Otro de Yunus - Another Quote from Yunus

si das oportunidades las personas realmente pueden salir de la miseria.
En el ser humano existe una capacidad sin límites. Podemos controlar la forma en que hemos organizado nuestras sociedades, nuestras economías. Probablemente sólo exploramos una pequeña parte de la superficie, y dadas todas las oportunidades que todavía tenemos, nos queda mucho más por recorrer. Y los pobres son quienes ni siquiera pueden arañar la superficie, no se les da ni una oportunidad. Les pondré el ejemplo de otro modo.

if you give opportunities to people they can really get out of misery. There is unlimited capacity in human beings. We can control how we have organized our societies, our economies. Probably we only explore a small part of the surface, and given all the opptys we still have, we have a lot more ground to cover. And the poor are the ones who can't even scratch the surface, they aren't given even one opportunity. I'll present the example to you in another way.


Los pobres son como un bonsái, ese pequeño árbol que pones
en una maceta, que plantas y crece solamente un palmo. No crece más, pero se parece al árbol original que puedes ver en el bosque, ese árbol gigante; pero el bonsái es sólo esto. Yo diría que si coges la mejor semilla del árbol más alto del bosque y la pones en la maceta para que crezca, solamente se desarrollará en esta medida. Por tanto, ¿es culpa de la semilla? No, tú has plantado la mejor semilla posible. Entonces ¿de quién es la culpa? ¿Es culpa del árbol? No, lo ha hecho lo mejor que ha podido; sólo podía crecer lo que creció. Entonces, ¿dónde está el problema? El problema está en la base donde plantas el árbol, porque necesitaba mucho más espacio, mucho más fondo. Pero no se lo dimos, solamente le dimos este poco.

The poor are like a bonsai, that small tree you put in a pot, that you plant and just grows by a palm. It doesn't grow more, but it looks like the original tree that you can see in the forest, that giant tree; but the bonsai is just this dwarf. I'd say that if you take the best seed from the tallest tree in the forest, and you put it in the pot so it'll grow, it will only develop in that measure. Then where does the fault lie? Is it the tree's fault? No, it has done its best -- it could only grow as much as it did. Then where is the problem? The problem is in the base where you plant the tree, because it needed much more space, much more depth. But we didn't give it to the tree, we just gave it this little bit.


Del mismo modo, los pobres son como el bonsái: pueden tener la mejor semilla, todas las capacidades del mundo, pero la sociedad solamente les da este espacio medido, está oportunidad limitada, por lo que solamente llegarán a ser este poco. Si la sociedad les permitiera avanzar para conseguir el espacio que todos los demás obtienen en la sociedad, las personas serían tan altas como cualquiera. No hay problema en esto, no hay nada heredado en esa persona.

In the same way, the poor are like the bonsai. They can have the best seed, all the capabilities in the world, but society only gives them this measured-out space, this limited opportunity, and so they only will come to be this little. If society allowed them to advance to get the space that all the rest obtain in society, they would be as tall as anyone else. There is no problem in them, there's nothing hereditary in those persons.


Así pues, lo expreso de este modo: la pobreza no la crean los pobres; la
pobreza la crea el sistema. El sistema que ha creado la pobreza no puede eliminarla porque continúa reproduciéndola. Para eliminar la pobreza tenemos que ir al panel de control y arreglar las piezas responsables de ella, y una pieza que estamos tratando de corregir son las instituciones financieras.

And so I express it in this way: the poor don't create poverty -- poverty is created by the system. The system that has created poverty can't eliminate it, because it keeps reproducing it. To eliminate poverty, we have to go to the control panel and fix the parts that are responsible for it, and one part that we're trying to correct are the financial institutions.

En la actualidad, las instituciones financieras, tal como existen en todo el mundo, rechazan a más de la mitad de la población del mundo a la hora de prestar sus servicios. Los llaman insolventes, como si la culpa fuera de ellos. Insisto en que la culpa no es de la gente; la culpa la tienes tú como institución incapaz de atender a esas personas, y no quieres admitirlo. ¿Por qué llamas a la gente insolvente? ¿Se trata realmente de que la gente es insolvente? ¿O se trata de que los bancos son incompetentes?

Today, financial institutions as they exist worldwide, reject more than half of the world population when it comes to providing their services. They call them insolvent, as if it were their fault. I insist that it isn't the people's fault -- it is your fault, as an institution that's incapable of providing these persons with services, and you don't want to admit it. Why do you call people "insolvent"? Are people really insolvent, or is it that banks are incompetent?


¿Cuál es la pregunta? Lo que debes hacer es modificarte a ti mismo de manera que seas capaz de servir a cada persona individual. Afirmo que la concesión de un crédito debería aceptarse como un derecho humano. (Fin de Cita)

What is the question? What you should do is modify yourself in such a way that you are capable of serving each individual person. I affirm that the granting of a credit should be accepted as a human right. (End of Quote)

I remember talking to an aunt in the Phil. whose family owns sugar plantations in a province, and how angry she was with the people who work for them because "they're irresponsible, you try to help them and they just destroy the machinery." There was no way to talk to her, she was completely convinced that there was no solution, those people could not be helped.

Those sugar workers are the poorest of the poor, they're nothing more than slaves. And I was impressed because she seemed to have so much anger and resentment towards them. Yet, she and her family are very rich. They don't feel grateful to those people. In fact, they despise them. My conclusion: God will just have to pull the rug out from under all our feet, because as the world is today, the system refuses to change as long as it can keep working without change. It justifies itself, ad aeternam.

Mysteries of the human mind....