"We are in the position of a man asleep who dreams that he is obliged to do something which even in his dream he knows he ought not to do. He knows this in the depths of his conscience, and all the same he seems unable to change his position; he cannot stop and cease doing what he ought not to do." Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You

I am walking down the street, striving to feel the earth under my feet. I am the only pedestrian in sight. The streets are spotlessly clean, broad and smooth and black. The cars fly by, and not a single horn is blown. Are there living beings in those machines, graced with the capacity for intelligence and love?
I walk a full minute through a great parking lot and into the store, which is my destination: a great big box shaped store, without any architectural features to speak of, just gray slab cement walls. The lights are brilliant, the plastic floors squeaky clean. Overweight and pasty-faced mothers load up their shopping carts, and wait patiently at the registers. I shake my head, somewhat confused. Where did this wealth come from? Is it the result of the inventions of scientists and engineers? Was it manufactured in factories, by machines? Did we really earn this bounty, and do we deserve it?
I rush to the households section, at the far end of the store. It's good exercise. The aisles are broad, and lined with endless rows of inexplicably inexpensive products. Who made these products? Under what conditions do they work and live? I have a vague memory of stories of sweatshops and forced labor. But it is impossible to know.
I scan ten varieties of 'comforters,' and chose one with a floral design. I see a small label on the back. 'Made in Nicaragua,' it says. I toss it into my shopping cart. I zoom off to the coffee section, a whole aisle stacked with five pound cans. I hesitate for a moment, and then toss a couple into my shopping cart.
The uncertainty of the facts, and the certainty that things are not what they seem, work their insidious magic, dulling the mind. The freedom and pleasure of consumerism is fleeting. There is something sinister about it, something terribly wrong. Something very unlike freedom is going on. Under what conditions do the people who produce the products we consume work and live? To what extent is our prosperity due to their suffering? And what should we do about it? It was with the hope of gaining some insight into these questions that I went on a two week Witness for Peace educational tour to Nicaragua.

Driving from the airport through the city of Managua, Nicaragua's capital, the polluted air burned my eyes, but I couldn't close them. The life on the streets was too interesting. Street vendors circulated around the traffic, cars honked their horns. The aroma of organic matter filled the air, at times sweet, at times repulsive. It was a such a relief, after the dullness, the sterility, and uniformity of American affluence.
Aside from its natural vitality, though, Managua is a demoralized and desperate city. It was ruled for decades by the Somoza dictators; then, in the early 1980s the Sandanistas came to power, socializing the economy, bringing free schools and health care, and raising hopes. Those hopes were crushed when the socialized economy failed. In the first democratic election in Nicaraguan history a conservative government was elected, and has been in power now for ten years. It has worked with global trade organizations like the WTO to sell government assets, privatize the economy, and reduce restrictions for multinational corporations. Free trade zones have been created where corporations are not subject to taxes, labor and environmental regulations.
Our trip was a 'delegation' to learn about the condition of workers in Nicaragua. There were ten members of the group, of various ages and professions and temperaments, and three trip leaders. For two weeks we stuck closely together, going to meetings, having 'de-briefings' and 'check-ins,' working and eating and sleeping as a group. It was an intense and continuous and intimate relationship. In being crushed together, a bond was formed: a chemical reaction. Like a family bond, it seemed beautiful and lasting. But was it real or was it pretense? The intimacy of the setting compelled us to act as if we were a family. But the truth is that we were brought together on the basis of a single interest. When the circumstances passed, what would remain?
We spent the first two days in orientation meetings at the Witness for Peace house. At the first opportunity I took a walk through the neighborhood, accompanied by Erika. Erika is a young journalist with an insatiable curiosity. During the trip her endless questions, her thirst for details, and the constant impact of factual information, kept me from becoming too vague and abstract.
We walked passed the fancier houses, through the ritzy neighborhood in which we were based, and stopped still at a desolate field, full of rotting garbage. From there a dirt road lead up a hill into a far poorer area. The poverty was intimidating, and the contrast between rich and poor was stark. In poor countries this contrast is spread before one's eyes, not hidden away in institutions or far beyond one's gaze.
We walked up, passed the patched-together homes, made of mud bricks and corrugated iron roofs. On the sides of the road were piles of burning leaves, which smelled delicious. I stopped in front of a home that was particularly destitute. It was made of branches, with a thatched straw roof. There was a garden in front, with great green leaves. Chickens and children ran back and forth. I froze on the spot. The poverty, the desperate poverty, had passed beyond the wretched and squalid--results of moral decay--and reached a natural and primeval beauty. It had none of the artifice and technique, which overwhelms modern society. It was not defined by and drowned out by the mass mind. It was spontaneous and powerful. My lungs expanded, and I breathed deeply. I couldn't help exclaiming, "How beautiful that is! What a relief that is!"
Erika looked at me strangely, quizzically. She was becoming curious about me. Maybe she was wondering if I were serious. She looked carefully at the ramshackle house, the weather-beaten roof, the half-dressed children. "I wonder whether the people that live there think it is beautiful," she said. "It may seem so to you, but do you think anyone would freely choose to live there? I certainly wouldn't. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to actually live in a place like that."
A few days later we got the chance to find out. In the meantime, we spent the mornings working at a community project in a township called Nueva Vida, 'New Life.' The 14,000 inhabitants were forcibly settled there, a few years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch. They were removed from their settlement in downtown Managua. Some say that the government used the disaster as a convenient excuse to evict the 'squatters' so that they could build a series of five star hotels. Set down on the outskirts of the city, with no resources whatsoever, these people were desperately poor.
We stopped at the Jubilee House, near the entrance to Nueva Vida. The Jubilee House is a non-profit American organization that is engaged in various projects at Nueva Vida. At our meeting we sat on the porch of their building. Mike, a founder of the organization, gave us an overview of the situation. He is a down-to-earth, informal and humorous man. His beard is white, and he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. According to Mike, there is ninety percent unemployment at Nueva Vida. Most of the women who work are employed at prostitution. Seventy percent of the children are malnourished.
I was struck by a remark he made. "There have been significant improvements in the infrastructure of Nueva Vida," he said. "Electricity has been installed, roads developed, and houses built. Most families now have their own homes, simple cement structures with dirt floors. But the whole population is starving."
He went on to describe the projects of Jubilee House. They are creating worker-owned cooperatives, including an alternative 'sweatshop,' where the profits from clothing is shared equitably. His remark, which stuck in my mind, was passed over. The starving thousands were still starving, at that very moment, just a few hundred feet away. What unimaginable horror they were experiencing, it was impossible to say. We sat in the lovely, screened-in cool veranda, on comfortable chairs, sipping coffee, loaded with the privileges and rewards of affluence, perfectly willing to pass on to the next phase of our day.
After the meeting, we helped construct a cement wall around a new medical clinic, dropping the pre-fabricated 'losettas' into grooves in cement posts. Working under the hot sun was good exercise, though most of us were obviously unaccustomed to sustained manual work. It takes years to learn how to do such work, because the whole body must undergo a transformation. It slowly becomes capable of endurance, strength, and agility. It develops an intelligence of its own. Our own bodies were absurdly top-heavy. Afterwards, we drove back in our van, driving past the tiny steaming cement homes, their empty window frames already nailed up with boards, to prevent theft. We returned to the Jubilee House, formerly a vacation retreat of the sister of the dictator Somoza, and took a swim. I barely hesitated before jumping into the cold, clean swimming pool, submerging myself in sensuous luxury. I swam happily in the dictator's swimming pool. Back and forth I swam, completely refreshed, doing the crawl, the breast stroke. It was so healthy, so pleasurable.
'Starving.' That word, uttered so casually, was what made me hesitate before I jumped into the luxurious pool. It is a word with an intrinsic moral force. It contains a message that cannot be evaded. The fact that we normally do not respond to it reveals a sad truth about ourselves: something inside us is broken, sprung, shot. Something inside us is distorted, lost, twisted.
There is a simple test to determine the seriousness of a social problem. What if it were my child, who was the victim? What if my child had little or no education, or medical care? What if my child had few clothes, miserable living conditions, dangerous and debilitating work? What if my child were malnourished? What if my child were starving?
The truth is that it is my child. The belief that we are separate, that my child is precisely the one that I know: this is the illusion. And when I finally discover that I have shut my ears to the cries of my own dying son or daughter, my heart will crack. Maybe I will never realize this, but nevertheless there will be a significant impact on my spirit. The spirit knows. It draws back, it withdraws. Vitality diminishes, simple, pure joy is lost, trivial and superficial concerns begin to dominate consciousness.
In the evenings our group gathered in a circle on the veranda of the Witness for Peace house for the evening 'reflection,' in which we read and discussed spiritual writings. We sat in a circle in our rocking chairs, taking turns reading passages from selected works. One of the readings was from Abraham Heschel: "Ours is an assembly of shock, contrition, and dismay. Who would have believed that we life-loving Americans are capable of bringing death and destruction to so many innocent people? We are startled to discover how unmerciful, how beastly we ourselves can be. So we implore you, our Father in heaven, help us to banish the beast from our hearts, the beast of cruelty, the beast of callousness."

Our first homestay was with free trade zones workers. Nicaragua has about 30,000 of them, mostly in the Las Mercedes area near Managua. We took a bus early in the morning to the zone. We were thrust into the jam-packed bus, unable to move or turn, bodies pressing into each other. Not a sound was uttered. At the site, lines of buses disgorged their passengers. The workers did not look oppressed. Most of them are young woman, clean and well-dressed, many of them carrying knapsacks. They look like American college students. But this is not America. They are going to work twelve hours, crammed together in a warehouse, sitting over a sewing machine, where even their bathroom breaks are timed.
The minimum wage of free trade zone workers in Nicaragua is about $1.50 a day; average salary is about twice that. The working conditions in other countries is worse. In China, for example, with more than 100,000 sweatshop workers, pay is less than $1.00 a day. According to the National Labor Committee, "every worker in China knows that she can be fired for even being seen discussing factory conditions, that any worker publicly raising a grievance is fired and anyone attempting to organize an independent union will be immediately imprisoned." Because of Nicaragua's socialist history, workers there are more sophisticated than in most poor countries, and are more active in unions. That is why the attention of the international activist movement is now focused there.
A stream of 19,000 workers passes down the Las Mercedes entrance road in the course of half an hour. At the edges are vendors selling homemade snacks and beverages. The steadily flowing line is about ten people wide. I tried to stop to take pictures, but I was pushed forward by the human current. The workers go through a security checkpoint, and disperse to the factories. At seven o'clock sharp the gates are closed and locked.
I walked back through the emptying road with Iliana, a former free trade zone worker who was my host during the homestay. We got back on the bus, now empty, and she led me to her home in a poor neighborhood of Managua called Barrio Huaspan. Walking through the wide, rocky streets, I felt somewhat intimidated. There was something menacing in the atmosphere. The houses were poor, but they also seemed decrepit. The children, playing in the streets, were aggressive. Young adults watched us silently from the houses. They seemed sulking, menacing. The place was squalid and dangerous, and two days later, when the time came to leave, I was relieved.
I stepped over a rat at the entrance to Iliana's home. The house, which she had inherited from her father, was a basic cement block structure. Iliana lived there with her seven children and her elderly mother. Her husband, an alcoholic, had deserted her several years earlier, a common situation among sweatshop workers. The men in that macho Latin culture refuse to endure such a life for long.
There were two small rooms in the house: the entrance area, with a table and a television; and a room full of beds, on which Iliana, her seven children, and her mother slept. The kitchen was in a corner of the sleeping room. The stove consisted of a cement counter with a hole to insert sticks of wood. There were a couple of electric lights, dangling from a wire. In the yard was a single faucet and a toilet, and a green garden which Iliana was proud of. Chickens, dogs, and a couple of pigs wandered freely through the home.
The house, though austere, was better than that of other free trade zone workers. Other workers live in tiny homes made of simple wood frames, with walls that are hung with plastic sheeting, and dirt floors. Some live in shacks made of cardboard boxes.
Iliana held her family together with sheer will power. Full of energy, she would return from a twelve hour workday, look after her children, and then stay up hours answering my questions. She told me that she had earned the highest possible salary at the sewing factory, about six dollars a day, because she had developed her skills and was at the head of an assembly line. She was forced to quit her job, though, when she developed respiratory problems due to an allergy caused by insufficient ventilation. She was not bitter; in fact, she proudly showed me photos where she was embracing her boss.
There is a common argument that manufacturing jobs in poor countries must actually be advantageous for workers, because otherwise they would not choose to work there. This argument is accurate, but it avoids the real point. It does not explain why unjust and oppressive jobs are advantageous. The poverty which makes this so is not accidental. It is partly the result of the policies of corporations and of the U.S. government, which destroy local cultures and economies by forcing poor nations to sell resources and agricultural products at low prices, driving farmers off of their land and into cities. Once there, the only viable options are controlled by ruthless global institutions.
Now that Iliana is unable to work in the factories, she is forced to take odd jobs cleaning homes. It is quite challenging for her to raise her seven children, on her own, under such circumstances. "How do you keep it all together?" I asked.
"It is my spirit," she responded, and I could see that this was so. She was a quiet, gentle woman, but behind this was strength, not passivity.
A religious person, she has photos of her church and her priest tacked up to the walls. Somehow she manages to keep her family intact. As we talked, all seven of her children lined up in plastic chairs, as if they were in school, seriously studying the television set. The sweatshop workers have one foot in the global economy and culture, and this is what makes their lives so desperate. Like ours, their children sit in front of the television, enthralled. But for them, those flickering dreams can only end up in misery, preying on their hearts by raising expectations that are absolutely beyond their reach.
[When the group returned to our base in Managua, I spoke with Peg, a trip leader who has been an activist in Illinois for many years. I wanted to know her opinion about our responsibility for the products made in sweatshops.
"I've thought about that a lot, and I've come to a two-tiered approach. My daughter has two children, and she shops at Wal-Mart regularly. So that gives them the jobs they need, while we're working for change. But I devote myself to protests, and to working for deeper change."]
In the evening we had our debriefings, check-ins, and reflections. A passage we read was by Mother Theresa: "If you want to help, share something of yourself--not from your abundance--but until it hurts. Give what costs you--make a sacrifice--do without something you like, so you may share what you have saved thus with those who do not even have what they need. Then your giving will be true giving--loving until it hurts."

Our second homestay was with workers in an entirely different part of the global economy: poor peasant farmers. We drove out to a village near the town of Matagalpa, several hours from Managua, and left our van at the end of a dirt road. Ten cute piglets slept together in a heap, and the mother, a massive animal with mangy fur, lay in the mud and fed them. From there a trail through the green hills led to the community. Ramone Gomez is a cooperative, formed during the Sandanista era, but each member now owns their own land and crops. They grow beans and corn and coffee. Keeping what they need for themselves, they sell the rest to distributors. They earn about a dollar a day, considerably less than free trade zone workers. Most have no machinery at all. A few have a cow or two.
Erika and I stayed with a family near the bank of the creek. Their home was very simple, with dirt floors and bare cement walls. There was no furniture, except for some plank benches and two cots. Ceferino and Ana Maria apparently slept on the cots, and their five children slept on the floor. During our stay Erika and I had use of the cots, just a sheet of plastic tied onto a wood frame.
Dinner was beans and rice. No condiments, no appetizers, no dessert. No meat, no drinks. Nothing extraneous. Erika and I sat alone, silently, on our plank. No big words. No theories. They seemed inappropriate. It was a fleeting taste of simplicity. It was an interesting adventure for our pampered and spoiled stomachs, which we would never consent to for long.
After dinner we all gathered in the kitchen, which was in a wood shack attached to the sleeping area. The only appliance was a manual grinder, with a long metal arm for milling corn. There was no television, but the scratchy sound Latin love songs emanated from a radio. Like Iliana's, the stove was a simple hole in the counter, but here there was no chimney, and the wood planks of the wall were covered with dark soot. Still, it did not seem dirty. The soot was impregnated in the wood, giving it a beautiful aged appearance. I felt as if I were in a museum.
We all sat on the planks along the walls, peeling beans. The children and the parents looked at us curiously. Finally, we let loose. We bombarded them with questions. What is the price of the crops? What do you think of the conservative government? What are your plans for the future? Erika leaned forward, taking notes. They endured the assault gracefully. They were not embarrassed to show us their lives. But they seemed strangely uninterested in or incapable of questioning us. We represented a world that was too foreign.
I peeled my beans at a rate far slower than the others, thinking about how pleasant the scene was. I had read about this. Before the days of television, people used to sit together and tell stories to each other. It was called 'storytelling.' I listened to Ceferino speak about his plans to develop a small coffee plantation. A non-profit organization has been teaching them about coffee's potential. "That sounds like a good idea, Ceferino," I said. "You can sell the coffee and build up some capital."
Ana Maria shook her head. "Yes, it is a good idea. But we've made many plans before. We've been here ten years, working constantly, and still we have nothing," she said, laughing.
If the urban workers have a whole foot into the global mind, the peasants at Matagalpa have their toes in only. But the toes are nailed down. These poor, third world farmers are locked down. They struggle to build and save, but there is not much that they can do. After all, what they produce has little value in the global economy. They can't compete against industrial agribusiness. They can't compete against technologically sophisticated businesses. The game is rigged. Maybe we should all buy 'fair trade' coffee. But even if farmers were paid a dollar a pound, twice what they get now, how much difference would that make? There is no shortage of do-gooder international non-profit organizations that come in with one project or another. They build schools, they bring in clean water and outhouses. But, though perhaps useful, these are only amenities that do not affect the structure of poverty.
Although the farmers are poorer than the urban factory workers, their poverty does not seem nearly as wretched. They are placed in the unsullied natural world of living things. Poverty stalks them, but beauty nourishes them. There is no sense of degradation or depravity. Ceferino and Ana Maria were matured by the hardness of their life. They did not have restless energy, the frantic, anxious energy of city dwellers and lost souls.
We settled in for sleep early, at about nine o'clock. It was pitch black. I looked over towards Erika, just a foot away, but could not see a thing. There was nothing to see, nothing to tempt.
During the days we attended meetings in town; in the evening we returned to the cooperative. On our final night there was a party for the delegation, with dancing and singing. I stayed away, sitting on a bench in the dark, under the trees, listening to the crickets and the birds. I had my flashlight in my mouth, trying to write. The community building was not far away, and I heard the rhythmic music begin.
Aydalina, the fourteen year old child of Ceferino and Ana Maria, appeared in front of me, took a seat on the bench, and began to speak. This surprised me, as she had been very quiet previously. "Are you going to the dance?" she asked.
I surprised myself be being honest. "No, I usually don't dance," I said. "And anyway I feel a little sad. I'm just going to write."
"I feel sad, too," she said, softly. Her voice was gentle and sweet. I leaned over to hear her better, and turned off my flashlight. "I want to study," she said. "But my parents don't have the money to pay for school. They have to buy notebooks, pencils, and pay a monthly fee. There is only enough to pay for the little ones. This is my last month of school."
"What will you do if you can't study?" I asked.
"In the mornings I will cook, getting up at four in the morning to grind the beans. In the afternoons I will work in the fields."
"For how long will you do this?"
"For my whole life."
"Do you think that this world is unjust?" I asked
"I think that my life is unjust," she replied. "Our life is very hard. We have to struggle to survive. We cannot study long. During droughts we do not eat."
I looked at Aydalina, at her young, sorrowful face. I wanted to help her, to teach her about independent study, about her limitless freedom. But, I reflected, that was absurd. In America we have limitless freedom. For the eighty percent of the world's population who live in poor countries, though, freedom is less tangible. Victims of inequality, of injustice, of greed, circumstances cut short their potential, destroying their dreams, drawing a dark circle around their possible sphere of action.
I sat there, confused. My own sadness now seemed trivial. This girl was having her whole life cut short before my very eyes. Could I do anything to help her? Yes, maybe I could give her money for school. Maybe I could rescue one person. But what kind of hopeless act would that be? Charity simply confirms injustice, making the poor even more dependent on the rich, and in any case it can only help a minority, thus creating more injustice, as well as jealousy. Isn't it possible, if we have enough vision, to address the whole problem, stopping injustice at its source, and ending with unity?
Perhaps she was my own child. But I packed my bags and got ready to depart. I moved on to the next phase of my life. I wish her well.
Later that evening Cefarino invited me to see his fields. The two of us set out in the darkness. I shined my flashlight as he led me over the creek, stepping carefully from rock to rock. I watched the silhouette of his thin body, his ragged clothes. We slid underneath the barbed wires of an old fence, and walked up the side of the hill. We stepped between the rows of his corn field. They were stunted, just a couple of feet high, because of the lack of rain. The bright moon lit up the field. He pointed out his beans. He led me to his coffee seedlings, and stood proudly in the middle of them. They were each in its own small plastic bag. He bent down and caressed one of them, looking at it closely. "This is my future," he said, sweeping his hand at an undeveloped area in front of us, where he planned to plant these seedlings when they matured.
We stood silently, looking up at the black sky and the bright, numerous stars. I breathed deeply, submitting to its power. The heavens, the awe-inspiring majestic heavens, has the power to bind together two human beings of radically different backgrounds. One, an idea seeker, pampered and privileged; the other, a subsistence farmer, surviving alone by the work of his own hands in the earth. Standing under the night sky, two figures, lifted and inspired, bound together, see how a single message is revealed: We are one.
I looked over at Cefarino, at his dark skin, his trousers and shirt hanging loosely, and at his big eyes, searching the sky. "What are you thinking?" I asked.
He looked at me and laughed. "I am thinking about the drought," he responded. "If it doesn't rain, the harvest will be bad." He pointed to a cloud, which I could barely see. "That is a rain cloud. It may rain tomorrow."
I was surprised by his statement. Was he not inspired? Was he thinking only about material (though important) events? Or was his understanding more profound, connected in a way that was not accessible to me, to the real world and the real cycle of life and death?
The next day we left early in the morning. All the children of the community followed us to our van. Cefarino extended his hand to me, straight and stiff. "Thank you for sharing our poverty," he said.
Along the trip home to Managua we stopped for several meetings. One was with the CNT, the pro-government union of free trade zone workers, which was seeking harmonious solutions to labor problems. Another was with the CST, an independent union, aggressively pushing for workers' rights. Dirty and sweaty, we were moved by a passion that arose from our own experiences. We felt a personal urgency to hold someone or something responsible for the poverty we had seen. Government policies were at fault. Workers rights, stronger unions, equitable government policies, could improve the situation. Something must be done. We were on the edge of our seats. We plied them with questions. Our pencils flew over our notepads. Finally, having exhausted our hosts and ourselves, we returned to the Witness for Peace house in Managua.
We got home late in the evening. After taking showers, we meet on the porch for reflections.
Gandhi: "I must refuse to insult the naked by giving them clothes they do not need, instead of giving them work which they sorely need. I will not commit the sin of becoming their patron, but on learning that I had assisted in impoverishing them, I would give them a privileged position and give them neither crumbs nor cast off clothing, but the best of my food and clothes and associate myself with them in work."
Dostoyevsky: "At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men's sin, and asks oneself whether one should use force, or love and humility. Always decided to use humble love."

After our evening meetings, Emily, the bright high school student, offered to accompany me on my walk. After talking about the lyrics of her favorite album--which did strike me as being meaningful--she said that she wanted to discuss a problem she was having. It seems that Ernesto, the Nicaraguan man watching over the dormitory, got some mistaken ideas about their relationship. He thought that it was more serious than she wanted it to be. How did he get those ideas? They had personal conversations, and that led to other things. What other things? Physical involvement.
I was shocked by Emily's admission that she had had casual sex, within a few days of arriving. Why? Because I believe that sex has spiritual implications, and that to fail to respond to those implications means a blow to one's spiritual capacity. Pleasure is a fine thing, it can nourish and even inspire, and there is a place for it, but that place is secondary. When self-interest is the principal motivation, a fragile balance is shattered. That which is highest and best, and which makes us who we really are, is felled and defeated.
There is a choice, an either/or choice, and it is between sex and spirit, money and spirit, family and spirit. One comes first, and one goes last. Success and spirit, pleasure and spirit, matter and spirit. This is the fundamental choice we make, and there is no evading it. Other matters are subject to compromise, but not this.
There are many explanations for the poverty of the campesinos: political, economic, cultural. One could easily spend one's whole life trying to untangle the twisted logic which has created these intractable problems, and then to fight for the side which one believes is right. But this is all in the realm of causes and effects, of matter. There is no way out, no release, except through entering into a totally different analysis, one that is based upon primary causes.
What makes poverty, widespread and systemic, possible? What is the source of injustice, brutal and ruthless, which oppresses the weak? It is not a policy that is at fault. It is not an elite group, or a conspiracy. It is not a system. The explanation is simple: spirit-failure.
We can easily ignore the foreign policy of our nation, when it exploits and oppresses, because we are accustomed to ignoring the foreign policy of our own self. In our own minds and in our own daily life we invent the exploitative structure that makes possible exploitation everywhere else. The vast global system, which seems so complex and unstoppable, actually depends on innumerable human connections, of which we have full control. At each connection, at each relation, we give our tacit approval by taking the required action. At each connection, at each relation, we have total freedom.
What makes poverty possible? Every step along the way, one person must close his heart to another. The Spaniard, who refuses to turn on the water of the completed plumbing system of the cooperative; and the American philanthropist, who reneged on her promise to turn over the lands that the peasants were cultivating for her; the Managua officials, who drove the lake dwellers from their shantytowns, into a marginal existence at Nueva Vida, so that they could build expensive hotels; and we Americans, who flock to buy cheap goods, strung out on the high of unbelievable bargains, turning away from the process of sweat and blood, labor and desperation, which makes the bargains possible.
Spirit-failure. The withering of one's capacity for understanding, empathy, and inspiration. The corruption of innocence and the vulgarization of the sacred. The weighing of pluses and minuses, the heaping up of personal desires, growing so high and heavy that they crush the opportunity for pure and spontaneous action, which is a natural solution to all spiritual problems. The cunning, manipulative, and mechanical mind.
If the problem is spiritual, then what is the spiritual answer? It must be pure, simple, and effective, but it eludes me. I sense it, but I can't see it. Why?
The problem of poverty, of injustice, of the existence of the rich and the poor, lies deep in our minds. If we want to understand it, that is where we must look. It is the schism of our soul, the basic division, from which arises all violence and all misery. It is the fundamental failure of intelligence. It is the reason we treat other human beings as means, not ends; and it is what makes everyday life severe and cruel, or empty and pointless.
In order for an expression of the soul--which, after all, is what all of our actions are--to be pure, simple, and effective, that schism must be healed. When that happens, the solution will be revealed. The edges of that blurred, elusive vision will sharpen. The response will be immediate and profound. Have no doubt of spiritual efficacy. Have faith: precise, intelligent, and unwavering faith.