Us and them

In diplomacy, in business, even in philanthropy, people will attempt to gain an advantage whenever they deal with "others".
Therefore, in studying the motivations of individuals and institutions, the pivotal question is:
"When a person says us, to whom does s/he refer?"

We gather information on our friends, and we secretly share it with other friends. In my small town, we call that gossip. In world politics, we call it diplomacy. Among non-profit organisations, we call it measurable outcome. In all cases, we are reporting behind the back of a third party. Call it whatever you wish. Sooner or later, gossip always reaches the ears of its subject. This is what happened on a global scale this week, thanks to Wikileaks.

The entire world had the opportunity to slog through countless top-secret American documents. I could not resist. I poured over the diplomatic communiqués that were labelled "secret" and "classified" by the American government on wikileaks.ch. I searched for references to Bangladesh.

Having read dispatch after dispatch, I now understand how embarrassing many of these documents are to the United States. The bulk of these briefs could have been diary entries written by a teenage girl lying on her bed with a fluffy purple feather pen.

It just goes to show that the discourse among diplomats is no less gossipy and judgmental than the behaviour of a typical high school student. I begin to see that classification of a document is, most of the time, a matter of shielding material that criticises the personal habits of an individual leader, the "rubbery" quality of the food served at a meeting, what we know about certain prime minister's propensities to party, or how hurt we Americans should feel about the portrayal of the CIA on Canadian TV shows. Yep, all of these were the subjects of classified documents.

Even the trivial leaks illustrate that the United States has not retreated from the Cold War mentality of separating "us" from "them". The US has simply replaced the antagonists, while maintaining the paradigm. So little information was available concerning Bangladesh, I wondered if my government sees your part of the world only in terms of threat potential, just like we did during the Cold War. Do we overlook the importance of Bangladesh as a democratic friend, a progressive nation, rife with possibility of cultural and commercial cooperation? Are diplomats really so isolated that they ignore the consensus of the middle-of-the-road, everyday people in the country in which they serve, and only focus on the ruling elite and the potential terrorists? Ultimately, isn't Bangladesh way more us than them? So far, with only 950 of the total of 250,000 documents released thus far, Wikileaks has provided no insight into the American position on this question.

Whatever the answers may be, generally, I think the problem with US diplomacy is lack of empathy at the ground-level. It seems to me that a career diplomat is an individual born with a silver spoon, isolated from hardship, and therefore less likely to understand the struggle which defines most peoples' lives — most of us worry, on a daily basis, about how we are going to make ends meet. I imagine that our diplomats have very little opportunity to socialise with the people who could best offer a general consensus of life in the host country. Even if they did, how many diplomats could relate to a struggle from which wealth and privilege has shielded them?

Can any privileged person relate to poverty?

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Which brings us to the other big piece of news this week: the rise and potential fall of Muhammad Yunus. I hate this story. Yunus seems to act like a hero, initially, then develops chinks in his armour, eventually leading to his downfall. The story would make an excellent opera. The cautionary tale here is that the institutionalisation of anything, no matter how well-intentioned the results, can lead to a corruption of the original ideal.

On the other hand, some would say, that this is not a question of corruption at all. The cautionary tale is that the larger an institution grows, no matter how noble its purpose, the more likely it is to be attacked by other institutions.

Whenever we try to help people in the third person plural, we are doomed to failure. We can only ever help people in the first person, singular and plural. In my small town in the United States, we have many tiny charitable organisations. Some I have donated my time and money to help, and some have helped me and my family through hard times. There is no hard distinction between contributors and recipients of benefits. We are all in the same boat, and we often have to take turns rowing. We know each others' names, our strengths and weaknesses. No charity grows so big that its administration is a full-time job.

It is very good to help the poor, especially when you're poor yourself. Only the poor themselves have real insight into the obstacles they face, and the strategies their peers have employed to overcome them. The purpose of education is to share these insights, and to promote these strategies. If the allegations are to be believed, perhaps in dealing with the upper echelon, the wealthy backers, the Nobel committee, Muhammad Yunus may have changed sides. His "us", formerly the poor, became the "them", and his new "us" was the international movers and shakers and his own financial institution. Perhaps he lost his ability to empathise.

On the other hand, Yunus may have had enough understanding of his "us people" to conclude that even the most enterprising microentrepreneur could not profit if he did not have his health, his eyesight, access to health care and education for his family. It is my fervent hope that the investigation into Yunus concludes that funds transferred to Grameen Kalyan, whether or not they were properly processed, were done so with the intention of improving the educational and medical situation of thousands of people. Procedural improprieties could be forgiven if the intentions were good.

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Here I sit, a world away, passing judgments on subjects that have only recently come to my attention. I criticise privileged diplomats, yet I have been elevated to privilege myself by the efforts of my father, who was born in poverty.

Who, then is my "us"? By what right do I write to you all?

Last week, at a local convenience store, I began to talk cricket with the local proprietor, who is rooting for India. I slipped up, and said of Bangladesh, "we beat Zimbabwe last game".

We?

The proprietor laughed. When I got home, I took an inventory. In front of me are 36 index cards, containing the entire breadth of my knowledge of Bengali. But at the beginning of the week, I could not read the sounds. I did not know a single word. Five weeks ago, I could not name your capital city, and could barely locate your nation on a map. For two weeks in a row, I have been presumptuous enough to weigh in with my naïve opinions on matters of local politics, and your responses have been kind and generous. I say "us" the way a sports fan says us about a beloved team. But it is more than that. Bangladesh has already taught me so much, your history has kept me awake at night, you have made me think deep thoughts, you have inspired conversations with my children about how much a nation can overcome. The more I learn about Bangladesh, the more I hope the term "us" applies.

And that's the importance of learning. The more a man knows, the more options he has to choose his "us". Universally, every individual that I've ever met that was lifted out of poverty, was lifted out by education. No one can know where they're going before they learn where they stand. I guess this is also true of organisations and nations. Mohammed Yunus has welcomed an investigation. Hopefully, soon, the world will know where he stands. Wikileaks has given the nations of the world a clearer idea of where they stand vis-à-vis the United States. Once we all know where we stand, let us hope we can move together there toward peace through truth and understanding.

Perhaps this American has no business venturing opinion after opinion on the internal affairs of your nation. Please understand that I welcome your honest opinion when it comes to the internal affairs of my country. I think that we Americans generally appreciate the unsolicited opinions of well-wishers, and that we thrive on the fresh perspectives that these opinions afford. Diplomacy may be a matter of concealing one's true opinions. If that is so, my dear readers, then let us never be diplomatic toward each other. I am way, way too leaky for that.

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Frank Domenico Cipriani writes a weekly column in the Riverside Signal called "You Think What You Think And I'll Think What I Know." He is also the founder and CEO of The Gatherer Institute — a not-for-profit public charity dedicated to promoting respect for the environment and empowering individuals to become self-taught and self-sufficient.