{"id":1202,"date":"2011-12-04T17:18:12","date_gmt":"2011-12-04T22:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2012-04-09T23:44:06","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T04:44:06","slug":"acres-of-diamonds-occupy-wall-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/04\/acres-of-diamonds-occupy-wall-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Acres Of Diamonds Occupy Wall Street"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Image via Wikipedia\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs-images.forbes.com\/deanzarras\/files\/2011\/12\/300px-Russell_Herman_Conwell.jpg\" alt=\"English: Russell Herman Conwell Title: Leaders...\" width=\"151\" height=\"176\" \/> Decades before the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression, a Baptist minister named Russell Conwell began to deliver a lecture to groups of impoverished and dejected individuals around\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/places\/pa\/philadelphia\/\">Philadelphia<\/a>, Pennsylvania and ultimately, the entire country.\u00a0 The lecture came to be known as \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.temple.edu\/about\/AcresofDiamonds.htm\">Acres of Diamonds<\/a>\u201d, and Conwell went on to turn his nightly mission meetings into\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.temple.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Temple University<\/a>.\u00a0 He also went on to deliver that lecture over 6,000 times.<\/div>\n<p><p>\nFast forwarding a century to our own Great Recession and its corresponding groups of newly impoverished and dejected folk, one wonders what Conwell might have said to the ones who have come to participate in, or sympathize with, the Occupy\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/wall-street\/\">Wall Street<\/a> movement.\u00a0\u00a0 We need only to look to his \u201cAcres of Diamonds\u201d text to find out.<\/p>\n<p>\nEqual parts inspiring, engaging and witty, and almost disturbingly prophetic, the lecture derives its name from its opening tale of \u201can ancient Persian by the name of Al Hafed\u201d, who is lured into a search for diamonds in far away lands.\u00a0\u00a0 After spending his fortune in vain and coming up diamondless, he takes his own life.\u00a0\u00a0 As the story continues, we learn that if he had only dug in his own original backyard, he would have encountered acres of the precious stones, and achieved all of the riches he lost his life seeking.<\/p>\n<p>But with the hopes of inspiring his audience out of their poverty-stricken ways, Conwell goes on to say\u00a0 \u201cI say you ought to be rich; you have no right to be poor.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 And he follows that up with:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>I think the best thing for me to do is to illustrate this, for if I say you ought to get rich, I ought, at least, to suggest how it is done. We get a prejudice against rich men because of the lies that are told about them. The lies that are told about Mr. Rockefeller because he has two hundred million dollars \u2014 so many believe them; yet how false is the representation of that man to the world. How little we can tell what is true nowadays when newspapers try to sell their papers entirely on some sensation!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Much of Conwell\u2019s eleven thousand plus words revolve around the relationships between society\u2019s rich and its poor.\u00a0 As the self-described \u201c99 percenters\u201d rail against the supposed injustices heaped upon them by the infinitely fortunate 1%, Conwell\u2019s talk is chock full of wisdom that transcends the ages.\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, as we shall see, it is almost eery how currently applicable entire sections of the prose are.<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading at <a title=\"&quot;Acres of Diamonds Occupy Wall Street&quot;, Dean Zarras, Forbes Opinions, Dec 2, 2011\" href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/deanzarras\/2011\/12\/02\/acres-of-diamonds-occupy-wall-street\/\" target=\"_blank\">Forbes Opinions&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Decades before the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression, a Baptist minister named Russell Conwell began to deliver a lecture to groups of impoverished and dejected individuals around\u00a0Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and ultimately, the entire country.\u00a0 The lecture came to be known as \u201cAcres of Diamonds\u201d, and Conwell went on to turn his nightly mission meetings [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1221,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/1221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}