SCROOGE, JACOB MARLEY, AND BUSINESS

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

We have spent considerable time on the curbside of the intersection of culture and economics. The time of discovery and review is time extremely well spent because that intersection is where transformation on this old planet earth takes place. The strategic components that make it across that intersection determine recorded history.

We toyed with the idea that all individuals gathered at the intersection have carried with them their own personal market basket in which they have placed their most valuable and precious possessions. What the individuals take from their market baskets and inject into the historic action at the intersection will change the world. So, the question is proffered, "What'cha gonna do with what'cha got?" What is the most strategic and important component in your personal market basket that you could take out and inject into the traffic of the intersection of culture and economics?

After spending years observing and participating in cultures and civilizations around the world, this is my personal conclusion: The most powerful possession you could take from your personal market basket and inject into the traffic of the intersection is . . . Virtue.

I am going to insert here the retelling of one of the stories I included in my book, Love and Common Sense, (p. 163). It is a familiar story written by one of my favorite authors, Charles Dickens. It is a classic story about how Ebenezer Scrooge accepted a second chance in life to inject charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence into the mainstream traffic of his life and change his world by helping others around him become better off; 

Marley was dead as a doornail," starts out Charles Dickens in his Christmas masterpiece A Christmas Carol. "There is no doubt that Marley is dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate." Dickens intends to give Marley a position of authenticity and place him in a position where no one could argue with his established wisdom. He was already dead, but now he had access to knowledge as to where he was and why he was where he was. Somehow, Marley had bargained for the chance to revisit his old, selfish business partner, Scrooge, and give him one more thin chance to mend his greedy ways 

After Marley makes his scary entrance through Scrooge's double-locked doors, dragging his chains he had forged in life link by link, he gets down to giving Scrooge his other-worldly advice. 

"It is required of every man . . . that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world - oh woe is me! - and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"

Scrooge stabbed at a chance to turn down the heat of Marley's message, "Speak comfort to me, Jacob!" 

"I have none to give . . . . No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!"

Scrooge couldn't deflect the message, so he tries a little flattery, "but you were always a good man of business, Jacob."

"Business!" the ghost cried, wringing his hands. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" Then Jacob Marley's ghost went on: "I am here tonight to warn you: that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate." 

I have personally tried to discipline my behavior over the years to revisit the words and spirit of Charles Dickens Jacob Marley, not only at Christmastime, but throughout the year. His powerful advice, however correct or incorrect his theology, is as necessary as oxygen. Mankind truly is my business; that's the "why" behind the past twenty-five years of Project C.U.R.E.! "No space of regret can make amends for a lifetime of misused opportunity." The common welfare is my business. Charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence must be the mainspring and clockwork of my life every day.

The message of Marley should remind us that the chains of life that we forge link by link, day by day, should not be chains that shackle us to the greedy accumulation of this world; rather, the crafted links should become chains that bind our hearts together with kindness, justice and righteousness on this earth.

Next Week: Scrooge, Jacob Marley, and Business, Part 2

      (Research ideas from Dr. Jackson's new writing project on Cultural Economics)

© Dr. James W. Jackson
Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

www.jameswjackson.com

 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

RECONCILIATION

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Nothing has traumatized my psyche and emotions over the past nearly forty years of international travel, like the real-time observations of genocide. I have seen with my own eyes the atrocities in the Bosnia-Kosovo-Herzegovina tragedy. I experienced the killing fields of Uganda, Burundi and two episodes in Congo. I was in Nagorno Karabakh and experienced the systematic killing of 80% of its male population with almost no media coverage at all. I stood where the Turks ravaged the population of the Armenians. I have visited Cambodia and diligently observed and studied how Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge diabolically murdered everyone who did not fit their envisioned model of agrarian communism. I have visited the Jewish holocaust museums in both America and Israel, and have concluded that evil is very real, cultures are very fragile, and genocide can happen anywhere.

Witnessing the occurrence of genocide being perpetrated by the Hutus upon the Tutsis in Rwanda still plays horror movies on the wide screen of my mind. After the genocide stopped, we drove in a Volkswagen van from Kampala, Uganda, to the heart of Kigali, Rwanda. There I encountered the scenes I cannot now erase. 

Out of a population of 7.3 million people—84% of whom were Hutu, 15% Tutsi and 1% Twa—the official figures published by the Rwandan government estimated the number of victims of the genocide to be 1,174,000 slaughtered in 100 days, between April 6 and mid-July. That figures out to be 10,000 Tutsis or moderate Hutus murdered every day by their own neighbors; 400 every hour, 7 every minute. It is estimated that about 300,000 Tutsi, who had escaped to neighboring countries, survived the genocide. Thousands of widows, many of whom were subjected to a planned strategy of rape and female mutilation, became HIV-Aids infected. There were about 400,000 kids left as orphans, and nearly 85,000 of them were forced to become heads of families. The killings, on the most part, were accomplished without the use of any guns, but by hand with the use of machetes that were issued to the Hutus by their leaders, or the victims were bludgeoned to death with common gardening hoes and shovels.

It is important to see, from a cultural economics standpoint, that genocide differs from war. War, historically, is fought for tribute to be paid by the vanquished to the victor. Or wars are fought over the possession of some disputed border-land geography. But genocide takes place where there is full intention of destroying and replacing a culture. In 1994, the Hutus in Rwanda wanted to completely destroy and remove all remnants of the Tutsi culture and civilization. Their intentions were to kill every man, woman, boy, and girl who was of Tutsi blood, and every trace of Tutsi traditions, institutions, family structure and legacy, as well as all living individuals.

Once genocide has been accomplished, the aggressors assume undisputed right and sway over land (resources), labor (production), capital (business, currency, trade), education, religion, policy-making and enforcing, and the entrepreneurs are replaced by either a dictator or by a politburo.

Very little thought is given at the time of the genocide to the slaughter of the innocent civilians or any other hideous atrocities perpetrated. It is deemed imperative that the culture needs to be eradicated, and the eliminating of people is viewed as an incidental requirement. Therefore, it is impossible to enforce any standard rules or treaties of war.

The Commander and General of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a Tutsi named Paul Kagame, brought a halt to the killings and gained control of the country by mid-July, 1994. By then, the facts had begun to percolate out from Kigali. The United Nations had failed miserably in fulfilling its peacekeeping assignments. The Clinton Administration and the UN actually eroded support and blocked any help from going into Rwanda to stop the aggression and genocide by the Hutus. Later, President Clinton in a Frontline television interview admitted that he regretted the decision, and later publicly stated that he believed that if he had sent 5,000 U.S. peacekeepers, more than 500,000 lives could have been saved. President Clinton has referred to the failure of the U.S. government to intervene in the genocide as one of his main foreign policy failings.

In 2000, the UN explicitly declared its reaction to Rwanda a "failure." Then Secretary General Kofi Annan said of the event, "The international community failed Rwanda, and that must leave us always with a sense of bitter regret."

So, following the occurrence of genocide, how does civilization reset its clock?

John Rucyahana, the Bishop of Rwanda, admitted, “I knew that to really minister to Rwanda's needs meant working toward reconciliation in the prisons, in the churches, and in the cities and villages throughout the country. It meant feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, caring for the young; but it also meant healing the wounded and forgiving the unforgivable.”

In July, 1994, Tutsi leader, General Paul Kagame, was chosen vice-president of a new unity government, and Hutu leader, Pasteur Bizimungu was chosen president so that the majority Hutus would still be highly represented in the government. Bizimungu resigned in March of 2000 in a dispute over the make-up of a new cabinet, and Kagame became president. Kagame subsequently won elections in 2003 and 2010.

During the genocide, most of the governmental institutions were destroyed, including the judicial courts. Most of the judges and prosecutors had been killed. Out of 750 judges, only fifty were left alive in the country. However, there were over 130,000 suspects who had been arrested and were being held in jails for crimes related to the genocide atrocities. Between 1996 and 2000, the courts could only process 3,343 cases. It was calculated that it would take over two hundred years to conduct the trials of the suspects in prison, not including the ones who remained at large.

The UN set up the International Criminal Tribunal to prosecute the high level officials, and Rwanda established the Gacaca Courts that traditionally dealt with local conflicts and adapted them to judge the cases of the lower level leaders and the local people. Neither of the systems proved to be satisfactory.

Reconciliation and restructuring peace is a very complicated phenomenon. It has to do with more than reparations and economic matters. It also requires changes of heart and spirit and requires employing symbolic as well as practical matters. In some ways Rwanda has experienced healing; in some ways it has not. In some ways President Kagame has been given an impossible task. The last time I visited Kigali, I listened to a couple of prominent Hutu leaders who were saying, “Nothing has changed, we still have the minority Tutsis as leaders. Next time we will complete the job.”

The cultural and spiritual clock cannot be reset, and complete healing cannot take place without a veritable miracle of reconciliation. That reconciliation requires massive doses of kindness, justice, and righteousness. Otherwise, it will not last. Otherwise, temporary repression will be experienced, and ultimately another outbreak of atrocity will be repeated.

I pray often for my Rwandan friends and for President Paul Kagame. Project C.U.R.E. has been involved in the country for many years, and I believe that true reconciliation of kindness, justice, and righteousness will serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding and violation that unduly separate human beings one from another. 

  

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

SPEND MORE THAN YOU EARN

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

I am convinced that when dealing with the simple but priceless commodities like kindness, justice, and righteousness, you should spend more than you earn.

In the structure of our present economy people and organizations are allowed to do things they could not otherwise do because of the employment of debt. In our culture many things are too expensive for people to buy out of the cash they have in hand. Debt enables people to make purchases they could not otherwise afford by allowing them to pay off items with small monthly payments that include the price of the item as well as interest.

Not only individuals, but companies can utilize debt to leverage the return on the equity of their assets. That portion of debt to equity is used to determine the riskiness of the investment, i.e. the more debt per equity the riskier the investment. That is where debt becomes dangerous to both individual and corporate borrowers. Although debt can appear helpful, it can also become a burden and a hazard to your personal well-being. Real trouble comes when the cost of servicing the debt grows beyond the ability to repay what is due. Usually, that inability happens because of insufficient income or poor management of resources, coupled with increased interest rates, late fees, and penalties.

Historically, excess in debt accumulation has been blamed for many woes of this world and the tragic breakup of many honorable relationships. I grew up following the Great Depression and the stress of World War II. The accepted advice of that era was, “Who goeth a borrowing, goeth a sorrowing,” or, as Ezra Pound would say, “Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.”

Benjamin Franklin expressed his opinion of debt and advised, “Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt.” “Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity,” was the way Samuel Johnson expressed his concern of debt. During that period, most people even saved up enough money under the mattress to pay cash for their automobiles and other major purchases. They believed that home life would cease to be peaceful and beautiful once they needed to depend on borrowing and debt. As kids, we were instructed that we should run from debt as if it were the plague or an addiction. Today, we have grown quite accustomed to words like bankruptcy, foreclosure, short sale, bubble, meltdown, universal default, “too big to fail,” and spending more than you earn.

The above stated description seems to be the attitude and structure of our economy today. I have, however, discovered a wonderful alternative economy when it comes to earning and spending, and spending more than you earn. I have become convinced that when it comes to commodities such as kindness, justice, and righteousness you should spend exponentially more than you earn. With those commodities it should be the rule of thumb that lavish and exorbitant behavior is the investment rule of the day. You can throw all restraint overboard and be totally thriftless. You can never bankrupt your asset account of kindness, justice, and righteousness no matter how much you spend from the account.

Kindness: People universally long for kindness to be shown to them. In all the traveling I have done around the world, I have concluded that people will be exactly as happy and kind toward you as you are toward them. That was true in North Korea, Pakistan, Congo, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Showing benevolence, courtesy, tact, gentleness, patience, and unselfish consideration sends a signal of hospitality that pays great dividends.

Justice: Everybody carries around a psychological-spiritual scorecard. It is very high tech, and is placed somewhere up front, on the inside of one’s forehead. It has an emotionally activated, electric extension cord that runs down to the heart, and it concerns itself with issues of fairness, due process, equity, integrity, fair treatment, reasonableness, and reparation. You can never go wrong dispensing way more truth and justice than you ever dreamed possible. Spending more justice than you could ever earn will always prove to be a blue chip stock investment.

Righteousness: More than likely, your greatest fulfillment in living will be realized through your giving of goodness, virtue, fairness, respectability, honor, and dignity freely into the lives of others around you. Righteousness is a powerful phenomenon that keeps you alive in the hearts of others long after the action on the stage is over and the audience has gone home. That is because the source of righteousness is from a different economy.

In the structure of our present economy, people and organizations are allowed to do things they would not otherwise do because of such things as the use of debt . . . and there is usually a tragic downside. In this new economy people are allowed to do things they could not otherwise do because you were able to personally transfer into their lives such things as kindness, justice, and righteousness. In our culture we have to employ such things as debt because of the reality of limited resources. But there is no limit to the supply of kindness, justice, and righteousness, because they flow freely from God’s economy and you simply can’t out give God.

Here is the simple challenge: Try it. Freely spend into the lives of those around you the simple riches of kindness, justice, and righteousness. Spend out of your limitless supply. Plant the fertile seeds and watch the astounding harvest as the people around you are able to do things that otherwise they could not have done.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com