What’s wrong with being poor?

Lindsay Clinton
Senior Manager, SustainAbility

 

 

whats wrong with being poorTraveling through rural India, you see huts and small towns, groups of women washing clothes in streams, men tending their goats. You wonder at their life—what is it like? Most of us can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to live on their small income. Sometimes, there is an urge to put your life frame up to theirs and compare. You wish you could make their houses bigger. Provide more food. Send their daughters to school. Make the labor less trying.  
 
But, what if we are really just grafting our own notions about haves and have nots and quality of life based on our own limited experience? What if we want them to have things that they don’t need or they don’t want? What is really wrong with being poor?
 
In a conversation I had the other day with a first-time visitor to India, I was asked something to the effect of, “If a person has all that she needs, lives a life off the land, eats the fruits of her labor, rises with the sun—does that person need development initiatives and aid? Are the poor actually unhappy? Or have we created that frame, because we can’t fathom that without Nike and Starbucks, hardwood floors and Scope Mouthwash, this person actually already lives a whole existence?”
 
What does it mean to be poor? Is it about being too poor to afford basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter? Is it about social exclusion or not being “part of the system”? Is it about being invisible, facing discrimination and marginalization, lacking capabilities? Or is it about something else entirely?
 
Why do the poor need to be part of our system if, as some believe, they are perfectly happy living outside of it? And do they have the agency and choice to determine whether they live inside or outside of the system?
 
And this prompts the question: is it a myth that the poor are actually happy living a simple existence?
 
What do you think? What is wrong with being poor? And taking this one step further, what is the best way to bring the poor into the conversation, instead of continuing to project our emotions and desires upon them?
 
Join Lindsay Clinton, with Intellecap in Mumbai, in this provocative (but constructive) conversation.

 

  • R. Todd Johnson

    Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

    Poverty comes in many shapes and sizes. I’ve witnessed devastating poverty (at a spiritual level) here in the "land ‘o plenty" where people work jobs they hate, to make money they don’t need, to buy things they don’t really want, to impress friends they don’t like.

    In contrast, I’ve spent signficiant time with people in Africa who have nothing; people for whom the simple task of having breakfast can be a three hour ordeal that includes walking miles to fetch water (often unclean). And yet, notwithstanding the hard life, these people have a joy in their life that most American’s lack.

    I think this is the basic dichotomy that many notice when traveling to the developing world. And this is the dichotomy that spurs a question such as the one asked here.

    But let’s be clear to establish a difference in our discussion between poverty and extreme poverty. It is one thing not to have new clothes. It is another altogether to lack clean water or food. It is one thing to be lacking in access to quality education, it is another entirely to be such an important economic resource as a child, that you are expected not to go to school, but rather expected to work a plot of land from a young age.

    Extreme poverty — one where people lack access to the basic means for life (including adequate food, clean water, health care, and shelter), lack access to educational opportunities and lack access to economic opportunities (i.e., the opportunity to improve their condition through the profitability of their hard work) fosters the perfect condition for human exploitation. And whether it is the recruitment of terrorists, child soldiers, bonded labor, sweat shops or human trafficking for the global sex trade, this exploitation would be far diminished if extreme poverty were eliminated.

    This begs the question: Why does extreme poverty exist today? Do we lack the resources to eliminate extreme poverty?

    Actually, no.

    If we had the will, adequate food, clean water and educational opportunities could be provided to the estimated 2.5 billion people in the world who are living below MDG levels, would cost $20 billion. That is what Americans spend on ice cream every year.

    So ask yourself: would Americans be willing to give up ice cream for five or ten years to eliminate extreme poverty?

    Would their still be poverty? Yes.

    Would their be extreme poverty? No.

    Would human expoitation be reduced radically as a result? Yes.

    It’s all a matter of what type of world we want to live in.

    – todd

    • Jeff Mowatt

      Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

      Todd, You’ve pretty much nailed it as far as I’m concerned.

      When poverty renders humans into consumables for others, an array of social problems are created. Our work has focussed on Eastern Europe, where the consequences manifest in street children, crime, prostitution and an HIV epidemic. I just read an article today identifying very similar issues in Kolkata.

      Misha Glenny in his TED talk identifies the scale of consumption in organised crime. 15% of global GDP or $100 trillion.

      http://www.ted.com/talks/mi…_global_crime_networks.html

      Notwithstanding, absolute poverty means those 2.5 billion endure hunger and truncated lives and we can expect a large tranche of what is given to help them being siphoned.

      Jeff

      • kenneth brilliant

        Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

        Todd,

        I thought devastating poverty was to live a life of subsistence with no assurance of the basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter? Sorry you have such a synical spin on the American Work Ethic. People who take care of themselves, even by working in a job they don’t love, well that’s just resopnsibility. That’s being a grown-up Todd. It’s too bad so many societal drop-outs today feel that somehow our capitalistic system is deeply flawed, as you seem to think. Keep in mind as you go on studying the cultures of the world, that America’s "Poor" is the richest in all the world. Much of the poor in this country have T.V.’s and cars and a roof over their heads.

    • Adesina Haastrup

      Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

      Your comparison between the poverty of Westerners who work jobs they hate, in order to make money they don’t need, to buy things they don’t really want, to impress friends they don’t really like, with the extreme poverty of poor people in India or Africa who have nothing; people for whom the simple task of having breakfast can be a three hour ordeal that includes walking miles to fetch water (often unclean) – and yet, notwithstanding this hard life, these people have a joy in their life that most American’s lack, is a very sensitive and sincere "tale of two cultures". This is what the radical African musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti termed "Suffering and Smiling". However, I wonder if your recommendation will achieve your projected result

      First, I want to assure you that for these extremely poor Africans, their life is far more harshly defined by the severe pain of their extreme poverty than you know, because it is concealed by this seeming joy and laughter. This makes the inhuman anguish they experience daily all the more depressingly palpable. As an African, I wouldn’t deprive the American of his precious iced-cream. There is abundant resources still available to enrich every poor person on this earth, even now. My approach will be to embark on a cultural re-engineering, a transforming of mindsets that will empower the people with skills and the ability to manage their resources efficiently, and negotiate a better life for themselves and generations to come. This process will also imbue the leaders with a positive sense of public responsibility, justice and integrity. The solution or the key to the well-being of the African is not (melting away) in the hands of the American. The African has the potential power to "morph" his/her own fortune into one that is more comfortable and dignified.

      • Lindsay Clinton

        Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

        Dear TwelveSprings,

        You make the point that Westerners should not judge a person or community based on outward appearances. I agree with you. Often, when foreigners come into a setting and observe rural villagers or members of a poor community who are seemingly happy, they assume that all is right in their so-called "simple" lives. This is an example of what I’ve referenced in the prompt: grafting a framework onto the poor or onto a different community without enough information. This is definitely not an approach I’m encouraging. But, perhaps I am wondering about something deeper: how much development is enough? If you are "poor" but you have a house, you can feed your family, you can send your children to school, you can connect to a doctor through your mobile phone, is being poor such a bad thing? When do we say that this is enough…you have the basics…and you are fine just as you are? Perhaps it’s not for us to say…it’s something that we should let the "poor" tell us.

        • Adesina Haastrup

          Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

          Hi Lindsay,

          Any economy that can meet those basic needs you listed, like, healthcare, education, decent housing, communication etc, will usually be robust enough to also provide reasonable level of employment opportunities and welfare for its people. Then they will no longer be described as extremely poor. In countries like Nigeria where there is an appalling wastage and plundering of the vast natural resources by generations of political leaders, the fledgling democracy and recent liberalisation policies in the banking and ICT sectors seem to be unleashing the entrepreneural talent of the largely unemployed population. This is why I believe there is a need to twick personal and cultural expectations and values in developing countries. I do not think that perpetuating the idea that Westerners have the solution to their problems, or are more thoughtful and concerned about their predicament will provide the self confidence they require to truly become independent and creative in exploring and defining a more dignified destiny for themselves and future generations. So I agree with you that they should take the lead.

          • Lindsay Clinton

            Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

            Hello again TwelveSprings,

            Thanks for your thoughts. I have a question for you…can you elaborate further on this statement: "I believe there is a need to tweak personal and cultural expectations and values in developing countries"? Do you mean that the expectations should be driven by people within country? I’m curious to hear more and understand what you mean…

            Thanks!

            Lindsay

          • Adesina Haastrup

            Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

            Hi Lindsay,

            Apologies for this late response. I am currently in Nigeria where I am not as frequent online as in the UK.

            Yes! is my answer. There is a great deal of undeveloped human potential in Africa. People tend to accept unfavourable conditions more readily and this is precisely what greedy opportunists need in order to line their own pockets with the wealth that rightfully belong to the people.

            These opportunities are not just African political leaders. They include multinationals that pay lip service to the grand idea of corporate social responsiveness/responsibility. (CSR).

            The people need to be more aware and protective of their fundamental human rights and encouraged to realise that they deserve the best that life can offer as long as they play their own responsible part in the life of their communities. People can define new values of well-being that strikes a healthy balance between material comfort and inner fulfillment.

          • Adesina Haastrup

            Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

            Hi Lindsay,

            Apologies for this late response. I am currently in Nigeria where I am not as frequent online as in the UK.

            Yes! is my answer. There is a great deal of undeveloped human potential in Africa. People tend to accept unfavourable conditions more readily and this is precisely what greedy opportunists need in order to line their own pockets with the wealth that rightfully belong to the people.

            These opportunities are not just African political leaders. They include multinationals that pay lip service to the grand idea of corporate social responsiveness/responsibility. (CSR).

            The people need to be more aware and protective of their fundamental human rights and encouraged to realise that they deserve the best that life can offer as long as they play their own responsible part in the life of their communities. People can define new values of well-being that strikes a healthy balance between material comfort and inner fulfillment.

            Many thanks,

            ‘Sina

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

      Todd-

      As always, you have great insights and comments. Thanks for being the first to share your perspective. I think that it does help to define poverty, as you’ve mentioned. The word "poor" is actually very vague, and I’ve left it that way in the prompt purposefully. Because part of this discussion is about what you or I or anyone else perceive as "poor."

      It is important to realize what we mean by poverty. It can be approached from the perspective of income or how much it costs you to purchase a minimum recommedned daily diet. Or you can look at it in terms of quality of life, social inclusion, or opportunity.

      I think that your last point is really relevant to the larger way we think about the haves and the have nots: what kind of world do we want to live in? I happen to have been born into a middle class family in America. But, I could have been born into a very different life–one of subsistence, of daily struggle. I find myself thinking about this often, and wondering why, but also wondering what we can do to balance things. There will always be a economic gap between people, but perhaps it doesn’t have to be as distinct a gap as Have and Have Not.

      I’m not sure if giving up ice cream will work, though!

    • Glenys Flaitz

      Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

      I question the theory that $20.5 Billion thrown at the issue of extreme poverty would, indeed eliminate it. Billions of dollars have already flowed into the African continent (for example) in the shape of aid without having any real measurable impact. Part of the issue seems to be an endless "chicken and the egg" discussion – how do you build stability and infrastructure and invest when there is constant war and how do you end war without the financial stability of infrastructure that would allow people to find jobs and produce food. Layers of political interference from Western governments, corruption, lack of trust, and daunting environmental challenges also impact the world’s poorest.

    • kenneth brilliant

      Extreme Poverty is a Social Justice Issue

      Geez Todd, I have to reply to you again!

      I feel you’ve missed the premise, that it is principally the Government of these impoverished countries, that have to do something about their people living in abject povety! You can’t expect another country, such as Great Britain or the U.S., to PROVIDE relief, although we do!

      Todd, you gotta understand something fundamental here. the Wealth of Nations is not built from the outside in, like other countries bailing out a bankrupting country or a country whose people are starving. No. Wealth comes from institutions that are developed from within the country. Corrupt Governemnts of poor countries is the problem Todd. Stop asking the U.S. to give up its wealth. We can’t keep going on feeding the world with no reciprocity, Todd!

  • Joan Salat

    Poverty and the Myth-happy living a simple existence.

    This is so relative and so cultural. I have travelled to 37 countries, and what I have noticed is that cultures who have not had much influence from the Western world tend to be happier. Once the exposure to western materialism sets in, comparisons begin to destroy the heart of the values of indigenous people, beginning with the youth. I have an example of this, my 1992 trek in the Mount Everest region of the Himalayas. I chose a culturally and environmentally friendly travel company that was focused on respecting the culture,religion and values of the people that we would cross paths with. Although there were only 8 travelers, the support staff for our journey involved 30 people from the region, and a herd of Yaks to carry tents, cooking supplies, and our personal duffel bags for our needs and comfort. I asked the company owner if I could bring gifts that our staff would enjoy to show my appreciation at the end of our 3 week journey, to acknowledge their dedication and priceless service. To my shock, he said that they would highly prize wearing T-shirts that say either "California" or "Beverly Hills" on them. This seemed so incongruent with their culture, and my values, until the Co. owner explained to me why they would consider this the best of all gifts. He had observed over time the slow deterioration of their culture, and cultural self-esteem as they had exposure to American movies, TV shows and materialism. This American businessman had a deep reverence for the people, culture and their values over the 13 years he lived there, and married a woman from the culture. The children changed over time with the exposure of Hollywood, and somehow low-self esteem seem to set in for the youths, in the disaster of comparison. I am not against progress or modernization to improve the quality of life of any group of people. As I purchased 30+ T-shirts with surfers and the word "California" on them, and T-shirts with palm trees announcing "Beverly Hills, Ca.", I felt deeply saddened that these T-shirts were highly prized as a status symbol, but who am I to judge a gift that holds value for another. I just wish that the most superficial aspects of our culture wouldn’t influence the great indigenous people of this earth. Poverty can be real in interfering with the quality of life when the focus on survival overrides the edifying explorations of freedom, creativity, joy and altruism. Skill building, education about inner and outer resources combined with empowerment will set most of us free.

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Poverty and the Myth-happy living a simple existence.

      You point to one of the perils of an increasingly connected world. Information can be completely empowering, but can also begin the erosion of a traditional culture. Bhutan has tried to prevent this from happening by limiting the number of tourists who come into their country. The Shiv Sena political party in Maharashtra, India has tried to prevent erosion of the state’s culture by insisting everyone speaks Marathi! There are tactics to slow the progress of change, but as media becomes more pervasive, it also opens eyes to what is happening in the rest of the world. What is ironic is that although media causes a lot of angst by revealing what is on the other side of the curtain, or creating desires that seem frivolous, it could also be the tool that empowers the poor the most, and ultimately inverts the pyramid!

  • Jesse Murphy

    Pursuit of Happiness

    This is a great conversation, and comes at a timely point in the life of the young organization, MyFight.org, of which I’m a part. With so many organizations wanting to do good, it behooves us to be honest about what "good" is. Having seen "poor" children exuding a degree of joy enviable by most "rich" kids, it can hardly be said that the amount of money one has is the determining factor of "happiness." Even personally, my annual income and satisfaction in life have rarely had a direct correlation.

    As I’ve thought about this issue, I usually come around to the same thought. My working definition of poverty has little-to-nothing to do with a dollar figure, but with opportunity. By opportunity I mean, can somebody have a dream and work to achieve it? Can somebody put in a day’s work and enjoy the fruit of their labor? Can somebody pursue happiness?

    My working definition of poverty, the type I have set out to fight, is the economic condition that allows for injustice and exploitation. The condition that robs a woman of her labor’s fruit, and makes a child decide that his best interest is serving in a rebel force. This is why I believe so strongly in microfinance and the concept of "empowering the poor." It is not necessary or good in every village and every community, but where it is best used, it invests in local interests and local culture.

    Thanks for this discussion, it’s needed!

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Pursuit of Happiness

      Hi Jesse,

      Thanks for your comments! I think you’re right…so much of this is not about numbers–because numbers are relative–it is about opportunity.

      And, since you bring up microfinance, it’s also worthwhile mentioning microinsurance. A safety net is what so many poor people are lacking. Up until a health catastrophe, many poor people may be managing just fine. It’s when an accident or emergency happens that it becomes apparent what is wrong with being poor.

  • Mathew Dryhurst

    Interesting post

    The French philosopher Jacques Ranciere wrote (in ‘The Philosopher and his Poor’) extensively about the idea that Philosophy itself was dependent on a condescending relationship with the poor, presupposing their misery and voicelessness.

    On the other hand, too relativistic a stance about poverty can lead to apathy. I agree with the post above, a distinction must also be made between poverty and extreme poverty – a poverty that cannot sustain life.

    I think another angle to address this issue comes in our implicit involvement with such cultures. In my mind, to happen upon a self sustaining island community, untouched by civilization, and deem them happy, is one thing.

    However when speaking of rural Indians, one can not honestly conclude that they could ever operate outside of our system. Their conditions of life have, and continue to be, impacted by foreign intervention and trade, and thus it is our duty to attempt to address any disparity and provide opportunities for growth.

    In doing so it is crucial to open dialogue to allow for communities to help themselves, and attempt not to superimpose our emotions and desires upon them, but instead to educate, empower and mentor when needed. This is obviously a lot easier in theory than in practice…

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Interesting post

      Hi Mathew,

      Thanks for commenting! I realize that my post comes across as condescending, but trust that I am using this tone to provoke a response and an exchange.

      Your last point is where I am most interested in taking this…to empower the poor, we cannot continue to speculate. They must be part of the dialogue. This is why several new books/reports about how the poor spend their money and think about their situations are so necessary, and a great first step. Check out Portfolios of the Poor (Jonathan Morduch, Daryl Collins and others) to take a look at their project which included capturing regular diaries of how the poor spend their money. Another good reference point is Voices of the Poor, by Deepa Narayan, who used to work for the World Bank.

      • Mathew Dryhurst

        Interesting post

        Hello Lindsay,

        I apologize, I in no way meant to communicate that your post was condescending, more that it highlights a problem prevalent in philosophical cultures of dictating to the poor what is in their best interests, rather than including them in that dialog (or even just flat out listening :) ).

        I will look into both of the projects you recommended. Thanks so much for the tips and I look forward to reading your posts in future.

  • jo davidson

    poverty of opportunity

    Hi Lindsay, there are some things in life we just know, and one of them is, being poor isn’t a choice, it’s a condition that’s thrust upon people. And in grafting our own notions of why this is, (in a philosophy, or in our lop-sided, bell-curved world of conformity and competition) what is wrong with being poor is, it’s this very condition, that creates the division, of the haves and the have-nots.

    In the complexity of why this is, and why the distribution of wealth is so uneven, the solution to it lies with people themselves, and with creating opportunities for people to help themselves get out of the rut – transforming from the inside out – for the world in general, to get into better shape. I agree, the simpler life is, the better (which indigenous people’s instinctively know already) in that it’s this, that produces the most happiness, whatever the level of material success, yeah?

    When we compare ourselves to others, (creating the bell-curve) the structure of society is then set up to compete and disassociate from itself, setting up the conditions for poverty to persist, in creating the conditions for people to experience the entrenched associated feelings of lack – which creates the least feelings of happiness, therefore making it harder to escape the condition. I think it’s a lie that ignorance is bliss, or that it produces real happiness in people, (who are forced to live with lack) I think the opposite is true. There is much to be said in how we see the world. The problem of poverty lies in the poverty of opportunity. An example of this and what it represents, is the example of the t-shirts, (given above) in explaining how superficial aspects of Western culture are prized as status symbols – the effect’s clear it disseminates the indigenous culture, while eroding the very notion of what culture itself is – that’s what the poverty of opportunity is, it’s a corrosive force.

    As a counterbalance to this, it’s the sense of community, along with the potential in it for opportunity, that produces the greatest degree of happiness and well-being in a society, whatever the material level of success, It’s also education, that transforms the conditions of poverty, (whether extreme or otherwise) through learning, it’s the issue that solves all other issues right?

    A question then is, why does so much poverty still persist today, given the amount of wealth and knowledge in the world in the 21st century? Why does society and humanity in general, still allow the condition of (extreme) poverty to persist?…tolerating it to continue?…allowing it to exist…? The only thing I can think of, is that’s it’s because we are all still living inside a societal bell curve, where poverty is expected to exist, so it does.

    • Ravi Arapurakal – Wholeecology Strategist

      poverty of opportunity

      Jo, you ask:

      "A question then is, why does so much poverty still persist today, given the amount of wealth and knowledge in the world in the 21st century? Why does society and humanity in general, still allow the condition of (extreme) poverty to persist?…tolerating it to continue?…allowing it to exist…?"

      The short answer: because we are still, mistakenly, an ‘individual-centric’ species, which keeps us systemically selfish, acquisitive and exploitive, and therefore unable to relate to the rest of our species as the single syminformatic species we already are.

      The long answer: Poverty still exists today because the identity core of the conceptual system of the dominant and increasingly global civilization is not consistent with the fact that the human species has been, from the beginnings of systematic linguistic information transfer among us; i.e., from our earliest conversations, been becoming a single, networked multividual.

      Why? most ‘individual’ humans grasp and respond to their experience with a conceptual system that is almost entirely IMPORTED from other humans, via upbringing, education, communications, and the media, made up of the experiences, assumptions and ideas of OTHERS.

      The prevailing tendency to attribute the valuations, interpretations, and the resulting actions – to the local form, is a species-wide delusion that remains the biggest single threat to the survival of our own, and other species.

      The (false) human identity as local human form at the core of the conceptual system of the dominant, and increasingly, global, civilization. This false identity tends to make us defensive, acquisitive, and exploitive. There will be poverty as long as we fail to realize and beccome who we already are.

    • Lindsay Clinton

      poverty of opportunity

      Hi Jo-

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I liked that you flipped the question in your fourth paragraph and shared what it is that can bring happiness. Often, what the poor do have in abundance in community. It is easier to establish a sense of community in small villages or dense slums. It could help explain why many Westerners leave poor countries or villages thinking that everything is fine and grand–the community has created powerful bonds and a sense of security that leads to a sense of well-being. Unfortunately, that well-being is insecure and often short-lived because of things outside of their control–climate change, illness, natural disaster, to name a few.

      The question I can’t answer that you asked at the end of your post is why does society still allows poverty to exist? I’m not sure if it’s because of the notion "out of sight out of mind" or if we’re selfish, or if we’re just not being innovative enough. But, I would love to hear the group’s thoughts on this.

  • Francine Mestrum

    What’s wrong with being poor?

    What’s wrong with being poor?

    - as Jonathan Lewis said, you may be slowly starving to death

    - you are not part of community, you lack the resources to take part in social life – which is also life threatening.

    So this is the result of all the talk about ‘happiness’: if poor people feel happy, there is no problem? Is this where we have arrived after twenty years of so-called poverty research?

    Poverty will not be solved as long as we persist to ignore that in all market economjies poverty is mainly a lack of income. Povderty reduction policies can be multidimensional, but tnhey should always aim at giving people the monetary resources to live a normal life.

    Whether people are happy or unhappy has nothing to do with wealth or poverty.

    And as several people have indicated in these comments: it is indeed a matter of human rights and of social justice.

    The poverty problem is so eaxsy to solve, but there is no willingness to talke about redistribution …

  • Ravi Arapurakal – Wholeecology Strategist

    What’s wrong with being poor?

    What’s wrong with anyone being poor is that it is one of US who is being poor.

    We are completely integral as a species, not only at the sub-nuclear level, at the neurological level, and at the syminformatic level.

    When any one of us, who has not yet had access to the knowledge and skills that some of us take for granted, or even has not had access to the resources necessary to fulfill the potential that knowledge and skills give her or him – they are rather like undeveloped organs in our larger human specieshood.

    It is WE who should feel incomplete and undeveloped as long as some of us don’t have access to the fulfillment of the potential that the rest of us take for granted.

    In short, our entire species is only as developed as the least developed of us.

    • Lindsay Clinton

      What’s wrong with being poor?

      Dear Ravi,

      If only people actually acted according to your philosophy! Unfortunately, there is a major lack of empathy in our world; too often our more well-off citizens choose to ignore the woes of the rest of humanity. That inability to put oneself in the shoes of the poor, and to keep on living the same way because "thank god I don’t have to live THAT way" just doesn’t work. A giant dose of empathy might actually help the Haves see how to provide value to the Have Nots.

      Lindsay

      • Ravi Arapurakal – Wholeecology Strategist

        (Response to Lindsay) What’s wrong with being poor?

        Dear Lindsay,

        It’s so heartening to stress the importance of empathy as the condition necessary to get the Haves to provide value to the Have Nots.

        In order to inject the Haves with a giant dose of empathy, we must address the core factor that brings about the lack of empathy in the first place.

        In my preceding response to Jo’s similar question:

        “A question then is, why does so much poverty still persist today, given the amount of wealth and knowledge in the world in the 21st century? Why does society and humanity in general, still allow the condition of (extreme) poverty to persist?…tolerating it to continue?…allowing it to exist…?"

        I point out an additional area where we need to focus:

        “Poverty still exists today because the identity core of the conceptual system of the dominant and increasingly global civilization is not consistent with the fact that the human species has been, from the beginnings of systematic linguistic information transfer among us; i.e., from our earliest conversations, been becoming a single, networked multividual.

        "Why? most ‘individual’ humans grasp and respond to their experience with a conceptual system that is almost entirely IMPORTED from other humans, via upbringing, education, communications, and the media, made up of the experiences, assumptions and ideas of OTHERS.

        "The prevailing tendency to attribute the valuations, interpretations, and the resulting actions – to the local form, is a species-wide delusion that remains the biggest single threat to the survival of our own, and other species.

        "The (false) human identity as local human form at the core of the conceptual system of the dominant, and increasingly, global, civilization. This false identity tends to make us defensive, acquisitive, and exploitive. There will be poverty as long as we fail to realize and become who we already are.”

        "In short, Lindsay, if we want to address the problem of systemic poverty, we must make an effort to decontaminate our species of the prevailing false identity as the local human form, so that we might revert to our true identity as the networked multividual."

        After all, would it not be impossible for anyone who knows that every one else are each other vantage point of one’s own true self not to feel empathy for everyone else, and therefore, act accordingly as well?

        Lindsay, can we afford not to attempt addressing this origin of the systemic lack of empathy that keeps retarding our efforts to end poverty for good?

  • Jonathan C Lewis

    For the poor life is “fragile, cheap, dangerous and unpredictable.”

    Thanks to Lindsay Clinton and the Social Edge for shining a spotlight on this issue.

    For some time, many have suspected that those who claim to speak for the poor or even understand the world through the eyes of the impoverished are probably over-hyping their expertise and perhaps even their empathy. We can hope for the day when the poor will be empowered to answer Linday’s questions for themselves.

    I am partial to the novelist Michael Holman’s (author, Last Orders at Harrods) poignant summary: For the poor life is “fragile, cheap, dangerous and unpredictable.”

    • Terry Hallman

      For the poor life is “fragile, cheap, dangerous and unpredictable.”

      "For the poor life is ‘fragile, cheap, dangerous and unpredictable.’"

      Which, in turn, is the basis for terrorism. "Unpredictable" cuts a wide swath. That’s not terrorism anyway for the poorest among us. It’s self-defense.

      If only one person in a thousand can find a way to strike back, and a billion people suffer torturous deprivation that tells them at every moment that life is cheap, that’s a million people. But it’s more than a billion people, and more than one in a thousand who are finding ways to strike back.

      Word.

  • John Hamerlinck

    QoL vs. SoL

    I believe that people in the U.S. frequently think of "quality of life" and "standard of living" as interchangeable.This is because standard of living is essentially a measure of consumption, and we consume more than anybody else in the world and think that buying things can produce quality of life. It is a privileged point of view that probably doesn’t exist in too many "developing" places.

    • Ingrid Bruynse

      QoL vs. SoL

      I like your point, John…

      I agree that poverty is a social justice issue, and our discussion presupposes a lot without the poor contributing to the chat.

      So, does consumption make us happy? Not necessarily.

      Who speaks for the poor? How do we include or exclude through this "open" "web" where some of us can express our views so openly and easly – (as long as we have resources and bandwidth and time :) ).

      Quality of life is a place where those of us not working on a western consumption method of living our lives may have something to contribute to the prevailing paradigm of more is better.

      More is defininitely better when you have none. Then you get to the tipping point where "more" is just "more". Then more becomes unpleasant and unhelpful, and eats itself in pain and misery.

      SO going back to QoL – finding the balance, for more of us, to have enough, and more choice, and more voice!

      From Ingrid the pale African.

  • Al Wroblewski

    A New Paradigm with New Metrics

    In Tracy Kidder’s book on Paul Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains, reference is made to a Haitian proverb suggesting God dumped prosperity on the planet but it is up to us to distribute it. I like that.

    Here in the US, the Fed says that 90% of wealth is owned by 10% of households. A recent study out of Northeastern Univ has shown the likelihood of being unemployment at the moment is inversely proportional to one’s previous income. Out-sized unemployment has not touched the $100,000 and up income group. Recession accelerates the shift of wealth to the already wealthy. Globally, this is disastrous.

    Throughout the course of human history, wealth tends to concentrate. The vacuum cleaner effect: sucking up wealth into the hands of a few (Wilfredo Pareto was bothered by this phenomenon in Italy).

    A Grand Master wealth vacuum cleaner like Bill Gates is confronted with a rather uncomfortable moral imperative. On the one hand his ego has been stroked as if he is somehow responsible for his accumulated wealth. However, on the other hand he is obviously quite aware that his success requires the non-success of many others. (Or maybe he isn’t. Maybe he thinks it is not a zero sum game!) The moral imperative is about payback.

    How much must he give back to sleep well at night? Probably not very much (stats in the USA document the fact that, percentage-wise, the less well-off give far more that their well-off brethren).

    Just like Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) jumped onto the stage with its measures of "correctness," we need a WDM (as opposed to WMD!): Wealth Distribution Metric. I think we need to think beyond Bill Gates-style philanthropy. The best thing the Skoll Foundation can do is facilitate creation of a set of metrics that indicate the lasting redistributive effect of an initiative. Then that score is used to attract capital investment.

    Capitalism is flawed in the wealth distribution zone. Communism is flawed in the wealth creation zone. Socialism is a compromise.

    The Haitians are correct.

    Wealth is wealth. We should receive it humbly. It is a gift of the gods.

    As an American (or, more correctly, a United States of American — in deference to Canadians, Central and South Americans) you cannot imagine the shame I feel for the unparalleled pain we have heaped upon our brothers, sisters (and ourselves) with our reckless abuse of prosperity — not only now but over the centuries. The gods gave us (USA) unparalleled wealth which we have squandered recklessly.

    Poverty is a metric. It is a metric of failure. It is a metric of arrogance. The more poverty, the more arrogance. Countries of maximum prosperity also are countries of maximum arrogance.

    Finally: If Capitalism is so great, why is there still poverty?

      served and he has gathered unparalleled status

    • Jeff Mowatt

      A New Paradigm with New Metrics

      Al, you’ll find no argument from me on the flaws of capitalism. Above, you’ll see Terry’s point that those who wealth falls to be distributed to, have the potential to strike back when pushed to the point of self-defense.

      This was one of the major points made in Terry’s white paper for inclusive capitalism, which included a description of a for-profit l business for social purpose.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…ntered_Economic_Development

      He describes the limitations of capitalism in the interview that marks our having established in the UK and participating here on Social Edge to convey the idea.

      http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/economicdev.html

      You will probably know that Bill Gates has recently become an advocate for inclusive capitalism. His interpretation may not be quite the same, however.

      Refotming the output of capitalism for inclusion is a message many don’t want to hear. Same may wish to redefine it, others may make partial interpretations.

      Bill Gates and Warren Buffet appeared together on a CNBC broadcast last week from Columbia which I believe was entitled "Keeping America Great". There was little indication of Gates’ recent conversion or Buffet’s criticism of derivative. It was to me reminiscent of a trip to Disneyland where a mechanical parrot had read the same script.

      Yet we know people are unemployed, hungry and living in tent camps, even in the USA.

    • Terry Hallman

      A New Paradigm with New Metrics

      "Finally: If Capitalism is so great, why is there still poverty?"

      For consideration:

      "Capitalism as we knew it ended on September 15, 2008. That much is clear. What we don’t know yet is what will replace it and whether that new version will be any better than what went before. The choices we make now will set us on the road either to renewed prosperity or to stagnation and even depression.

      "On that day, Lehman Brothers, a powerful Wall Street investment bank, declared itself bankrupt. Panic spread rapidly throughout the financial markets. What had once seemed valuable investments suddenly lost most of their value, turning into “toxic assets.” The instant loss of value threatened to bring down some of the world’s largest financial institutions. This sparked a chain reaction that ultimately led to the worst global economic crisis since at least the Great Depression of the 1930s.

      "Amid the carnage of bankruptcies, soaring unemployment, and the loss of millions of family homes lay the bloody corpse of a set of ideas that had underpinned the economics of the previous thirty years. This was a period in which it was widely believed that capitalism based on markets, especially financial markets, could be relied on to deliver unprecedented prosperity. This was the “Great Moderation,” an era that began in the 1980s, when the American economy embarked on an extended run of low inflation and steady growth, a trend that went global in the 1990s. As well as creating an army of billionaires, it was believed that this system would lead to a general increase in wealth, including among some of the poorest people on the planet, hundreds of millions of whom would be lifted out of dire poverty.

      "Faced with the collapse of this version of capitalism, government, which the orthodoxy prior to September 15 had tended to see as the problem, suddenly became the savior. The titans of Wall Street, long accustomed to complaining about big government and its wealth- destroying red tape, threw themselves on the mercy of Uncle Sam and his seemingly bottomless pockets. (The same thing happened in the City of London and other financial centers around the world.) Government, doing what it knows best, hurled money at the problem. It probably had no alternative. Symbolizing how the world had changed, as it bailed out the financial system, the American government became the world’s biggest owner of bank shares.

      "Dealing with the toxic financial assets bequeathed by the bankers was fiendishly difficult. In the months after Lehman collapsed, the Bush and Obama administrations wrestled with various schemes to purge the rottenness from the banks’ balance sheets, but recovery was painfully slow.

      "Yet there is an even bigger problem than toxic assets, and that is toxic ideas. The years that preceded the crisis were dominated by a set of theories that celebrated the wisdom of markets. These ideas, which shaped government policies and underpinned banking practices, were triumphant in the boom years. They had won broad acceptance because they seemed to work in practice. Capitalism had seen off communism. Countries with more market oriented forms of capitalism seemed more productive and prosperous than those that were more planned and heavily regulated by the state.

      "In the wake of the crash of September 2008, the challenge is to figure out whether some, all, or none of these theories should survive the crisis. The bust has pushed an alternative set of ideas to the forefront that call for comprehensive intervention in financial markets and bigger government. Working out which of these ideas are toxic and could poison our future prosperity is the most urgent, and difficult, challenge we face.

      "To find the road from ruin to renewed prosperity, we must engage in a new battle of ideas to work out which elements of the conventional wisdom of the past thirty years will be needed perhaps in an improved form — and which ideas should be jettisoned along the way and replaced with something entirely new."

      —————-

      That’s from "The Road from Ruin", by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green. Who’s Matthew Bishop? "Matthew Bishop is the US Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief of The Economist. Mr. Bishop was previously the magazine’s London-based Business Editor." Who’s Michael Green? "Michael Green is an independent writer and consultant, based in London.

      Michael studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford." etc. Of particular interest is the single sentence about managing UK aid to Russia.

      more info at http://www.theroadfromruin.com

      —————–

      So, back to the question: If capitalism is so great, why is there still poverty?

      IMO: Because traditional capitalism, recently deceased (see above for just one obit., albeit surely a reluctant obit. if from Economist mag.), was not about people. What’s next? Here’s a clue:

      The Quants

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed2FWNWwE3I

      It’s a new paradigm, with new metrics, creating a new sort of financial system that ventures even further from human concerns. It’s not even capitalism any more, deceased or new. It’s more like Frankenstein’s monster.

      Note in particular the oyster fisherman at the start. He’s already figured out to get away to safe ground, a few billion dollars behind him and an oyster farm for his front.

    • Lindsay Clinton

      A New Paradigm with New Metrics

      Dear Al,

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Your idea about WDM (Wealth Distribution Metric) is quite interesting and something I haven’t heard talked about. But, the rhetoric in the microfinance/social enterprise space in India is actually tilted in this direction, with leaders like Vijay Mahajan (founder of BASIX) and Vineet Rai (Co-Founder Intellecap and Aavishkaar) using similar language to describe their visions for a more inclusive India.

      The precise language they use is "inclusive wealth." For example, a recent oped written by Rai states, "Perhaps the time has come to look at a new world order that does not see the creation of wealth as distinct from its distribution, but helps us produce wealth that is equitably distributed while it is being produced. Maybe we need to find ways of decoupling the idea of doing business with the idea of greed itself."

      The idea of inclusive wealth could change the ability of the poor to benefit from the work they do. How does this happen? Through social businesses that enable the poor to take an ownership stake in the company itself. Through strategic investment into companies that serve or employ the Bottom of they Pyramid, thereby allowing them to grow and scale.

      *Full disclosure: Vineet Rai is the Co-Founder of Intellecap (www.intellecap.com), the company that publishes Beyond Profit (www.beyondprofit.com).

  • Dane Shelly

    Great Topic

    Lindsay, this is a great topic. I recently had this very conversation with a buddy of mine who was in Zambia with the Peace Corps. We talked about how much happier children in developing countries seem than American children. My friend said that it made him seriously question what, exactly, he was supposed to be providing to these villagers. But then, one of his friends in the village had a daughter who died unexpectedly from a disease that would have been easily treatable in a Western society. The grief of his friend convinced him that development matters – at least to the point where people have access to basic necessities and modern medicine.

    For those who want to explore this topic further, I want to point you to some other resources:

    First, the UN has been releasing a Human Development report (as opposed to Economic Development), which strives to define development more broadly by looking at factors such as life expectancy, education levels, etc.

    Also, a few years ago the King of Bhutan adopted a similar metric called "Gross National Happiness" as an alternative to Gross National Product or other narrowly economic measures of a country’s health.

    Carol Graham, a professor at the Univ. of Maryland, recently released a book called "Happiness Around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires."

    And Pope John Paul II also wrote frequently about this topic, often criticizing "superdevelopment" (excessive materialism) and "spiritual poverty" in the rich western nations.

    As you can probably tell, this is a topic that I’ve been thinking about for awhile, and I look forward to hearing from more of you…

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Great Topic

      Dane-

      Thanks for commenting, and for sharing these great resources. Carol Graham’s book, in particular, seems quite relevant and really interesting. And, having heard about GNH in Bhutan for years, I am really keen on going there myself to see this in action.

      I wanted to share with you and the rest of our forum a new poll that yields interesting results when it comes to well-being. The Gallup Global Wellbeing survey came out at the end of last month that finds a huge gap in feelings of "well-being" according to where respondents live. To

      "Gallup’s global snapshot of wellbeing reveals a vast divide that underscores the diversity of economic development challenges around the world. The percentage who are "thriving" ranges from a high of 82% in Denmark to a low of 1% in Togo.

      "Using data collected in 155 countries or areas since 2005, Gallup classifies respondents as "thriving," "struggling," or "suffering," according to how they rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale.

      "Adults within each of the four major regions are often worlds apart in how they evaluate their lives. Africa has the lowest wellbeing; no country in this region has a thriving percentage higher than 25%. In fact, of the 41 countries where the thriving percentage is 10% or lower, more than half are in Africa. Conversely, in the Americas, where "thriving" is highest, the only countries with less than a quarter thriving are Cuba (24%) and Haiti (4%). "Thriving" in the Americas is highest in Costa Rica (63%) and Canada (62%), followed closely by Panama (58%), Brazil (58%), and the United States (57%)."

      Initially, the survey results aren’t that surprising. Poorer countries report "thriving less." But, this survey is particularly interesting when you look at HOW the respondents are surveyed. It doesn’t ask whether one is happy…it asks where you think you stand on a ladder between 0 and 10. This method means that respondents are immediately answering in COMPARISON to others and to where they COULD be in the scheme of things. So, it’s still not entirely clear whether these people are happy with their own position, or if they are just unhappy in COMPARISON to where they could be.

  • Terry Hallman

    When is poverty not poverty?

    This story from NYT

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/nyregion/30heavy.html

    is about a homeless man in Times Square. The last homeless person on Times Square. But he wants to live on the streets. Is he poor?

    And the last homeless person on Times Square? This is a very encouraging story. Not least the part about how that was achieved, quietly, even amidst Wall Street madness.



    "But tactics changed. Nonprofit groups began sharing information about the homeless people who were anchored in Times Square, gathering names, ages, medical conditions and the personal issues that might be keeping them homeless.

    "The street outreach teams from Common Ground and the Goddard Riverside Community Center, both nonprofit groups that hold contracts with the city, began maintaining close ties with the Times Square Alliance and the Police Department. More units of supportive housing and specialized shelter beds were opened up to the chronically homeless, as an alternative to the sometimes-unruly and intimidating general shelter system.

    [...]

    "“He’s kind of iconic,” Ms. Haggerty said. “He would leave for periods and then return, and some days we would actually succeed in getting him inside. But he has this fascination with the life in Times Square.”

    She added, “We are continuing to plug away to find the right housing solution for Heavy.”

    All that effort for just one person, as though he is not disposable and he is worth caring about. Hope springs eternal.

    • Lindsay Clinton

      When is poverty not poverty?

      Terry-

      Thanks for sharing this story from the NYTimes. What I find interesting about this is the method that was used to drastically reduce the number of homeless. The organizations that worked on the problem made a distinct and focused effort to COUNT the number of homeless.

      This is notable in relation to a new campaign that India is currently working on to give every single member of its 1.2 billion population a unique ID (UID). The UID Project is being led by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani. There are high hopes that by COUNTING and identifying each of India’s citizens, government funding can be better tracked, progress out of poverty can be measured, and each person can potentially by "financially included."

      The Times Square project is a small scale initiative in comparison to the UID Project, but it illustrates the importance of recognizing the poor as individuals, not merely a faceless community. When people are enumerated, it is easier to trach and measure progress.

      Here’s an interview in today’s MINT newspaper with Nilekani, who is leading the initiative: http://www.livemint.com/…/Nandan-Nilekani–We-will-issu.html?h=B

      Oh, and one more thing…I love that Nilekani is a super-successful businessman who has entered a government office (this is a cabinet-level position) and is using his management and technical expertise to invoke social change. It would be great to see more leadership like this in other developing economies around the world.

  • Pamela Hawley

    The Wealth Available to Us All

    Once we do get beyond the notion of extreme poverty, in which people are not able to subsist, I think we do need to look at what wealth means. "Money poverty" can be horrific and exhaust a terrible toll on people’s lives. However, there is also a wealth that is available to us all.

    Wealth is a state of mind and life. We tend to associate poverty with money. But poverty can be mental, emotional or spiritual poverty. I am often struck by this in my travel and volunteering in developing nations. Often, the divorce rates are low. Families not only stay together, but also spend time together. They gather food from the fields together, cook together and share meals together.

    Contrast us: 15 minute family dinners if we are lucky. Fast-food and food distanced from its natural base. We eat alone; we eat in our cars. Divorces are easier to get, and in our mind it can be easier to allow those thoughts in as a possibility, rather than work through critical issues. So we lose the connection to family. We lose the connection to the local farm. We can lose the connection to long-term commitment.

    We lose our greatest asset in natural wealth: relationships. Relationships with ourselves, our families, the earth. This wealth creates happy, balanced, productive, lower stress lifestyles, because we are connected in the way we are meant to be.

    Further, we often pass by our heritage and where we come from. In many emerging nations, and especially in the continent of Africa, we see tribes value their connection to their heritage as primary importance even above their nationality. There is a deep-rooted connection to rituals and history which keeps people grounded in who they are, and the deeper, long-term meaning of being a part of a larger community in their lives.

    Poverty is about money, at times. It has to be addressed as people should have the opportunity to live productive lives and make choices about what they would like to devote their lives to. Poverty is also about our well-being. Often when we get beyond "money poverty," we forget "well-being poverty," and get trapped in a go-go-go consumer culture.

    I hope we can celebrate the healthy wealth that is accessible to us all in positive, committed relationships with ourselves, one another, our families, our earth, our communities and our heritage. How wonderful this is available to us all.

    Sincerely,

    Pamela Hawley

    Founder and CEO

    UniversalGiving™

    phawley@universalgiving.org

    http://www.universalgiving.org

    Living and Giving blog

    http://www.pamelahawley.wordpress.com

  • Purnima Chawla

    Poverty is a state of mind, but it’s also about choices

    Hello Lindsay,

    Thanks for starting an interesting discussion. I do think that there is an experiential element to poverty – it is a perceived lack of something vital and essential. But comparing lack of food or clean water to lack of quality family time or a fulfilling job leaves out an important element, which is the lack of choice. The difference between extreme poverty in developing countries and poverty in relatively rich societies is how much latitude the "poor people" have to change things. Any discussion about poverty is also about power and agency.

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Poverty is a state of mind, but it’s also about choices

      Thanks Purnima for contributing to the discussion. Valid point…it goes back to the notion of opportunity. A poor person might be happy until there comes a day when she has to send a child to school or get medical treatment for a sick family member. It’s these situations that illustrate how much lack of power/agency/opportuniy there is in a person’s life.

  • jo davidson

    loss of value

    I agree happiness is not a product of the market-place, it’s about people not things, right Pamela? Happiness is also about loving what you do. Poverty robs people of their happiness and inner peace, because it’s not a natural state to be in, in an abundant universe. Poverty is also about lacking the opportunity to love what you do, by not having the means to try to do it. For the condition to fly by the wayside, I think it was Helen Keller who said, ‘when one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.’

    Poverty makes people kind of blind in their lives too – what it means to be poor is, not having the opportunity to open the door – and who has the right to deny people their right, to open their own doors? My favorite quote about happiness comes from the Buddha: Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others. As B Disraeli noted, ‘there is no happiness without action.’

    The question of poverty is one of action, around accountability and responsibility – who is to be held accountable when the world favors the few? That’s why there has to be action around removing such an outrageous gap between rich and poor, it’s up to everyone, rich and poor to close it.

    What’s interesting Terry, about the collapse of capitalism in Sept 2008, coinciding with the atom smashing LHC beginning its journey of discovering the secrets of the universe, in looking for new particles and such, is that it’s about weeding out toxic ideas (of the arrogant and uninformed of the past who structured things.) As we know, the universe works on it’s own time, but events like these lay the seeds to germinate a shift in global values and responsibility. You know, I hear the UN has 2012 marked for a global governance system, to reign in climate change, poverty reduction and development etc, what do you think, is it going to be more of the same of the same old past, with ‘buck-passing’ of the individual responsibility of nations? One thing’s for sure, the world has to act, poverty fuels the kind of anger it can’t escape…and all this stemming from a loss of value, that poverty and limitation promotes.

    I agree with the Dalia Lama, ‘nothing other than compassion, can be a prerequisite to building a happy and productive society.’

  • Greg Matney

    Focusing on Wealth

    I’ve always found it helpful to focus on wealth (not poverty) when assessing and comparing different circumstances of individuals around the globe. Four types of wealth are spiritual, relational, motivational, and material (Silvoso) and every culture and individual holds varying amounts of each.

    As per the article, I’d like to answer the question, "What is wrong by being poor" to say that the problem should be focused off of poverty, and toward rights. What rights and freedoms are fundamental to humanity (Sen, "Development as Freedom"), and are these individuals being allotted their rights in a way consistent with those around them?

    The Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) have done as good of job as any as defining freedoms/rights that every person should have. Poverty should be viewed in the context of whether or not one has been given access to their fundamental rights as a human. In this, we’re moving past ‘feeling bad’ for someone without a large house, and moving towards fighting for someone who is not experiencing their rights. I believe that correct fundamental freedoms have been identified, so its less about engaging the materially poor on defining those freedoms, and more about engaging the materially poor on contextual solutions to reaching these freedoms.

    A person may seem happy because they’ve known no other situation – water has always been unclean – or their current situation is better than their past – a glass of slightly dirty water is better than a glass of completely dirty water. Contentment with either is based on having no choice of clean water. Clean water should be a right/freedom, not a privilege. Coca Cola is a privilege, and one shouldn’t say, "These people are poor, they’ve never even had a coke?", but one should and can say, "These people have not been given their rightful clean water, which is a justice issue."

    Asking ‘whether the poor are happy or content’ is less important than asking whether the poor are being given their fundamental rights. If someone has the right to education, clean water, ability to live without fear of oppressors, etc., then their ‘apparent physical wealth or poverty’ should be moved to the back of our minds. Additionally, happiness is certainly fleeting, and a smile on one’s face when one visits their village (probably because of a language barrier) is not happiness. Development is not about brining happiness, but identifying and implementing ways to help all achieve their fundamental freedoms.

    Asking ‘what the poor want’ can certainly serve a purpose – if it brings them towards dignity – which is the desire of all humanity. This certainly needs to be cautioned, though, because asking ‘what they need’ in the wrong way can strengthen their lack of dignity. I would then say that the best way to bring the materially poor to the table is to give them information and options. Present good information to the leadership of a village, IE "We’ve done research and found that 30% of the children here are sick every quarter, and here’s why we think its because of the water source." Then present opportunities, IE "We’ve found that there are 3-5 different ways we can work together to bring clean water to this area in a sustainable fashion. Our estimate is that it will cost about 50 cents a liter for this method, 1 rupee a liter for this method, 3 rupees a liter for this method. Here are the pros and cons to each way."

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Focusing on Wealth

      Greg-

      Terrific post. You’ve really opened up the discussion by challenging us all to think not just of opportunity or income poverty, but to think toward Amartya Sen’s philosophy of "development as freedom" and fundamental human rights of all people.

      At the Opportunity Collaboration 2009 in Mexico (see http://www.opportunitycollaboration.net/) one of the required readings was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s a document that many of the participants had read long ago, but it was not fresh in our minds. For the participants at the Collaboration, re-reading the Declaration reinvigorated the reasons many of us got involved in our work. Although I doubt that many social entrepreneurs think of themselves as "human rights workers," they indeed are.

      The document, written in 1948, distills the discussion at hand to its central elements. For everyone’s reference, I’ve pulled some of the Articles from the document that relate closely to our ongoing conversation. For the entire document, see this link: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/#atop

      EXCERPTS:

      Article 23.

          * (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

      Article 24.

          * Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

      Article 25.

          * (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

          * (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

      Article 26.

          * (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.

      These articles describe rights that are often denied to the poor. When we frame the poverty discussion in terms of "rights," the dialogue is elevated from "wouldn’t it be nice if there were fewer poor people" to "we must enable all men, women, and children to have the same fundamental human rights."

      Thanks again for joining the discussion Greg!

    • Robin Molinski

      Focusing on Wealth

      Well put Greg, I agree that at a fundamental level the continuing problem of poverty is a rights issue. Since the end of WWII & the establishment of the current moribund world order (Bretton Woods, WTO, WB, IMF, UNSC, etc) much growing emphasis has been placed on the rights of corporations & business to create wealth relatively unchecked. (The subprime banking mess is an example of the kind of faliures of the system to monitor itself) Too often, however ‘growth’ of corporations or of ‘the economy’ has come at the expense of the fundamental rights of millions of individual human beings not to even mention the environment. ‘Growth’ has become the holy grail of the endemic religion of fanatical greed blighting this planet, & as long as it is pursued as an end in itself rather then the means for improving life we will continue to see increases in economic inequality. So long as human beings lives & dignity can be calculated away as just another cost of business, to be reduced to & beyond the limits of tolerance, so long as business concerns itself only with what is profitable & legal & fails to ask the question of what is right & decent so long as governments pander only to the strong while ignoring or trampling on the rights of the weak we can expect no dramatic change in the condition of the global poor.

      It takes years & a law degree to work out just what is legal, but only empathy, understanding & a conscience to know what is right.

  • vivian louie

    Contextualized Poverty and Grassroots Organizing

    My very first blog experience; please forgive if I violate blog ettiquette.

    Thanks to everyone for the informative, education, and inspirational postings; however, the more that’s said, the more amorphous the issue, the more cerebral and philosophical. When poverty has real-life effects of death and human suffering, we should use every opportunity to translate dogma into action.

    Very simply, poverty means less. Clearly, "less" is not confined to specific contexts, nor is it static in value. Poverty has thus far been discussed in the following contexts:

    - Social justice, environmental justice, and human rights

    - Economic structures and policies

    - Consumerism and pop culture

    - Wealth distribution

    Contextualized poverty illuminates core strategies around *access* to survival resources, justice, participation and use, decision making – each with its own journey and end. It further reveals the impervious impacts of cultural differences in political, economic, and social structures. Contextualized poverty allows for more focused and intelligent discussions without the need to challenge each other for priority and presence.

    By contextualizing and breaking down poverty issues into more tangible and focused "buckets", opportunies to engage communities at the local level become more realistic when the consequences of poverty are more relevant to daily life. By engaging in grassroots organizing and bringing the fight to the local community, we create the model of democratic, inclusive, and relevant change without imperialistic agendas.

    If blogs are meant to inspire diverse dialogue, I suggest that dialogue is only meaningful when coupled with action.

    If the purpose of this blog topic is to relieve the guilt of the privileged when working with poor people, then I offer again, grassroots organizing is the answer. We need to bring the fight to the people, translate the fight into community-based sustainability planning, let the people educate us on what they need, then use our skills and connections to coordinate sustainable solutions that are led and managed by the community. In short, help the community own their own fight.

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Contextualized Poverty and Grassroots Organizing

      Dear Vivian,

      Welcome to the world of blogging and online discussion. Thanks for taking the plunge with us! Thanks for bringing up the action element. You point out the need for more grassroots organizing. There are some great examples of this in India. There’s SEWA (www.sewa.org), of course, the self-employed women’s association, which started by organizing informal women workers in the 70s and now works with almost 1 million women. There’s Roshan Vikas (http://www.social-impact.org/…/Roshan%20Vikas.pdf), an organization that helps women form self-help groups. There’s SPARC (www.sparcindia.org), an NGO working in India’s slums, which works to organize hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers and pavement dwellers to address issues related to urban poverty, and collectively produce solutions for affordable housing and sanitation.

      I would like to invite forum participants to share examples of community-based MEDIA efforts…projects that are not just organizing the poor, but also giving them tools that enable them to share their ideas and opinions. One of my favorite examples is Video Volunteers, a global social media network, which provides solutions-based media for marginalized and poor communities around the world. Check them out at http://www.videovolunteers.org/.

      Video Volunteers works in local communities to train the marginalized and/or poor how to make video documentaries that bring social issues to light. In this way, communities can tell their own stories about issues that matter to them.

      Does anyone else have interesting community-based media models to share?

  • C. Brayton

    The Empirical Method

    what’s it like to be poor? try it and see, or read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book on life as a Wal-Mart wage-earner.

    how to bring the poor into the conversation? go to where they are and talk to them.

    here in São Paulo, where I live with my wife, we are lucky enough to be surrounded by a vast, sort of nebulous service network of poor people working na informalidade — the informal labor market — for us.

    we are friends and so we talk to them about what they think about stuff. they ask us for advice, such as if they were thinking about buying their kid a computer in 36 installments, which in recent years they are beginning to be able to consider, which might be the best to buy?

    (Chinese PC clones with Linux are getting extraordinarily cheap here. MY next box is going to be one.)

    Duh. You cyberphilanthropreneurs.

    How can you help the poor if you are unable to geolocate them the old-fashioned way, in the event they have not been air-dropped an iPhone yet?

    • Lindsay Clinton

      The Empirical Method

      Well CBrayton,

      I have to give you credit for being practical. But, your post was a bit dismissive. What we are talking about is not just talking to 5 or 10 poor people, but understanding the plight of billions.

      To give you an example of the kind of solution that can help provide insight into the lives of the poor, check out http://www.miworld.com. MiWorld has a plan to put Flip videos into the hands of hundreds of thousands of poor people/communities around the world so that they can tell their own stories. The process will be facilitated by partnerships with local NGOs in developing countries worldwide. You facetiously referred to helping the poor by dropping them an iPhone, but the innovation offered by MiWorld is making something similar ACTUALLY happen. Using technology to open up the global conversation is a GREAT way to engage this marginalized population in the conversation.

  • Justin Ellis

    Lifeguard

    Hi Lindsay, thanks for the great discussion.

    I wonder frequently about many of the great points brought up in your post and in the lengthy replies. It seems like opinions span the full spectrum of possibility too (in other forums), complete with examples proving them correct and exceptions proving them wrong. I very much enjoy reading Ivan Illich’s old writings on this topic and seeing how controversial an issue this still is and how little of it has been resolved since the 60′s when he was writing.

    When I was a lifeguard, I was faced several times with the position of being in a very privileged position (not drowning) while someone else within arms reach of me was in a very desperate position (drowning). The reached out to me, gasping for air and trying cry out, wanting…demanding that I grab their hand and save them. It was my responsibility, being in the position of privilege, to decide the best way to save the desperate person. They wanted my hand, I gave them a flotation device instead, they didn’t even know that was an option. Desperate people are acting on survival instincts, it seems like it’s not even the same person.

    Sometimes, when I’m around extremely impoverished people, I feel like they’re desperate too, that they want me to give them exactly what they think they need…and I’m actually responsible for making that decision for them, because of my privilege, because I’m not in a desperate situation and can have some perspective on the problem.

    Do you think this is a valid idea? I’m not the leader of an international NGO, or a phd, this isn’t a trick that I’m going to respond to with lots of great references or anything. Most of my travel experience is with the military and I’m genuinely interested in your thoughts on my impressions of poverty.

    Regards,

    Justin

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Lifeguard

      Dear Justin,

      Sorry it’s taken me a few days to respond! I appreciate you adding your insights and questions to this discussion. Let me begin by saying, I’m not the leader of an international NGO either and I don’t have a phD…yet!

      I think that you bring forward an interesting idea about individual responsibility to help. When you are a lifeguard, it is your responsibility to save a person who is drowning. You have the power to do so, and the swimmer knows that and trusts you to do that. You might feel the same way when you are walking down a street in Kabul and a little girl asks for help. You think that in this moment, you are the only one who can help, and you believe that you must.

      But, I think it’s difficult to apply this logic to the inequality we are talking about because it’s not a one-on-one solution we’re looking for–we need systemic change. If you help that one impoverished person today, it will enable them to live another day, but probably won’t solve the root of the problem.

      If I move out of literal interpretation of your question and think more metaphorically (which is likely what you meant)–I think I have to give you a qualified answer. In some ways, the well-off have the responsibility in determining how to help the poor–and in the past this has taken the form of development firms and international agencies taking the steps they deem necessary. But, this is old school development thinking, is rather paternalistic, and has not always had great results (see Dambisa Moyo).

      I’ve been pushing the idea, in some of my earlier responses, of including the poor in the dialogue, and not doing what we (privileged outsiders) think is best, but asking them what is best for them. It’s a combination of doing what we think is right, but doing it in an informed way, that brings in the ideas/visions of the people we are trying to help.

      To carry on with your analogy, it would mean asking a non-swimmer what he needs before he gets in the pool. He might tell you that he wants to know how to keep his head above water. Maybe you decide to give him arm-floaties, but what he really wants is for you to tell him how to keep himself afloat without props. By asking him what he needs, you may be able to co-create a viable solution that lets him swim on his own.

      I’d be curious to hear what others think…

  • Ciara

    Poverty as a State of Mind

    I definitely see poverty as a state of mind. I do also see it as a matter of perception– what one perceives oneself to have access to, and what one perceives oneself to not have access to. We would want for one to see the world as open to him or her, and to feel that any thing is possible. When people don’t feel that way, we have to look at what in that person’s environment is making them feel that way. Everyone may not feel that their situation is lacking. For those who do, I am sure that if we were to ask them what would help them to feel good about their lives and feel that anything is possible, then they would be able to pinpoint some concrete examples of aspects of their environments that could be fixed. If we care enough to help, as I am sure we would to be asking these questions in the first place, then I bet that we may find that we have the power to help in ways that we’ve never thought of. We just might find that a lot of what makes people feel poor are things that can sometimes be easily fixed by the right people. And sometimes we are those right people who can help others expand their horizons and expand what they perceive to be their realm of possibilty and influence.

  • Edward Harkins

    Extreme poverty with extreme inequality is unjust

    A number of comments I’d like to add to the excellent thread:

    1. There is nothing fanciful or theoretical or “it’s all a state of mind”, about extreme poverty where the extremity of it causes you or your family or members of your community to suffer prevenable physical or mental damage. If people starve in our world of plenty or suffer pain or death from preventable illness, or are clinically depressed, or go mad (literally) because they are in extreme poverty that is plain wrong and is a great social injustice.

    If you are physically starving to death, it’s not ‘all a state of mind’, your are starving and, normally, are unavoidably and desperately unhappy about that.

    2. Having got that out of the way, I find that the other confusion and obfuscation that goes on, is regarding whether people in ‘the West’ are, per se, less happy than people in ‘Underdeveloped’ or other economies. This, in my experience, is often just a cover for anti-consumerism that causes great confusion on an important point about poverty – which is that it must be judged in the context of inequality in the society in which it is occurring.

    The recent acclaimed research by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett et al (See their book ‘The Spirit Level’ ) very robustly demonstrated that it is the levels of inequality in any particular society that determines levels of happiness or unhappiness – and the attendant consequences of unhappiness. This has also been borne out in the writings of Tony Judt in ‘Ill Fares the Land’.

    It is evident that even in the generally affluent West, you are significantly likely to be happier and have a significantly greater sense of wellbeing if you are poor in, say, Denmark than if you are poor in, say, the UK – despite the fact that the UK is, overall, a far richer country than Denmark.

    3. Research into the cause of violence, especially male violence, at almost any level in almost any society (outside of those undergoing a particularly catastrophic event such as civil war or earthquake) time and again comes back to inequality and a sense of powerlessness on the part of the perpetrators of violence.

    4. So let’s focus more on one of the truly core and seemingly universal causes of unhappiness and mental ill-health; the existence of unjustifiable and extreme inequality in any given society – whether in the ‘affluent’ West or elsewhere. If there is unjustifiable and extreme inequality and it has severely negative social consequences then that can be described as a social injustice.

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Extreme poverty with extreme inequality is unjust

      Dear Edward,

      Thanks for bringing this book to our attention. I haven’t read The Spirit Level, but given the context of the conversation on this forum, I’d like to. Having not read the book, it seems like their research shows that one’s status relative to others is what matters in the context of well-being. If you are poor in a country with many rich people, you’re likely to feel the difference acutely, and your well-being will be affected. If, on the other hand, you are "not well off" and everyone else around you is in the same state, your well-being is less likely to be impacted. Am I taking too much of a leap there?

      Also, agree with you on #3. Lack of employment opportunities contributes greatly to violence and can also be attributed to the ease of luring men in poor countries into terrorism.

      Lindsay

      • Edward Harkins

        Extreme poverty with extreme inequality is unjust

        Lindsay you have the essence of the inequality argument – but it is a distinct part of the argument that the overall description of which particular society you happen to live in is not the key factor. In other words it is argued that the key factor is not whether your particular society is what would generally described as ‘poor’ or ‘rich’. The criticial factor is the inequality within each society.

        Obviously, exceptions have to be admitted; for example where a society has suffered wholesale collapse and the population is at or near the starvation level.

        For me the attraction of this argument is that it begins to offer a generalised framework within which to consider poverty, inequality and wellbeing across societies of greatly varying (material) wealth. Hence here in the West we are using the framework to examone why there are such high, and growing, levels of poor mental health and wellbeing amidst much affluence and availble medical ‘solutions’, as compared with some desperately (materially) poor societies.

        For us in the West, it is also striking that there are wide variences in evels of mental illness and wellbeing scores between Western societies that are seemingly similar in terms of material affluence.

        The W

  • Neerja Raman

    Its about Choice

    Do you know anyone who chooses to live in extreme poverty (unfed,unclothed, unloved etc..)? I do. I met them last year travelling in the Himalayas. They are called rishis, munis, saints whatever. Wise men and women who have reduced their physical needs without compromising their mental prowess and in some cases enhancing it even. Its their choice.

    Do you know any child who chooses to live in extreme poverty (unfed, unclothed, uneducated)? I don’t. Having grown up in India, surrounded by the poor, I cannot imagine a child choosing hunger over a full belly.

    Poverty is no different than other forms of injustice- be it equal opportunity for women, minorities, religion etc. And just like them, it is unnecessary – if we only have the will.

    Mostly poverty is not a choice. If it is, I am fine with it. Lets not over-think the issue – this discussion reminds me of the debate in the seventies about working moms versus career moms – what’s better?

    Its about choice. Society benefits when its people have choices.

  • cynthia

    Poverty of soulful art

    Dearn Lindsay,

    Thank you so much for asking this question. I am a cofounder of a community arts NGO, InterPlay, based in Oakland, California. I have traveled for the last three Januarys to Mumbai and other locations in India to teach and play in communities both wealthy and poor at the invitation of Indian leaders. A

    ll of my life I have been aware of a kind of poverty of community soul in the US. As a dancer I began to research the extinction of community art in religion and academica and the resulting danger of this loss to people who no longer dance, sing, tell stories, physically connect, or hang out together just for the heck of it. I call these our five freedoms: freedom to move, give voice, tell our truth, be, and connect. I would offer that such inherent abilities are a lifespring of community health and wealth. When I see people in Africa, India, Australia, or the US maintain these forms of wealth they seem more than happy. I encounter them as deeply alive. Something in them affects me. (See mirror neurons in the new brain science).

    Is extreme poverty, that situation where both food and shelter are severely interrupted, people lose contact with their basic individual and group freedoms. They become refugees.

    Teaching in clinics and slum areas in Mumbai and Bangalore, I noticed that many residents no longer access their home community arts. Away from their rural homes young people lose contact with common songs and dances. I asked a group of teens, many of whom had cell phones, if they could share a song with me. It was difficult for them to think of one. In the villages I am always welcomes with songs and dances first thing. But in the slum, that practice of danced prayer was no longer there.

    Sharing with Adivasi in Mumbai, Talasiri, South Gujarat and other places, where they still sing and dance together, I experienced their powerful life force even as they are up against loss of land and rights to their own productivity. Those who support them know that their community arts are more than lexicons of recreation. They are vocabularies of wholeness that activate vision, memory, creative space, reassuring contact, kinesthetic imagining of social good, and of general bodily health making. Community dance, song, and music making, I believe, are primary "interneting" web technologies that provide psychic shelter, sustenance, and energy, especially when the community art leaders are healthy and loving.

    One question that I think about regarding economic poverty is "How has hunger for material and social security through industrialization and defense contributed to educational systems that downplay basic freedoms and wholistic human wealth (right and left brain)? Having taught in higher education in the US, the most socially conscious students usually exhaust their life force and exhibit great bouts of depression and malnourishment as members of community. I think we might be wasting some of our greatest resources, ourselves, in the paradigm of wealth that we continue to prize.

    As for myself, I live in a condo in the Bay Area, drive a 97 toyota, have a husband, a college aged daughter, and a 20 year old NGO dedicated to the InterPlay of humans for health, peace, connection, and fun. I get to create things, research, and rest. Creating, contributing, and resting, are my idea of what humans are meant to do. Thanks to phones and the internet, my connections extend around the world. I also have a possport. I dance, sing, tell stories, and share great affection with many people. i consider myself one of the wealthiest people on the planet on all levels. When I foster any of the above in the world around me, I see life and new solutions rise up. This includes people in major depression, poverty, and despair in body, heart, mind, and soul.

    I am seeking to support a wider conversation on poverty and wealth and I am interested in connecting with twenty year olds who are wandering around the world looking for a greater match between experience and outcomes.

    Thank you for the privilege of sharing,

    Cynthia Winton-Henry

  • Ayan Banerjee

    Why do you want to be rich?

    Hey Lindsay,

    First and foremost let me compliment you (without indulging in sycophancy): You’ve got the knack to ask interesting questions.

    Though the answer will really depend on who’s asking it and who is answering it (in a typical 2×2 matrix)

    • Rich to Poor? ((Exploitative, selling the win-win story)

    • Poor to Poor? (Complacency perhaps. Contentment perhaps. Camaraderie perhaps)

    • Poor to Rich? (Retort, the defensive counterargument. Grapes could be sour!?)

    • Rich to Rich? (Well, it’s our academic debate isn’t it!? Ever ‘been’ poor??)

    Each block will give you something interesting to ponder on…

    Before one embarks on addressing ‘what’s wrong in being poor’, a flip-side question of the same coin is, ‘Why do you want to be rich?’

    If you have the answers ready, then here’s is an interesting story…

    My friend’s mom used to tell him to stop playing and study a bit. She was, quite honestly, fed up of his ways. He asked, “Why should I study, mom?”

    She said, “So that you can do better in your exams.”

    He asked, “So? How will that that help me?”

    “Well”, she said, “You will be wiser, knowledgeable and then have a good job and career. Eventually…”

    He asked again, while she wrongly assumed she had quelled his curiosity, “what will that give me?”

    A bit annoyed, she said, “obviously, you will be able to get a good car, a good house, a good wife…” (Yes, apologies: that IS the Indian mindset!)

    And he interrupted, “…so…?”

    She said, “well, you’ll have all the resources to be happy…isn’t that what you want in life, after all?”

    He said, “But mom! I AM already happy! Why go through all this (ordeal) to be happy?”

    I hope the essence (definitional difference of happiness vs poverty debate) – through the story – is not lost.

    Regards,

    Ayan

    P.S. A reflection on Jefferson’s "the right to the pursuit of happiness" is in order. which brings to mind a related question: Are the poor poor by choice, by birth, by compulsion (circumstances) and/or by destiny or by their (in)actions (Karma)???

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Why do you want to be rich?

      Dear Ayan,

      Thanks for joining the conversation! And for bringing us a different perspective by flipping the question. I’m not sure I’m the best person to answer though…I’ve never longed to be rich, and I seem to be doing a pretty good job of keeping myself in check! Point taken though, and thanks for bringing it up.

      I think that your postscript is quite thought-provoking for our ongoing discussants. Why are the poor poor? I believe, the answer will also depend on your 2×2 matrix. If you ask the poor, I imagine they will have a different answer from what you or I might say.

      The subject of Karma is complex in this regard. Whereas we would assume that Karma would keep the poor from believing that they can get ahead, because "this is my fate and the next life will be better," I believe that the World Bank study on Moving out of Poverty has evidence against this claim. Unfortunately, I can’t cite anything specifically, but I remember reading in their most recent release, that poor interviewees did not feel bound to poverty by fate–which is particularly important for followers of Hinduism. Of course, it’s just one study…it would be interesting to know more about the cultural context of the way the poor perceive poverty.

      As the lead researcher Deepa Narayan of Voices of the Poor (Moving out of Poverty) told me, "Poverty is not a problem of ‘the poor.’ Poverty is a situation. Something households experience. Like the common cold, it is something no one is immune to and a condition that there is currently no cure for. But, that doesn’t mean we should stop trying."

      If you want to read the entire conversation with Deepa Narayan(from a while ago), click here: http://beyondprofitmag.com/?p=30

      • Ayan Banerjee

        Why do you want to be rich?

        Hi Lindsay,

        A clarification is in order: Actually, I intended to use Karma in an auto-regressive scientific context (rather than religious grounds) while still talking within the context of the same life. Previous or next lives are tough to talk about within a scientific (and hence, rational) framework, is subjective and a matter of faith; consequently, I would rather abstain from it in the current context.

        To elucidate, I was wondering if the transition from Poverty to "non-poverty" (or rags to riches, if you like) is an epiphanic moment for most(is it a black swan as shown in Slumdog Millionaire) or a series of conscious actions. Is it a deterministic model, which can be put in Covey’s "work backwards" concept. It might interest you that statistically, there are various ‘degrees’ to which "randomness" of this sort may be expressed (apart from the now popular ‘black swan’)

        This investigation would reveal whether or not one ‘can’ make the transition though "action" (own or cooperatively) and moreover, whether one finds it worth it(cost-benefit analysis). If the cost (individually or as a society) is "too high", then you are likely to remark rhetorically, "what’s wrong in being poor!?", irrespective of who’s asking the question.

        While the question sure is intriguing and interesting…was wondering, is it relevant to answer in the current 21 century milieu of buzz around massive global funding for socio-economic upliftment, social entrepreneurship, next 4 billion, bottom-of-the-pyramid, microfinance etc.?

  • Suzy

    being satisfied

    In response to Cynthia, and actually another commenter above that mentioned allowing the poor to define their own standards of happiness and satisfaction, it is important to note that even in the US, where people are afforded many opportunities and access to more resources, those who have, often don’t realize that they are rich. Most basic necessities and everyday luxuries are completely taken for granted, such as a hot shower in the morning with clean, potable water. While I grew up surrounded by a culture that promoted extreme consumerism, it was never something that I valued because I was taught to appreciate the important things in life: health, time with loved ones, and the beauty of nature and true friends. Unfortunately, if viewed through the eyes of our media and the ways we communicate beyond our borders, I appear to be in the minority.

    My questions are:

    When there’s always something more to want, how do we learn to appreciate what we have? How to people who have enough realize that they are happy with what they have? How do we build these mirrors into our society to reflect the true wealth that we’re often forgetful of? When we haven’t these boundaries ourselves, how do we expect developing countries following in our footsteps to create their own ‘indicators of satisfaction’?

    While the US exports its moral-less culture across the globe, how do socially concerned people communicate their affirmation of the values of native cultures, and refute the glorification of consumerism?

  • D. CHRIS NUNEZ

    What’s wrong with being poor?

    "If you ask the right question, you’ll usually get the right answer." is what Fr. Charlie Gagen once said. It seems that the question should be reframed as "In what way does being rich, negatively impact the poor?" and a corralary to that would be "How much is enough?" Is it the exclusionary tendency that accompanies the class distinctions that keeps the ‘haves’ from inviting and listening to those perceived to ‘have not’? There is a significant difference between the material wealth that people have (is this really riches?) and the spiritual wealth that comes from being ‘connected’ and therefore sympathetic to those around us.

  • jo davidson

    moving out of poverty

    Well said Chris, and with humanity’s focus on materialism, I’d say ideologically what also has a negative impact on the poor, is the Hindu caste system (and its interpretation of placement, based on the ‘three powers’ mentioned in the Gita, and argued by scholars thereafter) of who is allowed into the universal brotherhood etc.

    The order and pattern of social classes, based on birth, life, rank and color, etc, is only a fear-based rationale for keeping people apart to maintain the status quo. And because it has a religious base, it’s deemed ‘untouchable’ by everybody else. It’s outrageous really, for anyone to be called ‘outcast’ simply by accident of birth. I appreciate its origins in antiquity, but in the current milieu, with the blurring and changing of boundaries, religious and social divisions are seen as nothing more than an illusion along racial and ideological lines. So it’s really good news that while being ‘hallowed by their miserable treatment’ the poor (in India) don’t feel bound by their fate, as reported in the World Bank’s report.

    And in taking charge of their own destiny, it is of course education, that moves people out of poverty and keeps them out, and in learning how to improve their socio-economic conditions, in the context of well being, it’s like all Karma – that is, cause and effect – it takes a leap of faith to get there.

    All people need, are the tools for their own transformation, in creating opportunity.

    • Ponnusamy Devaraj

      moving out of poverty

      Hi Lindsay

                   I compliment for the very interesting and important topic brought for discussion. your question what is wrong with being poor? Are the poor actually happy? These questions can beter answered by a poor. what is seen in mumbai is not mere poor but it is poverty and penury. who is responsible for the poor, definitely the rich. The slums are the witness of development without planning, or in the course of development the petty land or marginal farmers are pushed to a corner into a slum. for the question are the poor actually happy? I will tell the story of Akbar and Birbal which may perhaps give some answer. The story goes like this one night the Emperor Akbar and Minister Birbal were going on night patrol to find out the reality of his administration. They have found a poor fellow without cloth on his body, or cover(sheet) inspite of mosquito bite having a sound sleep in cold night in the street. Akbar said he is the most happier person,have no worries thatswhy he is having good sleep. Immediately Birbal refused. Akbar got furious and ask him to disprove it. Next Birbal brought the person and kept him in the Palace with all comforts, but the poor fellow could not get sleep for few days and he accustomed to the new environment. After few month he told the works to bring freshy cut plantain leaves and stems to place on the path and made the poor to walk on the plantain. Immediately he caught cold and running nose this was witnessed by Akbar and later the poor person was striped off his clothes and asked him to sleep in the same place where he was picked up a few months before, he could not sleep due to cold and mosquito bite. Then Birbal explains to Akbar it is the acclamatization which made him sleep in the adverse condition not happiness. And he further explains that happiness is in the mind. The moral of the story I perceive is happyness is common for both rich and poor. It does not mean that rich are not happy. As Johh Milton rightly put it up "Mind is the seat of hell and heaven".

      As Jodavidson rightly said in India the Hindu caste creted the rich and poor. there are four castes or varunas. The Upper castes are land owners and the lower caste Sudras are not permitted to own lands, as per Gita they have been created by God to serve the upper castes,hence they are not allowed to own land. Now please tell me poor are created and poverty has been thrust upon them or not? Land is the wealth and cattle also wealth, but these communities are not allowed to posses it, as they are deprived of their rights.

      How to move out of poverty?

      one must get the basic needs. three times food,cloth and place to reside. Rest of the things are additional amenities.

      I came acroos a nice a quote "People lost their health and happiness to earn money and spent money to get back them". The rich and poor must co-exist, it cannot be removed but the gap between rich and poor should be bridged.

      Right to live is a Universal right and Fundamental Right and Natural justice the World should see that everyonegets his equal share. All are equal by birth,caste,Color,creed,rich or poor.

  • Aden Solomon

    How poor?

    It depends on the person and situation, if ones basic needs are met then they can potentially be happy and not care about material things.If one is in extreme poverty they very well may be and should be unhappy. If basic needs are not being me and a person is under a system where those needs are hard to attain then it can be hard for them. Then there are people who think not having material things make them poor and it can also be a state of mind.There are many people out there that say they are happy and have little. There are also people that have a lot and are unhappy.

  • Suzannah Kolbeck

    Another vote for talking to the poor

    I think CBrayton’s comment were dismissed as invalid because of the manner in which they were delivered, but I think the point that was raised is critical in this discussion. Can you imagine a higher pinnacle of luxury than being able to sit and have this discussion about what it means to be "poor" and whether it is a choice or not? It’s kind of an ironic juxtaposition, I think. It is also a bit condescending in a way to not speak directly with the people being discussed, whether it is five or ten or a million or a billion, or to speak in highly theoretical terms. While I understand the enormity of the task of polling entire nations to determine why they are poor or what they need, to not do so and then implement "solutions" based on a small sample of people is a waste of time and resources. This is why so many initiatives around the world fail; someone in an armchair somewhere comes up with a great idea and foists it on people who don’t want it, then wonders why it didn’t work, or it worked only for a short period of time.

    To answer the question posed, though, poverty of spirit and humanity is degrading developed countries and is a serious issue, while poverty of the flesh (extreme poverty, i.e., no clean water, no food to sustain life) is expanding in the developing countries (and, I think creeping into developed countries as well), and both of these situations are dire. That said, there is nothing wrong with being unable to participate in the conspicuous consumption of goods that has bankrupted many countries, and I believe that living simply and frugally, with a mind to community, whether by choice or by circumstance, is a better and more sustainable choice for the world.

    • Lindsay Clinton

      Another vote for talking to the poor

      Dear Suzannah,

      I’m sorry I’m late in responding! I am pleasantly surprised to read that the dicscussion here is still sparking interest.

      Your comments are wise. Of course we need to bring in the poor to the conversation. Interventions that take the end user into account almost always have better success rates than top down decision-making. But, many social enterprises are still not talking enough to their poor customers to find out what they really want, and too often policy makers have no idea what their end beneficiaries really need. I hope that the expanding use of technology across all segments of society will help to create platforms for exchange of ideas, so that people can better express their needs and how to help.

      The reason I wanted to have this conversation is that I often see wealthy Westerners visit India and ask just this question–"What’s wrong with being poor? It doesn’t seem so bad to me. They seem happy." Instead of fielding that question from visitors, I thought we could all benefit from open dialogue.

      I tend to agree with you…and couldn’t have put it better when you stated: poverty of spirit and humanity is degrading developed countries and is a serious issue, while poverty of the flesh is expanding in the developing countries, and both of these situations are dire. Perhaps our current economic situation will make the former rethink their habits of mindless consumption. We can only wait and watch.

      Best wishes,

      Lindsay

  • Lakshmi Narayana

    Poverty Vs Development

    Poverty though it appears as the issue of the individuals or the family, in reality it is the issue of the society or the nation. In the developing or underdeveloped countries, majority of the people comes under the poverty and struggles for the basic needs. It is the fact that poverty and development are the cause and consequence of each other and results for poor quality of life with vulnerable circumstances which leads for disasters.

    In the race of development with the technology, the resulted development is mostly confined to few hands or pockets and thus widens the GAP between the rich and poor. This type of development results for more disadvantages rather than isolated brightening spots.

    Knowing the situation, we all need to look for the positive aspect of the development. This is possible when the development is planned with optimization of local resources with the participation of the stakeholders on need based approaches. It is possible and everyone should work for the development of all with barrier free environment as poverty acts as a barrier for the development.

    I am working with the rural poor with the need based empowering strategies.

    Looking forward for better networking…

    with thanks

      

    N LAKSHMI NARAYANA

       grcnln@gmail.com

  • Lakshmi Narayana

    Poverty Vs QOL or SOL

    As per the existing laws,"EVERY ONE IS EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW". If so, why there should exist poverty? This supports us that, every one should have equal share in the development or in the existing resources. If this is implemented and monitored, there won’t be any issues with poverty and we all can lead equal and better QOL or SOL with better access in an inclusive and barrier free environment. This is the need of the our to all including the persons with special needs.

    Let us focus on the measures / strategies / approaches which can mitigate the poverty by enchaining the capacities of the needy people.

    Looking forward ….

    N LAKSHMI NARAYANA

        grcnln@gmail.com

  • Lisa Vives

    What’s wrong with being rich?

    A conversation I would like to see is about the social cost of extraordinary wealth for a few while grinding poverty and diminished quality of life is presented to the peoples of the most of the world. What does it say about our values when the three richest people in the world possess more financial assets than the lowest 48 nations combined? (MoneyCentral), when the richest 1% of adults own 40% of all global assets in the year 2000? When salaries of $50 million yearly on Wall Street do not raise an eyebrow? Can we really in good conscience limit the discussion to "How does it feel to be poor?" and be silent about the morals of letting a few take all the toys – a practice not even accepted in kindergarten by the way.

  • Micah Moran

    nothing when it’s by choice

    First off, I just want to say that by poor, they mean that they can still scrap by, children aren’t starving to death.

    I once had a professor, who sometime after he graduated school, decided he didn’t want to go through with a normal life and decided to become homeless. He got rid of his stuff, stopped paying his bills and lived on the streets of San Francisco. At the end of his ten year homelessness, he decided, I’m done with this and got a job. He lived off panhandling and soup kitchens for ten years. He told us that most of the people he met were homeless by choice.

    Now, I know not everyone who is poor has a graduate degree to fall back on the moment they decided to change their circumstances, but if people don’t want help, there isn’t enough money or good enough programs that are going to change that. All you can do is to let them know that there is a different option out there and let them make the choice themselves. Sometimes people don’t want to change because they are comfortable where they are, I know people that I work with who are like that, they have no motivation to improve or advance and they are happy with that.

    I think the most important thing that can be done is to give the people opportunities to improve economically, to those who want it, aA way for self-empowerment.

    What is wrong with being poor, when it is by choice, nothing. The problem comes when they don’t have a choice, when they want to rise up from where they are on the economic ladder, but are not able to. This is when there is a problem, people’s options are limited by where they stand on that ladder. If people want to stay where they are and can provide for themselves, great, but they shouldn’t be held down.

  • Octavia Nankunda

    extream poverty

    I believe that this kind of poverty exists and that it is not the fault of those that suffer from it but the ones in power. There is enough room for everyone but poor planing for for it. Those in position share the opportunity with those that are related to them either by blood or by status and they think because they are in power it makes it alright for them to do as they please. this kind of life doesn’t exist in only India but rather around the world in every country even in those places where one’s side mirror can feed a full household for a good six months. it is not right to think that people actually choose to live like this.

  • Laura T.

    What’s Wrong With Being Poor?

    I don’t think there is anything wrong with being poor if you choose to be poor and are happy with your circumstances. I think the problem is that many people look at other countries/parts of the world and project their own definitions, ideals and views on these other groups, thereby making it seem like there is something wrong with this particular group that needs to be fixed. I think that in many instances just because something is different from what we are used to doesn’t mean it needs to be changed. Differences make life more interesting and diverse. Involving those that are directly impacted in the decision making process is always a good way to ensure the most ideal outcome and therefore, also what I think is the best way to involve the "poor" in the discussion. This also ensures that the outcome will be agreeable to those that are impacted rather than something forced upon them.

    On another note, I also enjoyed reading the other posts and found the first post to be of relevance as it discussed the impact one person could have on this overall topic by not eating ice cream. This of course is true of many things that people do regularly that could be lessened in order to improve the lives of others, which is something many organizations advocate when soliciting for donations. I understand this concpet completely, but on the flip side wonder, why someone else has to sacrifice? It would be better to find sustainable solutions to these issues, so in the long run no group is put out by another.

  • Christina Gigliotti

    just a few thoughts

    A lot of great points have been made here in the comments already, but I’d like to add a few thoughts anyway. I think that living a simple existence can absolutely make people happy. However, there is a difference between living in such a way that material things do not have too much value, and not being able to afford the basic necessities that make life livable. It’s perfectly fine to live without the things that "everyone else has" when it comes to material possessions, but I don’t think it’s okay for people to go without food, water, shelter, access to healthcare, education, and work. Those are the fundamental necessities that humans need in order to be functioning members of their societies. Having little money is often the result of poor education, and a lack of many of the things I aforementioned. Unfortunately, this also leads to exclusion of the rest of society, and makes it difficult for many people to change their situation. Without the opportunities for education or jobs, etc, people become stuck and often lose hope that they will ever get out of poverty. I think the most efficient way to help isn’t necessarily to force our systems upon the poor, (for example, micro-financing has had a great deal of backlash) but to just ask them what would make their lives better.

  • Affordable Grants

    Family from Vietnam

    I was having dinner with a family from Vietnam. Only the children were born in the United States. The other members of the family are originally from Vietnam. The mother, who was a child during the Vietnam War, is an amazing woman. She told me stories of her experiences of the war and I was shocked to find out the living conditions that she endured. They had no running water. Water was fetched from a stream almost a mile away. We just go to the store and buy bottled water. Could I live in those conditions, I don’t know. I know I don’t want to find out.

    • ashutosh ranjan

      the decline of East

      I had the privilege of reading various great logics affecting science behind being poor in Africa or Asia.

      First, I would like to introduce myself, I am a Post Gad Student of Social Work in Delhi University, India and have worked with one of the best organizations and in one of the most deprived sections of our society in India.

      My constant duel with the problem what people face in their day to day lives have come to end because I started understanding the complexity working behind the causes or we should call it the social construction influenced by west.

      As is discussed a lot about the issue of cultural and sociological values ingrained in eastern countries, I will try to figure out the causes and effects of routing of those values by inefficient west.

      The technological and industrial advancement of Great Britain can be termed as the turning point in the life of our earth.

      Britain achieved the technological upper hand at the time when some of the great civilizations of the world were ageing and deterioting, mere routine affair one of the universal truths. The Britishers had gained most of the Renaissance and were desperate to spread their authority over others.

      The Britain was in no way self sufficient in relation to crude resources or man power and to fill the void it spread is influence over others, thus, colonialism.

      The resource rich Asia and Africa contributed immensely to its further growth and in return Britain gave these continents 4 things:

      1. Christianity,

      2. Materialism,

      3. Low self esteem and

      4. Values undermining every indigenous cultural or religious practice that was in existence since ages.

      Britain needed to impose these values to rout the existent values for it was no match to the natives in anyway other than its cunningness and policies of intangible masterhood.

      Through these measures and it ruled the unrepresenting continents for centuries. The values that the colonialism had brought with it were in no way better that the one existing in the colonies, “before they had started suffering of civilization ageing”. So, the new concepts, values and notions were easily transfixed onto the old and feeble civilizations.

      What we are seeing today is mere continuity of those procedural policies adopted by nations like west to rule the Asian and African countries and the eye through which we see poverty are the same which have made brands like apple immensely successful.

      More to follow………………….

      • kenneth brilliant

        the decline of East

        I really do not mind criticizing the gentleman who proclaims to be a "Post Gad Student of Social Work in Delhi University", but I must say, that his entire statement is very difficult to read, almost torturing the reader with every bump and grind thru the multitude of grammatical errors in his writing. Had he studied more of English writing and expression and prose, his entire point might have been able to be reduced down to one or two laconic sentences:

        1) Great Britain is bad

        2) Countries who in the past colonized other continents are bad.

        Let me add an end note here: President Obama is an anti-colonialist in the same spirit as the write above. Because the "West" developed its great industries far sooner than other countries, the West became more powerful and therefore more influential over other countries going back in history. I cannot say today in this modern world, that these countries who had been colonized a hundred or two hundred plus years ago have been left behind too far. Afterall is it not the West who has been able to assist in modernizing otherwise primitive and stagnant cultures to keep up, or forever be left behind and subjugated by the more powerful developed cultures of the West?

  • kenneth brilliant

    being poor

    I am poor. But not destitute. I am being supported. I can work but cannot find work, at least yet. Poor, at least in the context of the above lead-in questions, is to be without money. To not have money means that you do not have all of the things that modern life can provide. People who are poor do without mostly what they want, but hopefully not without what they need. Without making any further attempt to distinguish ‘needs’ vs. ‘wants’ in human livlihood, i want to distill my thoughts down as much as possible to make my point simple. I think that being poor is to live without any extra material things, no extra clothes nor extra appliances nor extra cars, boats, and other things people who are not poor, buy because they want those things and not because they need those things. Poor people simply do not have that choice to make. When we open our eyes thru the experience of having visited other countries and witnessed other cultures and living conditions, an immediate comparison takes place in the mind of the visitor. Comparisons are drawn between two lifestyles, two economic conditions. ‘Poor’ in the mind of this visitor, witnessing the culture of another people, takes on the relative meaning with respect to that visitor’s own lifstyle and living condition. Poor really is our perception of to what degree of comfort, health and freedom from toil and hardship another culture lives in. A poor culture is one in which people toil and have no leisure and no extra amenities. Often, a poor culture lacks necessities such as good nutrition and the protective housing from climate.

  • chenmianhao

    What’s wrong with being poor?

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    What’s wrong with being poor?

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    • Omolebi segun

      What’s wrong with being poor? I have seen it!

      Hmmm! It took me barely a week reading through comments upon comments before I could try my fingers at posting here! I really appreciate several dimensional explanations to what poverty is and its attending scourge of deprivations! I have been there. Poverty and happiness are strange bed-fellows,you either choose to flock with one.Consider what it means to be brilliant,willing to go to school and passionate about it,yet deprivations all over the place. Shall we then say happiness is in this? NO! I had been without food for 3 days,not because I could not eat just because I had none,wanted to work,none presented itself and several nights of eating what you did not want. Yet,in this part of the world,you still see people whom you know are not better off while in school,peradventure you still lent your times to put him through his academics while on campus and suddenly in the labour market with top job just because he has a connected parent. Happiness can rarely reign in this scenario. Yet,poverty is a state of the mind and relative as we have all agreed. I would have said it is self-inflicting,if everyone has input in how his or her region is being governed. I still believe that,someone might choose to live above this level but a whole lot of things are external to human endeavours in this part of the world. A single policy,harsh and inhumane as evident here, are parts of what make poverty extreme here. Yet,leaders live with impunity here and siphon bulk of what should have gone into making life better. So,happiness elude the poor when they know they are poor,not because they are lazy but deprived. And this is why criminality is on the rise! I make bold to say it here,that there is strenght also in poverty,particularly that of economy,when you lack,it dawns on you as to how best to survive,critical thinking sets in and at the end some flashes of solution jumps out of the frying pan. But,it takes a sincere heart and well-groomed heart to be a Fidel in this kind of situation. It may mean anything goes for such a lad who had not trained his mind to be upright in the midst of dire needs and outright oppression on the parts of the leaders! This is my 11 years of graduation,I have not earned a penny for a day as a wage but I thank God that out of this gloomy poverty I have been able to see reason to be self-reliant and depending.I am self-employed yet,I know how many times I have got to loose my business because of inhumane policy of the government! How many young ones have been able to scale the hurdles? Hence,they take to crimes! Yet I hope the world community will become a better place for all if deprivation is off. But,can there ever be a time when poverty will be swept off the globe? I guess this may be an Herculean task. Even if one is happy,it is relative in a society where poverty reigns supreme because the security of the haves,is even daisy! No wonder,they say here in our local parlance that,the day the poor have gotten nothing to eat for too long ,the poor will stoop to eat the children of the rich! Please ,take me as I am for my context as I write, to know poverty,you need to talk to those who have been there! When you have next to no school uniform and yet the head-boy of such school, could come with mixed feeling! Poverty is bad when you lack the basic needs……essentials of this life and not mere wants!

  • karan kumar

    What’s wrong with being poor?

    if You are walking down a bustling boulevard in a developing-world megacity of over 12 million people. You’re in Mumbai, or Jakarta, Lagos, or Sao Paulo. You pass shanties and pavement dwellers, vegetable vendors, and the occasional beggar. You wipe the inevitable sweat from your brow and stop for something cool and soothing to drink—perhaps some coconut water, maybe fresh lime juice.

    http://www.amirafoods.co.uk/karan.html

  • Napoleon Neo

    The poor are too busy avoiding death, the middle class are too busy trying to get rich, and the rich are too busy indulging in crap.

    With twisted criminals, rotten personalities and vile degenerates within all three classes. It is hard to imagine how it can be possible to put any form of stereotypical/broad assumptions on any of the classes.

    What I can try to imagine is, the tremendous impact that would brought forth, from a trillionaire if he/she has the moral standards of say, Gandhi. However, money has proven itself to be highly effective in eroding the morals of the weak, and evidence doesn’t show well for the hearts of people today.

    In short, I highly doubt that the poor are truly happier, but i would agree to a large extent that one can better find peace within a non-materialistic environment.