I'm reading a book titled: A Billion Bootstraps. It's about Business solutions to ending poverty, focused primarily on microcredit. In the book they give the origins of "bootstrapping."
Baron Munchhausen was a German eccentric who served the Russian military in two campaigns against the Ottoman Empire in the 1740's. Returning home to his manor in Bodenwerder, he acquired a reputation for telling outrageously tall tales about his adventures. According to one such story, he escaped from a swamp by pulling himself up by his own hair. In later versions of that story, the Baron used his own bootstraps to pull himself out of the sea, giving birth to the term bootstrapping.
So, the idea of pulling ourselves out of difficult circumstances started as a tall tale. I'm starting to believe it still is. That it is nothing more than a farce to believe we can save ourselves.
I see poverty all over the world...extreme poverty (defined by World Bank as living on less than $2 a day). I've read many books on how to combat poverty ...The End of Poverty: economic possibilities for our time, Nickel and Dimed: on (not) getting by in America, and more.
The conclusion I am coming to, is that we cannot do it alone. I'm not advocating a view of the American super hero who flies in to save those who can't save themselves. Instead, I am growing increasingly convinced of the need for a hand up and not a hand out. Often people in poverty around the world aren't lazy, rather I find them to be quite industrious; they aren't stupid, but rather quite intelligent in spite of limited educational opportunities. It is often the circumstances of their lives that shackles them to poverty...remove the shackles and watch them fly.
Bootstrapping...a tall tale we should stop telling and instead offer our hand to pull someone out of the muck of their lives.
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