Have you ever taken 10 minutes to venture into the woods? Have you ever taken time to stand alone in a forest and look up at the trees? Have you ever closed your eyes and listened to the sound of birds chirping and wind rustling through the leaves? Have you ever taken time to clear your mind of all the hustle and bustle of modern life? To think about why we are here? To remember what is important in life? To thank God for all the blessings He has given us? To thank Him for the tests He gives us?


Today, for the first time ever, I did that. Though it is ironic that immediately after this liberating and spiritual experience I rushed back to my computer, the product and facilitator of modernity and the busy life I was escaping, but I felt like sharing this experience, in the hopes that people who read this would go out and try to have the same experience.

In addition to this experience being very liberating, it allowed me to reflect on my frustrations with my development class, and understand how to deal with them.
The most recent subject we have been covering is the models of development that have been used in the past 50 years (all of which have failed I might add, and in some cases, made poverty worse). The element that stands out the most in this study is the constant push towards modernization and industrialization. Western countries felt that the best way for underdeveloped countries to escape poverty was to push towards industry in order to produce more commodities that could be exported, rather than simply relying on raw materials for export.
In East Asia alone did this theory work, and even East Asia experience a huge economic crisis in 1998. For most African and Latin American countries, the push towards industrialization created huge amounts of unemployment as rural citizens moved to the cities in search of work, governments decreased social welfare spending, and agriculture was forgotten, resulting in lack of food and need for more foreign aid in order to feed populations.







It was only towards the late 1990s that development agencies started to think that maybe technology and money was not the most important aspect of development. There was a shift in focus towards people, education, and especially looking at women. Although the economic side of development remains extremely important, it is encouraging to see that an emphasis is being placed on the "human" side of development.

















Now comes the issue of perspective. The language used in my development seminars is "us" and "them"..."us" the people with money, the modern and developed part of the world, and "them" the helpless underdeveloped poor people. I am in no way saying that all the people in my seminar are intentionally expressing this mentality, or that they feel any kind of superiority to people outside North America, but the truth is that the language used was learned somewhere, therefore it is existent in society. This mentality of "us" and "them" creates an automatic divide, that makes working together impossible! Not until we recognize the absolute equality and oneness of all the peoples of the world will we be able to get anywhere.

It is absolutely true that most of Africa, Latin America, and Asia remains underdeveloped in terms of modern infrastructure. And it is true that these countries have little hope of escaping the extreme poverty that has engulfed them without foreign aid. But let us not forget a small history lesson:
In the 1800s, the GDP per capita of all the regions of the world was about the same...all regions of the world had about the same amount of money! Through a combination of political, geographical, and natural resources though, Europe began to amass huge amounts of wealth, which it then chose to spread over to North America and Oceania because they had many of the same geographical conditions, and take control of colonies in the rest of the world. Europe chose to industrialize, and with that industrialization came power, the power to control a global economy which it created in the first place through imperialism. (Jeffrey Sachs)

Today, countries that weren't able to industrialize, because of lack of resources or because they were being prevented from doing so, are forced to function in a world controlled by industrialization. These countries did not consciously choose to be underdeveloped and require outside help. The children born into conditions that can best be described a "fight for survival" did not ask for that. The children growing up in war zones did not choose to be born there. The children who face hunger for days on end because they're parents can't feed them, or worse, because they have no parents, had no choice in the matter...








































The time has come to see development not see as "the white man's burden", but as a struggle that the entire human race must face because of the mistakes of our ancestors and for the sake of our children. It begins with an appreciation for all the peoples of the world, knowledge, and life...and sometimes, a short walk in the woods.