Developing One's Brother

            Uh oh!  One had better come up with something quick.  This is the last section of the last chapter before the final chapter where all the foregoing experience and printed matter come together in a neat little practitioner’s guide – The Developer’s Handbook.  Here’s where, in summation, short sweet ‘n’ sour pithy trenchant significant eye-opening didactic gems of knowledge are fashioned.  Ready for wear.  Flash them at social gatherings.  Wear them on your sleeve.  Mouth them.  Package them with bubble gum and baseball cards.  Be the first in your neighborhood to collect them all.  Enough, enough!  Here they are:

·         Big Developer goals come in two varieties.  The public one – We are here to help you develop.  And the closed circuit one – We are here to help ourselves by developing you, on our own terms.  To accomplish this, it has been necessary to establish a mammoth development industry . . . which, by the way, contributes markedly to control and perpetuation of the dependency of the developees.  The smaller the developer, the less chance that this is the case.

·         Development is characterized by bureaucracy when practiced by the Big Boys.  Rules & regulations abound, because it is through these that the process is controlled and their institutional and personal goals are met.  As a result, Development is chock full of academic, administrative, and alien approaches amenable to the media.  In this, image supersedes truth & reality, and fashion dictates trends.

·         Empowerment is a statement, not a practice.  At least not by those who “do Development” on a large scale.  The imbalance of (em)power(ment) must be maintained at almost any cost. 

·         Development is politics, first and foremost.  Once again, this applies to the Big Boys . . . directed as it is at the achievement of geo-political and just plain political ends serving the giver, not the receiver. 

·         Why is “development” like this?  Why is it sometimes insidious, sometimes good?  The answer is:  We’re right back to prehistoric precepts and Darwinian explanations – the Mutants are in charge and passing on their genes in propagating the Developer species.  This particular species thrives on The Power and the Glory, as well as lucrative careers in Poverty.  On the other genealogical branch, on the other hand with an opposable thumb as well, it is at times good because a considerable number of good people work for Development organizations, governments, and development organizations . . . and they make it good . . . in spite of the organization.  Development is best when the People do it, maybe with some external support.