Wayne's World

I was walking through the parking lot this afternoon (the same parking lot I bumped into Grunge Bob at actually) when a man walked up to me. He was in his 60's, hearing impaired (he had a hearing aid), said his name was Wayne and that he was down on his luck, could I help him out, etc. He had his two kids with him, they were asking others for help as well (though strictly speaking they were actually attempting to ask others for help, as the others were just ignoring them). Yes, I gave Wayne some money.

Why I gave him money is unimportant. What's important is that Wayne needed money and didn't have anyplace to turn but hopefully compassionate strangers in a busy parking lot.

Why? What's wrong with our country (our world?)? We've spent more than $250 billion in Iraq, with no end in sight. Perhaps there are better things we can do with our money? Is the world much safer now? Maybe we are, here, safely tucked away in our hemisphere, but I'd hazard a guess that most people walking around Baghdad don't feel particularly safe.

Let me see, under Saddam, maybe you could be dragged off and killed or tortured if you were somehow deemed a threat to his regime. That was then, the bad times. But things are better now. Now you can be dragged off to a secret prison, non-tortured, not treated humanely, not given the most basic of human rights. Or maybe you just find yourself standing on the wrong streetcorner one day and you get blown up by a car bomb. Yes, things are better now.

But I digress...

How do we make the world a better place for everyone? Will the $100 Laptop initiative do it? I don't know (though I doubt it). Would that $100 be better spent buying food or shelter for someone? I imagine Wayne and his family would be ecstatic to receive $100. It's money, they can do something with it. What would they do with a laptop? Sell it to get money for food perhaps?

If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, he eats for life (or until there are no more fish). But what if he starves before he learns to fish?