A number of years ago in a Cairo taxi, the legendary scientist and inventor Harold Edgerton of MIT, in answer to my question as to how he had been so successful, and had accomplished so much said, ‘Look for the leverage points; everything else is just friction.’ His words in the close hot space of that dusty summer afternoon changed my point of view. I saw in them a statement of social acupuncture, expressed with an engineer’s clarity. A guide to an economy of intention, like a martial arts movement, or a ballerina’s gesture. When we think about how poverty might really be ameliorated, independent of ideology, political affiliation, or bias, where are such leverage points to be found? There are so many options. Any day’s mail brings several. How does one select something that will make one’s intention a reality? One clearly successful leverage point is the micro-loan - the development of personal loan programs - such as the Grameen Bank - for sums which, in America, are often no more than a golf round, or a family’s weekly church donation. Larry Dossey, elsewhere in this issue, eloquently describes the Bank, whose founder, […]