Third World: Shut Up Richard Dawkins

It follows the most loosely thrown together facts, implying that Nike/Gap/whoever is responsible for everything bad.

The basic format never changes:

• Shots of slums, interviews about slum life
• NIKE
• Shots of open sewage, statistics about health
• NIKE
• History of violence and terrorism in the country
• NIKE
• Intervention of first world to overthrow terrorism and leadership
• NIKE
• Shots of Africa, Peru, Philippines, anywhere with slums
• NIKE
• Global debt
• NIKE
• An interview with a confused academic that can’t answer questions about if they supported terrorism
• NIKE

One thing the documentary totally fails to do is to make a link between any of these things and NIKE.  It’s just inferred, constantly.

Basically, the town I live in is a slum.  Third world countries have slums.  Drive 45 minutes to the nearest ‘city’ and it’s still a slum with open sewers.  Put NIKE in or take NIKE out, and it is still a slum.  A NIKE factory would just mean that some people have a job and some hope.  There would be something to do.

The NIKE factories look nice enough.  They are clean.  They have lighting, machines that look safe.  Everyone is a young adult to middle aged female.  They talk to each other.  They aren’t chained to any workbench.   One worker said she worked from 8am to Midnight some days. I did that three days a week, for three years, at McDonald’s to get myself through university.  For every shoe they make, they get 40 cents.  They make a lot of shoes.

I thought that water was privatized, especially here in Peru.  It isn’t.  I think someone thought about it one day, every news program did a special on it, but it never happened, at least not permanently.  Water is available everywhere in north Peru for 2 hours a day.  People deal with it.  It has to be filtered, but filters are everywhere.  Electricity costs practically nothing.  The roads in my town are now being paved fir the first time, and the residents aren’t paying for it.  There are rates, but they are loose change.

I wish some big company would move back into our town.  Here’s a shot of the people in my town, those few who get a pension from the factory that closed 20 years ago, lining up for their pension.  The day before.   Because there’s not much else to do, and it’s a social activity, and they don’t want the bank to run out of money.

Maybe it’s just me, but it’s very sad to see this as the primary financial income for the town.  It’s not sustainable and not open to new employment.  My mother in law does employ a child to sit in line for her.  We employ as many people as we can, as much as we can afford it.  There are set wages, and it is a bit of an insult to pay one or two people ten times what others are getting for the same work.  It is much better to use any extra money to look after this new family now connected to you.  Because once you employ someone, you take responsibility for their family’s health, education, travel and other basic needs.     And this is IF they accept the additional help.  You have to have a good relationship first.  It’s a wonderful place.

Back to the documentary, in another  company, GAP,  workers got 72 cents per hour (this was a 1980’s documentary).  My mother in law, and half of every Peruvian household, survives on $2 a day.  Put into proportion, I once worked 9 ½ hours a day.  A third world worker earns $6.84 a day, I got paid $35 an hour and earned $332 a day.  I am in $60,000 debt from medical expenses, daily living, travel, bills, although I had all of the insurances.  I could not afford to live, and I have no children, no education debt, no sick mother to support.  It just cost me so much to live in the first world.  I had no assets, other than my $200 IKEA sofa that turned 12 years old (and did not stand up to the test of time).   In Peru, living in poverty, and I am paying off my debts faster than I could when I lived in the first world.  It’s all a bit insane.  And I just love life here.  Life is about family, supporting each other, taking time out for parties, and finding the most wonderful ways to deal with poverty.  Everything the first world throws away ends up here.  In every flower market, the seller uses 1970’s rolls of computer-data reels to tie the flowers together.  It’s really cute.  In restaurants, the ‘napkins’ are a 2-ply napkin, made into 1 ply, then cut into 12 pieces.  It’s a tiny little thing, but sums up life here.  It’s enough.  You really don’t need any more.  If someone in my family is sick, they will get whatever treatment they need.  The hospital or chemist will take credit, and then everyone in the family (and I mean everyone) will get together and put in a little bit.  Done.

Now there’s new stories about terrorism in Peru.  Peru is the second largest drug manufacturer in the world.  Everyone knows that, and everyone knows that the cities that make drugs are deep into the Amazon, and yes, if you go visit, you’ll be shot at.  People don’t use illegal drugs in Peru.  Peru is much too religious.  I was not Catholic, but I’m going to convert, because the church here is wonderful.  I’ve never seen such deep caring and support of the extended family.  I just love it.

Now I am watching a Peter Dawkins documentary, and he’s going on about reason and science mean that these people are deluding themselves about myths and silly stories about Jesus and Mary.  Yes, I don’t particularly believe in Jesus and never have, but I believe in enjoying the care and love of the church.  I wear a rosary now and hold it in when I feel happy or sad, thanking this religion for the open love they throw at me every time I leave the house.  When I go past a statue of Mary, I thank Mary for the amazing warmth this culture and its religion gives me.  And in Peru, they don’t particularly care that my lifestyle is breaking about a billion Catholic laws.  Who cares.  I am part of their family now.  “Make children.  However you have to do it.”   Even when I was back in the first world, the priest here would still buy me presents at Christmas, and when I came back, I’d be invited to huge dinners at his house, once my in-law’s house, but they swapped it with the priest because he needed more space when there were nuns.   (The Nuns disappeared during the years of mass violence and have not returned just yet).  I think my mother in law is getting close to living the life of a nun.    Condoms are talked about openly and given to young men when they get to the ‘age’.   These people are not the mindless drones Peter Dawkins makes them out to be.  He’s still going on about these people, my extended family, being the least enlightened people in the world.

I’ve lived with an overly logical person.  I’ve grown up without Christmas, not because it was against any of my family’s beliefs, but logically it was a waste of time and money.  Yes, thank you logic.  You made me a happy child.  For one Christmas I got a children’s book about scientific facts.   How is thunder made?  When did dinosaurs die?  I was eight.  How the heck was I going to talk about my Christmas with other kids at school?

I could give Richard Dawkins a good slap for being such a cold, heartless person.  Could you imagine him on his wife’s deathbed, giving her facts and figures about her ill health, estimating the exact minute that she might die?

And the western-world’s view of third world countries and ’slave’ labor is just as black and white.  Develop a very strict template of how a non-existent, perfect world might run, and hold it over another culture and judge it unmercifully.   I used to be a hard line government bureaucrat,  responding to the community with strict “these are the rules, made through a democratic process,” so I can’t help you.  That same democratic process made it illegal for charities to help me when I was down, because of my family’s situation.  If they helped me, they could loose their tax status as a charity.  The Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Life Line turned me away.  St Vincent de Paul did help me, as long as it listed me as another person, and didn’t every put my family’s name on their files.

The third world doesn’t have the same stupid black/white template they view life through.  If I overstay my Visa, I get fined $1 a day, while I am still able to contribute to the Peruvian society, help others and pay for services, because I am not a citizen.  I don’t get thrown into a detention centre because I am automatically now a criminal, worthy of terrorism status.

Richard Dawkins is still prattling on.  He’s starting to sound like Hitler with his “my way is right, you are stupid” ranting.  He should know that science is never ‘right’.  Science by its very nature is continually updating facts, contradicting itself, learning.  Science has theories and hypothesis, not ‘facts’.   A few years ago I dropped in on a distance education lesson, with isolated young children (8 year olds) were chatting over the internet about Richard Dawkins’s theories.  Obviously at a distance education centre, there will be children enrolled because their family does not believe in the traditional schooling system (and secretly, I have a few reservations about it too).  So there were about ten young children, arguing over who was right/wrong about their own spiritual beliefs.  Which was very, very sad.  Why on earth should a child feel guilty about their way of life?  He’s going on about children now, and children believing the earth is either 4000, or 4o million years old.     Who gives a F*?   Let’s leave that till we’re adults, and let children learn about things which aren’t “facts”, like caring, mutual community responsibility, respecting elders and helping others in need.  I have never met an eight year old child that could understand the difference between 4,000 and 4million years anyway, and then use this understanding to form a view of evolution versus religion.

Please, Mr Dawkins, never come to my town in Peru, and please castrate yourself.  You are pure hate and contribute to the incorrect notion of looking at the whole world, everyone’s culture, through your boring and heartless academic view that doesn’t recognize how wonderful people be can, no matter where they are and what they believe in.