Problem Solving

It seems to me that the true mark of wisdom is being able to see miracles in what everybody else sees as problems. That requires a new set of eyes. Norman Vincent Peale used to say, “How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself – so always think positively.” 

Problem-solving is, in reality, only one part of the larger problem issue. Before you can arrive at the problem-solving function, it is necessary to correctly identify the problem and then accurately define the problem. Without the identification and clear definition of the problem, you will not be able to move from a given state to a desired goal. Most people would agree that problem-solving, sometimes referred to as ahigher-order cognitive skill, is one of the most complex processes of the intellectual function. It is a skill, indeed, and we usually are required to concentrate and work hard to acquire that skill because our normal tendency is to get so busy trying to mop the floor, we ignore simple acts like shutting off the running faucet. 

I’ve been encouraged by an adage of the old philosopher, Voltaire: “no problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking.” Perhaps that philosophical approach inspired Albert Einstein in his problem-solving: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” 

People sometimes ask me about what I was doing in Brazil before I started Project C.U.R.E. I was engaged in the exciting adventure of economic problem-solving. My prior economic commitments in the countries of Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela acquainted me with the concept of Debt for Equity Exchanges, sometimes referred to as Debt Swaps. 

When I went to Brazil, I began working directly with Brazil’s president, Jose Sarney, and his chief economist, Antonio Bacelar. Brazil was experiencing runaway inflation of 3,000%. They had borrowed millions of dollars from US banks and were incapable of repaying those loans. They were in real trouble. Our first two steps in problem-solving were to identify the problem, then to clearly define the problem. Once we had accomplished that, we could start on solving the problem. 

Many of the US banks had been coerced by our government, the World Bank, and the United Nations to make sizable loans to foreign countries as economic relief measures. Instead of our government simply handing over large sums of money to the United Nations who, in turn, would hand out the monies to foreign countries, they pressured our banks to make the loans directly to those needy countries. That sounded like a great problem-solving strategy to bypass the inefficiency of the United Nations and the World Bank. 

The banks, following prudent underwriting procedures, insisted that the sovereign countries sign promissory notes guaranteeing the repayment of the loans. Perhaps the United Nations or the World Bank could have allowed the foreign countries to default on the loans by just writing them off as “bad debts.” But individual banks in America were under the tight scrutiny of the US Federal bank examiners and federal agencies like FDIC, and could not just write off their bad loans. 

Under the Nixon administration in the 1970s, when the US economy was cut loose from the gold standard, banks were allowed to use foreign sovereign debt instruments as credits toward their necessary fractional reserves. But it was considered high risk to make foreign sovereign loans, and it was utter disaster for the US banks should those foreign loans ever go into default. 

Not surprisingly, by the mid-1980s, many of the foreign countries were in default to the US banks. Some South American governments simply shrugged their shoulders and said, “Sorry, we can’t make good on our loan repayment commitments.” Once the foreign loan instruments were declared non- performing loans, the US banks had to start writing them off. If they had counted them as part of their fractional reserves, the bank’s total lending ratio would shrink by approximately twenty times the amount of the non-performing loan. Their assets and lending powers would begin to implode. 

The other part of the definition of the problem included the fact that the US banks could not accept and hold foreign assets to satisfy the loans. 

Now for solving the problem: We poured our efforts into putting together the Libra Proposal for Brazil that utilized the concept of Debt for Equity Swaps. An outside group of individuals, or an entity, would agree to purchase the bad loan at an attractive discount from the US bank, and their new note would heal the bank. Thereupon, the new holders of the foreign note would take the note to Brazil’s government that owed the debt and agree to swap the note for some of the country’s assets to settle the debt. Those assets could include government-controlled exports; natural resources like oil concessions, mineral rights, and raw land; real-estate, government-owned buildings, fishing rights, rights to ports and harbors; or any other service or commodity of equally agreed-upon value. Simply, the indebted country could use their own assets to settle the debt where they could not come up with cash to make the payments . . . everyone was better off. 

The key seems to be to focus on the identification and the definition of the problem with new eyes of creativity until the solution of the problem becomes apparent.

Adjusted Thinking

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

-- Albert Einstein
The vast majority of the 150 countries in which I worked in the past thirty years were in dire financial straits. There were observable and definable reasons why those financial problems existed. Long-standing traditions of economic and cultural abuse remained as impediments to financial growth and the easing of poverty. Nearly all dictators promised free health-care and rural electrification for the masses; none sufficiently delivered on those promises. As a rule, most constituents were held to subsistence farming and the lack of access to markets. In order to break the restraint of such dictatorial bondage, a different kind of thinking was required. 

In the past two decades, some very creative ideas have been applied to those age-old problems. The implementation of cottage industries and micro lending programs made a significant impact upon market access, individual involvement in enterprise, and the alleviation of poverty. 

Prior to my founding of Project C.U.R.E., I was involved in the investment and real-estate development business. My success in earlier business ventures had partly resulted from a childhood understanding and use of basic concepts of old-fashioned counter-trade and barter techniques. The fundamental principle at the heart of a successful barter transaction and, in fact, the basis for all successful free market endeavors is that everybody in the deal must end up better off. Based on the barter and trade concepts I had included in my first book What’cha Gonna do with What’cha Got?, I received an invitation to speak at an economic gathering at the Ambassador West Hotel in Chicago on April 17, 1984.

The purpose for the closed meeting was to explore ways to increase market share into lesser- developed countries by use of international counter-trade and barter. We hoped that as a result of our deliberations we could find a way to bypass the unfair manipulation and corruption of the dictators and their cohort governments, who were skimming revenues off the top of the countries’ economies by means of exorbitant inflation and phony currency exchange rates. In attendance were top US leaders of commerce and international business. I shared with the group what I knew about the subject, but as the others began to discuss their experiences and needs, I listened very carefully. There was such a great need for what we were trying to accomplish in the global economy! We were endeavoring to solve problems by using a different kind of thinking than had been used when the economic problems were created. 

Many of the issues we were trying to resolve reminded me of what Armand Hammer, one of my entrepreneurial heroes, had encountered as an international businessman. Creativity and ingenuity would be the answer to working around the greed, corruption, and bureaucracy of the Third World markets and governments. 

About half-way through the guarded sessions, I began to realize that I was not there so much because I had a lot of magic bullets to offer, but I was there because there were things being said and concepts being proposed that I needed to hear. My thinking began to change during and after that Chicago meeting. 

Shortly after that meeting, and because I had been a participant, I was invited to attend a special economic focus meeting held in Indianapolis, Indiana, sponsored by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In the welcoming speech of the gathering, we were told “You are all economists and we have brought you together to brainstorm how to develop practical economic models for lesser-developed countries. You are asked to be just as creative as possible, using such economic components as counter trade, barter, cottage industries, micro lending, incentive credits, or anything else you can think of. There are no holds barred as you put your economic models together.” 

The meeting leaders went on to explain that the people living in the Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) would remain in bondage as long as they were controlled by the economic practices of repressive and manipulated governments. Changes would need to take place to free them from the systems of closed and oppressive economies. In other words, we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. 

We were divided into teams and seated at large round tables and instructed to get to work. We began by reviewing such classical economic concepts as scarcity, choice, and cost; land, labor, capital, and the entrepreneur; supply and demand; methods offiscal responsibility; closed economies vs. free markets. We discussed the need to have a responsible government that could guarantee the enforcement of contracts and agreements. We included the necessity of having exclusive rights of private property to hold or transfer, and free enterprise with the possibility of personal incentives and profits. At our table, we included anything else we could think of to work into the mix. 

The result of that meeting in Indianapolis was extremely significant, not only in its application to future programs in the LDCs, but it became one of the touchstones in the developing economic philosophy of the organization that eventually became known as Project C.U.R.E. And even to this day we are realizing, in even a greater measure that, we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

SIMPLICITY AND SOPHISTICATION

Saint Augustine taught, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” That’s good advice at twice the price. But, sometimes traveling far and wide presents a perplexing dilemma. Is a culture of sophistication superior to a culture of simplicity? What is the value of simplicity? Is simplicity to be sought after, or is it a default condition where there is no better alternative? Where does simplicity stop and sophistication begin?


Traveling in more than one hundred-fifty countries has required me to process a vast amount of sights, sounds, smells, values, unique cultural folkways, and inaccurate rumors. While growing up, I had been assured that my complex native culture was immeasurably superior to all the sad and disadvantaged cultures outside my borders. I found that teaching believable in some respects, but I also discovered that in comparison my culture was not one that much valued simplicity. 

In 1977, when Apple introduced the Apple II computer, New York agencies borrowed Leonardo da Vince’s quote, “Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication” as the slogan for their ad campaign. It was a clever attempt to redefine simplicity. About that time, I also heard someone say, “There is more sophistication and less common sense in New York than anywhere else on the globe.” 

During the thirty years of international traveling, I found myself fascinated and quietly drawn to the simple lifestyles and attitudes of many of the cultures where I traveled. I make no secret of my love for the northern provinces of old Burma. It took nearly five years before the present government officials of Myanmar allowed me to travel into the insurgency areas. I entered into a virtual one-hundred-year time warp. My mind often takes me back to Burma and the outdoor evening fires where everyone in the village gathered around to visit. I have vivid flashbacks of the crystal clear rivers that became roadways for our canoes as we traveled. Teenage boys and girls were in the river with short spears. As we moved down the river, I watched them put their heads under the surface of the water and swim until they spotted a fish. Then, with a quick thrust of the spear they would stab the fish, bring it out of the water, and deliver it up on the shore. Other men and boys were panning for gold nuggets from the river’s gravel bed. Young mothers along the river were tending their babies and small children and gathering water or washing clothes. 

I reveled as the early morning sun bathed the majestic Himalayan Mountains that separated Burma from India, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. Northern Burma wasn’t dirty and desperate like the places I traveled in Africa or India. It was safe, unlike Afghanistan, Congo, or Palestine. It wasn’t a land of poverty, even though they had no electricity, sewer systems or running water. The country was almost, in a classic sense, undeveloped, but it was not poor. Everything was neat and clean, and it was obvious that the people were not lazy or slothful in the least. They were well-fed and very happy, but they possessed very little of what we use to judge wealth or affluence. Their life was simple.

When we returned in the evening from our hospital and clinic assessment trips of the day, the villagers had already lit the fires and the candles. As we sat outside in the cool mountain night, we were served pre-meal treats of fried sticky-rice, crispy fried fish, fried chicken pieces, tea and little cakes, and, casaba roots to be dipped in fresh cliff honey and eaten along with the tea. 

I was expected to put away my western pants and shoes and wear my furnishedloungee and flip-flop sandals. The loungee was a length of fabric cut from a bolt and stitched together at the ends. There were no televisions, computers, or cell phones. The villagers gathered around the crackling open fire pits and told stories and sang folk songs as well as religious hymns. 

I would awaken about 5:00 a.m. to the smell of wood smoke from the fires around the kitchen building. They would already have the water heating for morning baths, and breakfast would be in the early stages of preparation. The menu consisted of cooked vegetables from the jungle, rice and meat, and topped off with freshly peeled and sectioned grapefruit to be dipped in fresh honey. 

I quickly learned to enjoy just standing around the early morning bonfire near the outside kitchen in my loungee with a hot cup of Burmese tea, getting dry and warm after my bath. In moments like that, I figured that if I should ever disappear, you could come looking for me in the pristine, high mountain jungles of Burma. With my tall stature, Scotch-Irish red hair, and light skin color I wouldn’t be hard to find, but my spirit, no doubt, would have blended in remarkably well. 

While in high school, I first heard people admonishing us to utilize the “KISS Concept.” I was all for it and my hormones seconded the motion. Then I found out that it was referring to the K.I.S.S. concept, an acronym for Keep It Simple Stupid. Thereupon, the phrase lost its emotional rush, but the logic and strategic impact stuck with me. I like simple.


But every time I am overwhelmed with the urge to escape to the world of simplicity, I am ambushed with a reality check. The only reason I traveled to those 150 countries in the world was because sophistication brings with it some advantages. I was drawn to those resource-starved countries because people were dying there without such advantages as sufficient health care knowledge and systems. I recall the absolute reality that when I was attacked in Togo, Africa, by a rare mutant strain of African e-coli, I would not be alive today if there had not been a sophisticated team of infectious disease doctors in Colorado who were prepared to tenaciously fight to save my life. I’ve decided to do everything possible to keep my life simple . . . and at the same time well-positioned to take full advantage of the benefits of sophistication.

MEMORIES

Memories come in all different shapes, colors, and intensity. Some are wonderful, some are awful. One of the most pleasurable memories I garnered from the past thirty years of international travel was when my host in Tanzania favored me with an exotic hot air balloon safari over the incomparable African Serengeti. At 4:00 a.m. I was taken in a Land Rover across the African plains to where our majestic, glowing balloon was coming alive. Fire and super-heated gases were being blasted into the still-limp balloon.

The sky was beginning to lighten, and faint colors of orange and pink bounced from the fluffy African clouds. Once we were settled into the basket and the cotton ropes that had tethered us to earth were loosened, we began to slowly ascend above the branches of the acacia trees. The pilot took us to a height of about two thousand feet. We viewed the vast number of animals on the floor of the Serengeti: herds of wildebeests, zebras, and gazelles, prides of lions returning from their nightly hunting, cheetahs, hyenas, elephants, and giraffes.

The pilot picked out a specific herd below and maneuvered the super-silent balloon back down to below the treetops where we could have reached out and touched the animals. Of course, when the pilot decided to ascend again, the sharp blast of the hot burner scattered the herd and we arose once more, high enough to pick another group of animals to visit in the ecosystem. The thrill of the two-hour balloon ride in the early morning as the sun began to bathe the Serengeti, and the adrenalin rush from experiencing so many wild animals close at hand in their regular morning routines, filled my emotional memory reservoir to flood stage. I would never forget that October morning.

The process of our minds that encodes, stores, and retrieves such Serengeti experiences is called memory. It is a lot like the cell phone camera of your heart that makes special moments last forever. It is the way of holding onto important things you don’t want to lose. As Edward de Bono once said, “A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely un-happen.” And the memory has a way of encoding, storing, and retrieving a bit of heaven from which we cannot be driven, as well as a hell from which we cannot escape. The non-discriminating memory function processes the bad things as well as the good things.

Shortly after making the delightful trip to Tanzania, I made an absolutely devastating trip to Belgrade, Serbia, in old Yugoslavia. I was driven to the City of Nis, where thousands of refugees were seeking protection from the Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo massacres. Project C.U.R.E. had agreed to help by donating medical goods to the refugee centers. Nis had set up fifteen refugee locations. Our first stop was at an old crumbling hotel in lower downtown. The doctor with us from the Ministry of Health succinctly warned me, “Most of these people have already died inside in order to survive.” They had walked to Nis trying to escape getting shot in cold blood during the ethnic cleansing.

We started on the top floor of the hotel. A man and his family of eight, including his old parents, lived in one small room that had been a closet. They were surviving on macaroni. The man told me that one day men with guns came to his house and told him to leave right then and take his family with him or they would line them all up and shoot them. He was instructed that he could leave his blind father and old mother there if he wanted to, and they would kill them for him because they knew the old couple would slow down their escape. As they left, the men ransacked their house for any valuables, then burned the house and outbuildings so the family could never return to Kosovo. As they walked north, they turned and watched as all their earthly possessions went up in fire. There were over three million victims. That family was part of over two hundred thousand victims from just that part of Kosovo.

As we stood in the hallway of the fourth floor level, we were surrounded by women who looked very old. I was told that some were still in their 40’s. One woman had watched as her husband and sons had been shot. She and her daughters had been raped as they fled. Through her tears and occasional sobs, she shared with me the memories of her beautiful flowers that she loved at her home in Kosovo. “They burned everything. I have nothing. Now, I write poems but there is no one left to read them or listen to me.” 

On another floor, a younger woman ran to her room and brought some sort of a diploma to show me. The paper was watermarked and stained. There was no glass covering the print. Along with the framed document, she held two pieces of broken glass. She stroked the surface of the glass gently as if she were touching the soft skin of a baby’s face. As she stared at the glass, the pilot light of her memory sputtered in her eyes. “This is all I have left of my life and my family. Now, I have nothing and no one left. I am not sure how I came here. I am lost.” 

Some memories are wonderful . . . some memories are awful. Sometimes we have a choice regarding memories . . . sometimes we do not. However, I decided while standing in the old Hotel Park in Nis that I would actively choose to gather and store an abundance of good memories in my memory reservoir. I needed enough good memories to far outweigh the possibility of bad memories I might acquire. I would need all the good memories possible to sustain me for the rest of my days.

REPUTATION

Abraham Lincoln suggested, “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” So, it would seem quite simple that if you wanted to build a good reputation you would work hard to be how you desired to appear. And, if you spent your time helping other people build good characters and reputations, it is more than likely that you would have built a fine reputation for yourself in the meantime.

As a cultural economist, I sometimes think that the mechanism of the reputation was designed as a method of social control. Whether it was designed or invented as such, it certainly works that way. Reputation is the opinion that people typically hold about the quality or character of an individual or entity. That opinion is formed by a social evaluation based on some set of social criteria. In recent years, we’ve heard a lot about managing your reputation or your company’s reputation, and even how to salvage a reputation that has been lost or tarnished.

Businesses have become more conscious of their perceived reputations because they are discovering that a noble reputation is valuable, and can be bartered in the public square for trust. That same trust can then be cashed in when it comes to premium prices to be paid, readiness to invest in corporate stock, and willingness to hold on to shares in times of crisis. To state it plainly, a good reputation is one of the essential forms of company capital. Even employee loyalty and supplier service is affected by the reputation of a business.

After a period of time, attributes such as reliability, credibility, and trust worthiness that result from sterling character will generally manifest themselves in honorable reputations. It is just good personal and corporate business to possess a reputation of goodness. Dwight L Moody used to say, “If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of me.”

In June 1998, I was requested to travel to Tirana, Albania. The news was full of reports of ethnic Albanians being massacred in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbian Yugoslavia. It sounded like a bloody repeat of the recent Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia atrocities. Widespread violence had erupted resulting in riots, where angry mobs attacked military arsenals and stole all the guns, grenades, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. The weapons were instantly spread to the hands of the citizens. The ethnic cleansing situation in Kosovo had destabilized the entire political environment in the Balkans. Thousands of refugee families were escaping the Kosovo area in farm wagons and carts and fleeing into Albania. The architect of that diabolical scheme of the ethnic cleansing was Slobodan Milosevic. With the help of Radovan Karadzic and his underling, Momcilo Krajisnik, well over 200,000 men, women, and children were massacred.

On Tuesday, June 23, I traveled from Athens, Greece, to Tirana, Albania, with Captain James Terbush, the US Department of State’s medical liaison for that part of the world. Upon our arrival, we were met by the Albanian Minister of Health, the director of the large Mother Theresa Hospital, and the US Ambassador to Albania, along with her senior staff members. Everyone had been made familiar with Project C.U.R.E. before we arrived, and they all knew of our mission to bring badly needed donated medical supplies and pieces of medical equipment into the refugee camps and the Albanian hospitals and clinics.

By 1:00 that afternoon, we were scheduled to appear at the Presidential Palace for formal meetings with Rex Mejdani, President of Albania. The US Ambassador led our entourage to the Palace. As we walked up the entrance steps, the colorfully clad soldiers drew their swords and held them up in a parade salute position. As we passed by, they turned together, and we passed under the tips of their swords into the Palace, where government officials and the President’s security men warmly greeted us. 


US Ambassador Lino opened the meeting and gave a brief situational overview, and introduced me to President Mejdani. For two hours we made plans regarding the needed medical supplies for the refugees as well as the hospitals and clinics in the war-torn areas.

Upon our return to Athens, Greece, I was summoned to the US Embassy for a meeting with US Ambassador Nicholas Burns. As I was being introduced, the Ambassador held up his hand and broke into the conversation, “Oh yes, I am thoroughly acquainted with the wonderful work of Project C.U.R.E. around the world. The Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and I and a handful of others were just in Hanoi, Vietnam. They told us there of all the things Project C.U.R.E. was doing in Vietnam, and how Project C.U.R.E. had agreed to help in a big way at the hospital in Vietri, north of Hanoi. Since I heard about Project C.U.R.E. with Secretary Albright, I have wanted to meet the founder, Dr. Jackson. It was my pleasure and delight to meet personally with you this morning!” 

Well! After I had stopped choking on my own tongue, I blinked my eyes and was able to respond in a dignified fashion to the Ambassador. That was the first time I had ever experienced the fine reputation of Project C.U.R.E. going out in advance and influencing folks at that level of global importance. I had never really given much thought about enhancing or managing the reputation of Project C.U.R.E. I wasn’t consciously thinking about our reputation. I was just trying to busy myself around the world making other people’s lives and reputations better off, and, lo and behold, our own reputation had miraculously placed us in a position of positive international influence. We were working on the tree, and others were seeing the shadow of the tree.

Change

Sometimes I like change . . . sometimes I really don’t. I’ve learned that it is imperative to find out just what another person is talking about when speaking of change, because the very idea of change can change. God declares the he never has and never will change (Malachi 3:6) but, other than that, change is here to stay . . . unless something changes:  

 

Action and reaction, ebb and flow,and trial and error: at the very core of existence one finds change. Nothing remains the same. Life flows like a rhythm, from overconfidence, fear, out of fear, clearer vision and fresh hope, and out of hope, progress.

 —Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am glad that life has indulged me the flexibility of change. I glance back over my shoulder and am chagrined at what I once thought were grounds for an argument. But, fortunately, I have been allowed the cultural elbowroom to massage my prerogatives. I have to smile at myself when I think of the frustrating early years when I was addicted to the illusionary dream of personal wealth accumulation. Then, for a short period of time there was a restyling regeneration where I was determined to dowell so that I could do good. But, oh, what a fulfilling change it was when it finally dawned on me that the doing good and being good were really the important changes needed. That was when I decided to give the best of my life for the rest of my life helping other people be better off . . . for a change. 

There were three subtle nuances of the change concept that helped me through metamorphosis and affected my personal life, business life, and humanitarian efforts. I will share those with you:

 

· Mutation: There are certain aspects of the change phenomenon that have a tendency to pull you off track and neutralize you. Elements that are merged with those of relative similarity can result in an identity or brand that is dissimilar and dysfunctional. If you cross a nice horse with a nice donkey the best you can expect is a nice, but sterile, mule. In the early years of Project C.U.R.E. there were pressures for us to merge our efforts with other well-intentioned organizations. But, the organizational chromosomes would have failed to carry the correct message for a proper future, and our best efforts would have ended up dysfunctional and disappointing. It is imperative during the change process to always keep our mission clear and not allow institutionalization to sterilize our efforts and set us in pursuit of preservation rather than progress.


· Permutation: At our home in the mountains of Colorado, Anna Marie and I enjoy working in our flower gardens. Fresh-cut flowers in our home are a welcomed delight. But, occasionally, Anna Marie will choose to rearrange the same flowers in the same vase into an even more pleasing bouquet. The net result of the change is very positive. The arrangement of the elements is altered, but the identity and function is left intact and enhanced. The positive results of the leveraged buyouts and corporate takeovers of the past couple decades rearranged the corporate structures, and today the organizations are many times leaner and meaner in function, and perhaps would not have still been in existence otherwise. 

· Vicissitude: This nuance of the change concept implies a change great enough to constitute a reversal in function or identity of what had been in the past. It can be observed in a personal life as a gestalt, or in a person’s spiritual life as a conversion.But this type of change can also come as a dramatic, positive, or negative alteration on the installment basis. Over a period of time and through an observable sequence this transposition can ultimately result in a complete reversal of function or identity: Sir Alex Fraser Tytler articulates this concept as follows:

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage;from courage to liberty;from liberty to abundance;from abundance to selfishness;from selfishness to complacency;from complacency to apathy;from apathy to dependence;from dependence back again to bondage.

As a cultural economist, I rather like the cyclical presentation of both despair and hope in the same concept of change. Never does the pathway get so dark but what light and hope can be perceived and expected in the future. For example, our country and our civilization may be going through the vicissitudes of reformation today, and the change may be neither comfortable nor to our liking. But, over a period of time, the dramatic sequence will bring about courage, liberty, and abundance once again in the future. 

I think change is here to stay . . . unless something changes.

Testing

“In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test, 

in life you are given a test that teaches you a lesson.” Tom Bodett

It seems to me that life is designed and structured to place me in situations where I am supposed to learn something. It also seems that if I learn something from the situation I end up better off, and I am better able to cope with the next set of circumstances. It also seems that the result of the testing process can be used as somewhat of a predictor of the outcome of the next set of circumstances, as well as a predictor of my suitability for a certain purpose. So, the teaching is the test and the test is the teaching.

I’ve been intrigued by life’s testing process. I have tried to observe how it not only works out in my personal life, but, also, how the process has worked in the living history of Project C.U.R.E. We do a lot of things differently today in collecting, warehousing, and distributing donated medical goods than we did twenty-five years ago when we started. In the beginning, I had some very traumatic and disappointing experiences working with the corrupt customs people in places like Romania and India. Now, we are successfully working in over 125 countries in the world and predict that the future will get even better. 

One predictable component of the testing process is difficulty. Testing was not necessarily designed to be easy, but it is inconveniently effective, and because of its brutal efficiency, it is surprisingly sustainable. Difficulty is not always a bad thing. I have come to embrace difficulty as part of the method of learning and assessing.

There seems to be at least two types of testing. The Greeks made the distinction by using two different words. Dokimazo: Here, the testing has almost an expected outcome of approval. When a doctor sits for his licensing examination he is there expecting that he will pass and receive his plaque of approval to hang on his wall and be able to legally start treating sick patients. Or, you might be testing to see exactly how much gold is in the rock you just discovered in the creek. Peirazo: In this case, the object of the test is to measure the limits. My mental picture is of a classroom of young engineers competing to see who can make the strongest model bridge out of flimsy balsa wood. The winning student is the one who has constructed the bridge that will hold the most weight without breaking. Usually, this kind of testing carries with it some overtones of sinister destruction or evil interference.

But, I have decided regarding my own life adventure, that regardless of the classification, method, or intent of the testing, I will accept it with confidence knowing that the testing encounter has within it the seeds of possibility for helping me become a better and more fulfilled person. I believe that all those circumstances can work to bring about good in my life.

In 2007, I was traveling about two hundred-fifty days a year in some really awful international locations for Project C.U.R.E. While in the country of Togo in West Africa, my body was invaded by some nasty bugs. Later, it was cultured as a highly aggressive mutant strain of African e-coli. When I returned to the U.S., my doctors worked feverishly to save my life. “We hate to inform you of this, but we are running out of time and alternatives, nothing is working and your body systems are shutting down.” Their efforts finally paid off and I began to rally. Presently, the e-coli have not all been discovered and destroyed. The problem occasionally reoccurs and I again get very sick. Of course, it has been difficult. Of course, it has not been fun. I had the opportunity to become caustic and bitter about the situation. But some great things have come out of that episode. 

Now, I am limited in my international travels. If I were to be in Nepal and the sickness were to reoccur, I would not make it home alive. However, that circumstance of testing was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to Project C.U.R.E. and ultimately to me. Until that time, I was nearly the only person performing needs assessment studies on the hospitals and clinics we were targeting around the world. Without the needs assessment studies no donated medical goods would have been shipped. In order for Project C.U.R.E. to expand it had to grow beyond me. Now, there are twenty-five or more of our people out doing what I had been doing. Now, Project C.U.R.E. is growing greater in effectiveness every day, and I am experiencing fulfillment and maturation.

I choose to invite growth. I choose to invite times of testing. I choose to embrace difficulties. I am continuing to learn that it is not the set of circumstances in which I find myself, but how I respond to those circumstances that makes all the difference in the world.

Soft Power

“Nothing in this world is as strong as kindness, justice, and righteousness.” 

~ J. W. Jackson

I have known Dr. Jim Jackson for over 20 years and served alongside him overseas on a number of occasions. Project C.U.R.E. has an outstanding record of effective and enduring health interventions in austere locations in more than 125 countries. Many of these contribute to US national security by helping to win “hearts and minds” in favor of the American people. Jim’s generous personal example of medical humanitarian outreach shows a kinder and gentler face of the United States, and is exactly complimentary to what we in the US military must do to protect our homeland. 

~Dr. James W. Terbush, Command Surgeon, NORAD/Northcom, Homeland Security

I would probably be classified by a political ornithologist as a military hawk. I love my country and would defend with my life its sacred honor. Furthermore, I believe it to be a cardinal responsibility of the national leadership to protect the nation’s citizenry, its honor, and its assets.

Recently, I have been trying to mentally revisit and re-assess the things I have experienced in order to see if I can draw some conclusions for myself. Let me share some of my gained insights from having visited over the past quarter century the military and political hotspots of the globe. I was born before the United States entered into World War II. We have always had an identifiable, precise, and convenient enemy. It was the Nazis, then China, North Korea, and, for the balance of the century, it was the Soviet Union.
 

Following the collapse of the Soviet system we were saddled with a dilemma not unlike the puppy dog, who, after spending his life chasing cars, finally caught the car . . . now what does he do? Who now is the grand enemy? Now, a new grand strategy has to be designed. It seems to me that over the years we have spent so much energy and capital legitimately trying to prevent the horror of global war that we have sometimes forgotten the reality of global synthesis and the possibility of peace. It is not so convenient being without a consistent, well-defined enemy.
 

It is almost impossible with one fell swoop to stop describing horrible futures to be prevented, and to start proclaiming the positive futures to be created. But, in the early 1990s we were offered that chance. While still appearing like a solution looking for aproblem, we seemed to try to substitute the slippery war on terror for the well-defined strategies of the cold war. To do that it was necessary to redefine the very word war. We needed to come up with definitive terms like “non-war combatant involvement” as we redefined our engagements.
 

Over the past thirty years I have observed the challenges and the changes that have been a part of the Pentagon strategies. I have seen their many defensive facets from different angles. I applaud them for their efforts to reassess, redesign, and re-appropriate the capital assets and human assets of the military.

Today, there are some really bad individuals desiring to do some really bad things to their own citizens and to their neighbors. Those charlatans and thugs who wreak evil and peril on their own citizens and close neighbors need to be checked. Equipped with a moral imperative and a well designed strategy, there is opportunity to see to it that everybody becomes better off. The countries are not necessarily bad, the societies are not necessarily bad, and the whole government may not be necessarily bad. Certainly the bad guys can be neutralized using weapons such as smart bombs and nonlethal forms of warfare that target enemy systems without harming the citizens or destroying the country’s capital or infrastructure.

But the thing for which I most applaud the new approach of the Pentagon is their expressed desire to begin winning the hearts and minds of the connected people of the developing world. That strategy of kindness, justice, and righteousness will in the long run be more effective than all the bullets and bombs in the world.

Over the past twenty-five years I have personally witnessed the powerful potential of radical change in the developing countries of the world through the acts of humanitarian kindness by Project C.U.R.E. We do not engage in medical philanthropy in order to get the disadvantaged people to become more and more dependent upon us. As a cultural economist, I believe that a healthy economy cannot be built on sick people. So, help get the people well and give them the medical information, supplies, and pieces of equipment so that they can begin to build their own medical enterprises and become dependent upon themselves. It can happen, and I have seen it happen.

I can excitedly imagine a revolutionary Pentagon strategy of soft power projection, where we expand the good and not simply check the evil. I would like to be a part of that change and would encourage the Pentagon in their efforts. With our sights focused on proactively winning the hearts and minds of the people in lesser developed countries by truly making them better off, we can become the necessary and welcomed force in making a better tomorrow for our world. 

Group Process

TESTING

Dr. James W. Jackson

July 3, 2012

“In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test, in life you are given a test that teaches you a lesson.”  Tom Bodett

 It seems to me that life is designed and structured to place me in situations where I am supposed to learn something.  It also seems that if I learn something from the situation I end up better off, and I am better able to cope with the next set of circumstances. It also seems that the result of the testing process can be used as somewhat of a predictor of the outcome of the next set of circumstances, as well as a predictor of my suitability for a certain purpose. So, the teaching is the test and the test is the teaching.

 I’ve been intrigued by life’s testing process. I have tried to observe how it not only works out in my personal life, but, also, how the process has worked in the living history of Project C.U.R.E. We do a lot of things differently today in collecting, warehousing, and distributing donated medical goods than we did twenty-five years ago when we started. In the beginning, I had some very traumatic and disappointing experiences working with the corrupt customs people in places like Romania and India. Now, we are successfully working in over 125 countries in the world and predict that the future will get even better.

One predictable component of the testing process is difficulty. Testing was not necessarily designed to be easy, but it is inconveniently effective, and because of its brutal efficiency, it is surprisingly sustainable. Difficulty is not always a bad thing. I have come to embrace difficulty as part of the method of learning and assessing.

There seems to be at least two types of testing. The Greeks made the distinction by using two different words.  Dokimazo: Here, the testing has almost an expected outcome of approval. When a doctor sits for his licensing examination he is there expecting that he will pass and receive his plaque of approval to hang on his wall and be able to legally start treating sick patients. Or, you might be testing to see exactly how much gold is in the rock you just discovered in the creek.  Peirazo: In this case, the object of the test is to measure the limits. My mental picture is of a classroom of young engineers competing to see who can make the strongest model bridge out of flimsy balsa wood. The winning student is the one who has constructed the bridge that will hold the most weight without breaking. Usually, this kind of testing carries with it some overtones of sinister destruction or evil interference.

But, I have decided regarding my own life adventure, that regardless of the classification, method, or intent of the testing, I will accept it with confidence knowing that the testing encounter has within it the seeds of possibility for helping me become a better and more fulfilled person. I believe that all those circumstances can work to bring about good in my life.

In 2007, I was traveling about two hundred-fifty days a year in some really awful international locations for Project C.U.R.E.  While in the country of Togo in West Africa, my body was invaded by some nasty bugs. Later, it was cultured as a highly aggressive mutant strain of African e-coli. When I returned to the U.S., my doctors worked feverishly to save my life. “We hate to inform you of this, but we are running out of time and alternatives, nothing is working and your body systems are shutting down.” Their efforts finally paid off and I began to rally. Presently, the e-coli have not all been discovered and destroyed. The problem occasionally reoccurs and I again get very sick. Of course, it has been difficult. Of course, it has not been fun. I had the opportunity to become caustic and bitter about the situation.  But some great things have come out of that episode.

Now, I am limited in my international travels. If I were to be in Nepal and the sickness were to reoccur, I would not make it home alive. However, that circumstance of testing was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to Project C.U.R.E. and ultimately to me. Until that time, I was nearly the only person performing needs assessment studies on the hospitals and clinics we were targeting around the world. Without the needs assessment studies no donated medical goods would have been shipped. In order for Project C.U.R.E. to expand it had to grow beyond me. Now, there are twenty-five or more of our people out doing what I had been doing.  Now, Project C.U.R.E. is growing greater in effectiveness every day, and I am experiencing fulfillment and maturation.

I choose to invite growth. I choose to invite times of testing. I choose to embrace difficulties. I am continuing to learn that it is not the set of circumstances in which I find myself, but how I respond to those circumstances that makes all the difference in the world.

Regarding Inheritance

Here is another bit of cultural folklore I picked up in the market places of this old world that I pass on to you for your consideration.

“If you want your children to love each other forever, don’t leave them any money when you die.”

As one old guy told me, “Happiness is being retired and spending all of my kid’s inheritance before I die.” And, of course, there are the serious admonitions like, “Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.”

Generally speaking, our culture is not bound by strict ethnic traditions, wherein lies part of the problem. Problems seem to arise where the passing on of the inheritance is determined by a type of logic positioned somewhere between a well-thought-out estate plan and a knee-jerk whim. Jewish traditions lean toward the oldest son receiving twice the amount as the other sons. Other eastern cultures have the daughters receiving nothing, or the sons receiving twice the amount as the daughters. In some matrilineal countries I have visited, the inheritance is passed down only from the mother to the daughters.

To complicate the situation in our culture, our government entities have decided that unless you have a valid will, wherein you have legally expressed how your inheritance will be divided, you are declared to have died “intestate,” and the government will decide where your wealth will end up. Seven out of ten people in the United States die without leaving a legal will. Making sure you have a valid will before you die is a grave responsibility!

The practice of passing on property, money, and rights gets a little knotty when it comes to perceived inequities of the recipients. It seems that the least responsible expect the most, and those who have been the least frugal expect the lion’s share. And we haven’t even mentioned the catch-all accusation, “oh yea, ‘what’s-his-name’ was always the favorite.”

It seems to me that inheritance squabbles center on at least three areas:

  • Arithmetic: “The appraisals and evaluations are wrong. It should have been more.”
  • Attitude: It is a temptation in emotional situations involving money to let it become a “heart issue” of attitude rather than a “head issue” of logic and common sense. That is when you hear, “It’s just not right . . . it’s just not fair.”
  • Affection: “I loved our parents more than any of the other siblings did. I was always there for them; I should have received more.”

I love the old Yiddish bit of advice: “He who comes for the inheritance is often made to pay for the funeral.” Perhaps the inheritance issue that trumps the feelings of ill will when there is money left, is when there is no money left and no provisions made for the expense of those seniors in their last years. Senior expenses and deaths can also mean the inheritance passes on liabilities and debts. Now, that issue will cause some squabbling amongst the siblings.

Isadora Duncan may have captured the issue well when she declared, “The finest inheritance you can give a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet.”