Dear CHR Leadership Team
Thanks for the invitation for this Sunday ... I would love to come.
I am in something of a state of shock ... I just realized that at my next birthday I will be an octogenarian ... and by conventional measures, over the last 50 years I have been a complete failure. Even though I have done quite a few good things. I made very little money, and in our modern world and society ... that constitutes failure.
As you probably know, I did not give any money to the CHR upgrade program. When I was visited to give to the program, explained that my monthly income was rather less than my monthly basic essentials, but that I would volunteer my time and energy to do anything I could in support of the CHR mission. I don't believe this message ever reached the fund organizers ... which was a disappointment ... but it does not surprise me given the role that money and wealth plays in the modern financialized world.
I am bothered that the socio-enviro-economic system has been in a downward trend for some 40 years and the world's rich and powerful leadership has done rather little ... no, absolutely nothing ... to handle the serious problem of growing inequality and the flatlining of wages for working folk. This is not something that started a decade ago, rather, it started in the 1980s.
When I was growing up in the UK I believe about 50% of the population went to Church on Sunday with some regularity ... my impression is that the modern number is around 2%. Don't hold me to these numbers ... but the trend is not good. Why is this? I argue that it has something to do with relevance and effectiveness. The world needs moral leadership and that is something I associate with religion and especially the Episcopal (Anglican) Church ... but its voice is not very loud any more. It is crowded out by all sorts of noise, much of which is terribly problematic. The question is how to make the activities of the Church cutting edge and addressing the existential issues that are already in play, and those that will be emerging in the near future.
About 18 months ago I went to the Concordia Summit in New York ... courtesy of a free pass from the B-Team ... and after sitting through 2 days of panels from top world leaders, realized that not a single person had said anything about how the big issues facing the world needed to be addressed ... notably things like inequality, refugees and migration and the existential risk of out of control climate change.
And then this past September I listened to several panels (on C-Span) talking about the banking crisis of 10 years before ... all of the big players in the crisis and the associated bail-out. Not a single person mentioned the massive damage caused to ordinary people because the appalling economic behavior of the leaders in banking, corporate business and government during the decades prior to the banking crisis as stagnant wage growth diminished the economic standing of most everyone in America except for a relatively few.
As to climate change ... I am appalled at the investment community's passive acceptance of a status quo that poses an imminent existential threat to humanity. I agree with Greta Thunborg that it is about time to panic ...
https://womenintheworld.com/2019/01/29/i-want-you-to-panic-climate-activist-greta-thunberg-16-lays-it-on-the-line-for-world-leaders/
I worked in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel during the 1980s when there was a serious drought. Typically, I manage with numbers and the key number back then was the number of dead people because of no water! The solution to this humanitarian crisis was well known ... wells and pumps and pipes. For this we needed money. In a world where profit potential determines virtually everything that gets funded, saving the lives of poor people simply is not profitable. Fast forward 30 years and the situation is probably worse now than it was back then ... and for all practical purposes, the world does not care. There is a vast amount of wealth in the world, but very little of it is in places where it can do much good. The UN, for example has a huge mandate to help make the world a better place, but it has the funding to do about 10% of what needs to get done. This is obscene ... and nobody seems to be bothered by it!
I am encouraged however by some of the young people who have been elected to Congress.
@AOC is a breath of fresh air, and in my view understands the issues better than most in recent modern politics.
http://time.com/longform/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-profile/
I am also a fan of Ilhan Omar ... newly elected to Congress from Minnesota. She was in a refugee camp in Kenya before she was able to came to the USA. Around the same time I was doing work with other Somali refugees in Ethiopia. I have a lot of sympathy for the plight of refugees and am outraged at the callous policies of the world with respect to refugees ... and especially the USA.
There is so much that is broken ... and huge systemic change is required.
Richard Buonomo gave me some excellent feedback some time ago. He pointed out that people who work on a volunteer basis simply don't have the 'bandwidth' to do massive systemic change ... but can do really useful things at the local level. The prison reentry program is a beautiful example of meaningful work at the community level ... and for this I am thankful.
My interest ... and maybe my competence ... is at the systemic level ... but how to do it in a way that is positive for CHR and the people of CHR is not at all clear,
I consider myself extremely fortunate ... not wealthy ... but excited to be on planet earth and really hopeful that the next 50 years are going to be a whole lot better than the last 50 years ... and maybe in a position to make some modest contribution to this outcome.
Best
Respectively
Peter B
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Peter Burgess ... Founder and CEO
TrueValueMetrics ... Meaningful Metrics for a Smart Society
True Value Impact Accounting ... Multi Dimension for ALL the Capitals
http://www.truevaluemetrics.org
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/peterburgess1/
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/PeterBurgess2/
Twitter: @truevaluemetric @peterbnyc
Telephone: 570 202 1739
Email: peterbnyc@gmail.com
Skype: peterbinbushkill
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My career did not go well when I learned about the role of grand corruption in so much of the modern world ... over and over again I had the opportunity to 'follow the money' and made the mistake of asking not only who was getting the money, but where it was coming from? In so many cases the money was coming from people and organizations that should have known better ... and also so often enabled by terribly weak legal arrangements and sloppiness. The one thing I never was taught in my formal education was how much of the world's wealth originated from absolutely appalling behavior! At some level, I am surprised that I have survived this long given how many evil people have crossed my path ...
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