior?

One thing is for sure, Zuckerburg is pretty sure of his own position.  The young billionaire, along with owning one of the most successful social websites in history, sets himself up as a starry eyed idealist who, rather than lining his pockets, seeks to revolutionize humanity and our methods of communication.  "The thing that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently," he says.  

For Zuckerburg, at least this is what he claims, Facebook is a revolutionary idea that gives the voice to the voiceless, mobilizing the world and making people more open minded about sharing information.  And with this claim, who could really be the one to criticize him?  By blabbing on about democratic ideals of representation and transparency, Zuckerburg hides behind a wall of good intentions that assures all critics and naysayers that Facebook could not possibly be up to no good, but only has your best interests in mind.  Thus, when Facebook roles out new changes that open your information to new people in ways you didnt think possible, how are you going to be the one that protests to transparency and representation?

Despite Zuckerburg's lofty ideals, being in charge of a social networking site means that he is still accountable to the people that use his service.  He can only give them what they truly want and, if they dont like it, they are free to leave.  But if Google + has taught us anything, people are cemented to Facebook for the very same reason that people criticize it: a compromise of your privacy.  

Behind the lofty ideals of its creator, Facebook is un-sexual voyuerism, from its beginnings as "Facemash" to the giant database it is today.  When someone logs on Facebook, they are given the opportunity to scan thousands of people's preferences, pictures, and lives without anybody knowing that their watching.  The same inkling that sends thousands to movies to watch stories play out from a safe position and urges literally millions to watch porn on the internet is, at its basis, the same inkling that keeps people Facebook stalking for hours at a time.  Scanning people's lives from the comfort of your computer takes out the risk of social interaction, since you can gather information with no risks and, this is the best part, they literally have no way of knowing that you're doing it.  People can now know more about you than you will ever know, yet this innocent voyeurism isnt seen to be strange, because it is voluntary and widespread.  As Zuckerburg remarked once, people are sharing more and more information about themselves than they ever have before, and dont even seem to mind it.  In fact, trends show they are encouraging it!  Zuckerburg, in the end, doesnt claim to be in any sort of wrong with lowering privacy because, in the end, its what Facebook is based off and what people will always be seeking.

So how does this affect social capital?  In the end, and in my opinion, what we see is a dispersing effect, not an augmenting effect.  Facebook, though originally only intended to reflect the relationships that you already have in real life, has become a way of making friends in of itself.  So, one could argue, how is this any difference from having friends over e-mail, or even over letters?  Since Facebook has such a wealth of information about preferences, beliefs, and to some extent personality traits, it can partly satisfy needs for social capital in a way that nothing before it has been able to do.  By constantly feeding you information through your newsfeed, Facebook gives the user a feeling of being nominally connected to thousands of people which nearly eliminates the need for close connections.  Obviously, you could argue that Facebook is what you make of it, and that the people who want to maintain thousands of nominal connections will and those who want fewer, closer connections will keep them.  However, the changes in Facebook show that Zuckerburg and his team are not neutral in the matter: they know people want to see more and more information, become deeper voyeurists in a way, and will therefore make sure this happens by feeding people as much information as possible and to cement them into using their service.

Should we be panicking?  Too soon to tell.  Maybe the trend will begin reversing and people will want their privacy back, but whats clear is that this generation is enchanted by sensory overload.  All internet services in one way or another seek to inundate the user with information since its more available than it has ever been in the history of the world.  How this will affect how we interact with each other will be sort of interesting I think.


I have too much of a headache from sickness to continue this thought. 

~Jared