Can help hurt? Poorism, Questions, and Hegelian Cartoon

Sometimes you just know. Or at least I think I do. Sometimes I am wrong. But in this case, I think my prediction will be based on a signal rather than just noise (see The Signal and the Noise: Why so predictions fail, but some don't).

Hans will make a difference. He already has. At his university he has participated, since high school, in significant research. He has been profiled by his University in its annual report highlighting the best of what they offer and have accomplished.

But he also thinks. The following words are his, and they outline some of the issues facing students, researchers, and charity workers globally. If we try to contribute, do we make a difference?

I have raised the issue of  'poorism' before, and the viral video of gap year excesses Hans talks about is linked there. For Hans to act, and to question, and to contribute means he will be a future leader. What form this will take I am not sure. I am not sure he is either. The purpose of education is not to provide simple answers, but to raise tough questions, followed then by action. He does so. Do you? Will you?

I wish to thank Hans for letting me share his words and the photographs he took.

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Four years ago, sitting on a futon in a new and empty apartment, I wrote my first journal entry from the capital city of Bangladesh:

Dhaka is not a pleasant city. The air is thick with the exhaust from thousands of motorized rickshaws. The smell of sewage is rarely absent in the labyrinthine network of dirt side roads. The sheer number of people is astounding. Crowds pour through the streets alongside cars and rickshaws. It is complete chaos:  No rules, no laws, no limits. I still can't believe that I will be living here…

Trucks piled with bags of chalky sediment hurtled down the wide roads that lead from the airport toward a sprawl of cement and metal, caged in bamboo scaffolding.  Dhaka was under construction—rising up into the shimmering hot air and spreading out toward boggy rice fields.  I looked down at the lonely planet guidebook open in my lap and tried to connect the world outside to the glossy pictures of spice markets and mangrove forests.  I had come to Dhaka during a gap year between high school and college to study a parasitic ameba that causes dysentery in the developing world.  The lab at the university where I have worked for the last 5 years studies this parasite in humans—uncovering genetic factors that influence susceptibility in populations—and in the lab—elucidating the mechanisms by which these toxic ameba kill human cells. 

In the four years since my trip to Bangladesh, I have thought often about gap years in the developing world—how they relate to personal growth and to what extent they ought to contribute to educational advancement.  I think the answers to both questions depend heavily on the person and the experience.  Undoubtedly, my work contributed more to my own development than it did to the field of amebiasis research.  But my research in Dhaka shaped a very general scientific curiosity into a defined, if rather ambitious, career goal—to understand and break the cycle of poverty, undernutrition, and infectious disease.  Being in a place where this devastating cycle persists was essential to my development.  I observed human stories behind the scientific puzzles that I was learning to solve.  Shadowing doctors at the center, I saw hundreds of severely dehydrated mothers and children filling the cholera wards.  I met patients with full-blown AIDS and tuberculosis or severe retinitis.  I saw teenagers stunted by malnutrition tending to their sick parents.  Their suffering and sometimes observing the relief of their suffering is why I have stuck with this work and plan to continue it.

  My mentors gave me this tremendous opportunity after I volunteered for several years at my university. But a majority of young people can’t finance a trip overseas.  Many do not have the opportunity or time to do volunteer work that might lead to funding.  And the motives and talents of those who can take gap years are often not sufficient to affect real or lasting change in their host countries.  A widespread acceptance of this “exploratory period” has inspired an apt satire depicting privileged Patagonia clad poorists in the African bush or trekking in the “Perahvian” Andes with vomit inducing hangovers.  Unfortunately, these videos have some truth to them.  Teenagers step off a plane in a country with no real drinking laws (at least not for foreigners)—some are bound to experiment.  Most common is the misperception that you are doing some good in a developing country just by being there.  The truth is that you are far more likely to do harm to the perception of your own country or, upon your return, perpetuate negative stereotypes about your host nation.  What’s often lacking is a thoughtful analysis of motivation and goals before planning such a trip.  Students and parents have heard the college admission success stories—they want in.

I think that much of the fault lies in the incentive structure of undergraduate admission.  Getting accepted to a selective school requires that you brand yourself. (It also requires a great deal of luck.)  Many students, though more often parents, have begun to buy into the gap year brand as leverage into elite institutions.  But the branding of trips to the developing world often overlooks unsettling truths and realistic expectations.  If the goal were to do real and lasting good, the money would be better off in hands of a person or organization with real development experience. If the goal is personal growth, actively seek it.  Don’t rely on the myth that simply being in a developing nation will change you.  I thought about these issues daily in Bangladesh—sometimes with tremendous guilt.   More often though, I have settled on a feeling of shared responsibility—the idea that great opportunity confers an obligation to improve the lives of others.

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Slavoj Zizek on Charity:  "First as tragedy, then as farce" is a snippet from GWF Hegel on repetition in history.