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World Poverty - A paradigm shift needed?
Forgive me if this post is disordered. I find the ideas that follow are not fully fleshed out in my mind, though hopefully they will become so as I write.
Today I walked by a person on the street who was holding a sign which informed me that the shoes I was wearing were worth more than the entire yearly income of certain people in third world countries. I didn't think much of it, as this is hardly a unique experience - such sign holders have existed as long as I've been walking the streets, though my self-centered mind refuses to allow me to believe that they existed prior to that. ;) But this particular sign came back to me, when I watched the videos posted by SR. They're pretty neat, but there's one moment that mirrors the sign, when someone writes that "this laptop costs more than some people in the world make in a year."
These sentiments have always bothered me. For one, I dislike anything that invites us to feel guilty for NOT being miserable. The underlying idea, as I see it, is that being starving, poor and diseased is the norm, the baseline, the foundation of the human experience, and that this culture is simply elevated above that standard. To me, this is an awful way of looking at it. Not only does it devalue the sufferring of those who live in the worst parts of the world, but it also, as mentioned, invites us to be ungrateful and indeed angry towards the properity that allows us to live better. Myself, I think it's far better to assume that THIS is the norm, the baseline, the foundation of the human experience, that we are living as people ought to live, and that the people who live among filth and death are living below this line, and not us above it. Suddenly, I no longer have to feel guilty for not being poor, and I can also have a more meaningful (and IMO less patronizing) sort of compassion for those whose lives are harder than my own. Their suffering becomes more of a real problem, if I stop assuming that I ought to be feeling some sort of guilt for not living as they do.
There are other things about the average attitude toward world poverty that annoy me as well, of course, but those are more concious problems that can be openly debated. For instance, the idea that charity is the way to combat a failed economy. The brilliant book "The Bottom Billion" is a fantastic overview of why donations are, while humanitarian and kind, dangerous to think of as an actual solution. They should be seen as a supplement to actual help, which would involve the building of industry and (yes) perhaps even the waging of war on governments that intentionally perpetuate starvation and genocide. But such ideas are able to be openly discussed. I feel as though there are unspoken, unthought ideas the underlie the discussion of the world economic situation that are directly intefering with both the solving of the problems that exist, and the simple dignity of those involved, on both sides of the poverty line.
Today I walked by a person on the street who was holding a sign which informed me that the shoes I was wearing were worth more than the entire yearly income of certain people in third world countries. I didn't think much of it, as this is hardly a unique experience - such sign holders have existed as long as I've been walking the streets, though my self-centered mind refuses to allow me to believe that they existed prior to that. ;) But this particular sign came back to me, when I watched the videos posted by SR. They're pretty neat, but there's one moment that mirrors the sign, when someone writes that "this laptop costs more than some people in the world make in a year."
These sentiments have always bothered me. For one, I dislike anything that invites us to feel guilty for NOT being miserable. The underlying idea, as I see it, is that being starving, poor and diseased is the norm, the baseline, the foundation of the human experience, and that this culture is simply elevated above that standard. To me, this is an awful way of looking at it. Not only does it devalue the sufferring of those who live in the worst parts of the world, but it also, as mentioned, invites us to be ungrateful and indeed angry towards the properity that allows us to live better. Myself, I think it's far better to assume that THIS is the norm, the baseline, the foundation of the human experience, that we are living as people ought to live, and that the people who live among filth and death are living below this line, and not us above it. Suddenly, I no longer have to feel guilty for not being poor, and I can also have a more meaningful (and IMO less patronizing) sort of compassion for those whose lives are harder than my own. Their suffering becomes more of a real problem, if I stop assuming that I ought to be feeling some sort of guilt for not living as they do.
There are other things about the average attitude toward world poverty that annoy me as well, of course, but those are more concious problems that can be openly debated. For instance, the idea that charity is the way to combat a failed economy. The brilliant book "The Bottom Billion" is a fantastic overview of why donations are, while humanitarian and kind, dangerous to think of as an actual solution. They should be seen as a supplement to actual help, which would involve the building of industry and (yes) perhaps even the waging of war on governments that intentionally perpetuate starvation and genocide. But such ideas are able to be openly discussed. I feel as though there are unspoken, unthought ideas the underlie the discussion of the world economic situation that are directly intefering with both the solving of the problems that exist, and the simple dignity of those involved, on both sides of the poverty line.
Comments
The only reason we have extra money is because we've allowed these other countries to be exploited to our own benefit. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a communist, but isn't that just how capitalism works? You can't make money out of thin air. Those in power are naturally going to do what it takes to secure that power, not let other countries start to syphon off some of that wealth and let themselves become the 'third nations'.
It's nice and all for people to want to be charitable and say it would be so nice for no countries to be poor, but the reality is they money has to come from somewhere and go somewhere else. It's really terrible, but at the same time it's nice to be on the winning side. :zip: