Povertism and Extending our Definition of Poverty

Isms run deep, we breath them in daily
Part of the cultures where we grew
Toxic soups shaping our identity.
Yet there’s another ism in the brew,
The one that judges poverty.
Chav, Pov, Hillbilly
Hick, Scum, White Trash
Deemed less than, because they lack the cash
Born in the wrong place in our “liberal” society

We need a movement of true solidarity
Not everyone fighting for their individual identity
But Diverse Spectrum Unity
An authentic state of Global Equity

Taken from The Homing Crisis

If there’s one form of prejudice that’s acceptable to the liberally minded and well educated it’s Povertism.

I’ve been at many dinner parties, where the speed of the breeding of the poor has been lamented. Or other critiques of the Poor have been comfortably voiced. I’ve even entertained such notions myself, fed on the Toxic Soup of Mediated Povertism.

The Poor are perceived as unworthy or lacking the gumption to pull themselves out of their situation, often framed as parasitic — taking advantage of the hardworking taxpayer. Single mothers are demonised. The victims of our Society are dehumanised to prevent compassion. This view extends well beyond America, but the myths are well addressed in this excellent series by On the Media.

A big part of the issue, and the issue of accepting a position of Relative Privilege is that it challenges our own personal narrative and ego. If we accept that our position is largely luck, then what agency do we have in our own story? What responsibility do we have to accept to correct this Legacy Injustice? What do we have to give up in order to correct it?

With our aversion to loss — both of personal success story, and material wealth, it is easier for us to shift the blame to the impoverished.

But Poverty is a Context which is hard to escape. Those who have escaped it bare the scars, and will even often shift their own narrative to support the dominant notion. “I worked hard, and I succeeded, why can’t others do the same?”

If you are born into Poverty you are not just affected Materially, but Informationally and Emotionally. You are born into a Context where you are bound tighter to and more responsible for your families wellbeing — and your family will be more dependent on the approval of the community. Your ability to express your true self in such circumstances could be extremely hazardous to your health, as the price of being shunned is higher.

Shunning denies you the essential nutrients you need to survive.

Not only is your Cognitive Bandwidth directly limited by your Material and Emotional States, but the Information you have access limits the choices you will make.

If your ideal job is unknown or the path to reach it is unknown to you, how can you even desire to follow the path? Furthermore if you are told you are stupid, dumb, unworthy or parasitical frequently by the media, how does this affect how you feel about yourself? The factors holding you back are numerous.

For those born into Relative Privilege, our need to address this issue is not just one of Morality or Compassion, but also fundamentally in our self interest. Desperate situations create potential points of conflict. If my neighbor cannot meet their needs, then they will seek to meet those needs by any means. Where non violent channels to provide for the self are denied then violence will inevitably arise. We must recognise that in denying people the opportunity to meet their own Needs, the System is committing violence against them. In maintaining this System, and benefiting from it, we are profiting from this Violence. Since we are dependent on the System to sustain ourselves, we are dependent on Violence.

This is an uncomfortable thing to acknowledge — while you may desire Peace and Equity, you are presently kept in your state through Violence. But I urge you not to look away, or worse de-humanise the victims in order to remain emotionally comfortable. Do not try to elevate your status or worth, due to the luck of your birth. As long as this system is allowed to persist, you are at risk. It could still be you. In part the Fear of this, is what keeps you in your place.

The resources you need to live in your present Context were obtained or maintained by Violence. Violence sustains you as well as restricting your growth. This applies to most of us, even the poorest of us. The poorer you are, the more reliant you are on cheap goods and services — and cheap comes at a Human cost. If ethically produced products cost more, then Morality (or the illusion of it) is a Privilege. Everything we consume has Harm embedded within it, unless you have grown it yourself from seed. It needed to be transported, it required minerals and energy extracted in conditions maintained by military force, or even slavery. In every daily deed we make, we Harm, it is our Privilege not to see it. I’m writing this on a device built of such materials. The irony is not lost on me.

The Devil is in the Defaults.

The chains that sustain us are the same chains that bind, what varies is the ways and degrees in which we are bound.

You didn’t ask for this. You’re not to blame. However it is Our responsibility to fix it.

The System makes us all both Oppressors and the Oppressed.

We need to change this System to one where Poverty does not exist, or build another from it’s ruins as it collapses around us. However if we are to do so properly, we must also extend our definition of Poverty.

Extending our definition of Poverty

In defining poverty it’s important that we extend our view of wealth beyond that of mere material goods. My reason for this is twofold:

1. If we can only be Materially poor then only Material Wealth has Value.
2. If we extend our definition we can see that Wealth and Poverty are not binary states — that the system also impoverishes the Rich in different ways, and the Poor still have unseen Wealth.

There are 3 dominant ways in which we may be impoverished:

Material Poverty
Informational Poverty
Emotional Poverty

Many “wealthier” individuals are Emotionally Poor (or bankrupt in some rare instances). This is in part due to their Material Wealth, as Material Inequality makes it difficult to Trust anyone who is not as wealthy as you, as you cannot be certain they Love you the Human and not you the huge bank deposit. I’ve experienced this personally at smaller scales in Egypt, making friends with people who perceive you as being wealthy or connected makes authentic relationships based on Trust a challenge.

Poverty is also Contextual. Our measurements of Poverty are inherently flawed — 1$ a day goes a lot further in some countries than others. Not to say we shouldn’t measure poverty, but we should consider our metrics more carefully. We should also consider their Contexts. What matters more than the quantity is how Money restricts or enables flows of essential nutrients and services to individuals in order to allow them to grow and thrive. Money in this respect is Relative. In the Context of the Law Peter Thiel once commented that Hulk Hogan as a mere millionaire was unable to get access to the Justice system.

If this holds true then the majority of us are Legally Impoverished. Justice is beyond our means.

This is a form of Information Poverty, the information in question being accessible only through time and community, or vast monetary resource. But not all information flows are restricted or enabled through financial wealth alone. In the Context of the Desert I would be Informationally poor — Lacking the information required to ensure my survival, some Bedouin by contrast would be Informationally Wealthy. 1$ a day can go much further if you can find water, food, care for your own health and keep yourself and your community warm and safe. The cocooning context of our culture, has left us Intellectually Malnourished and dependent on our Capitalist Infrastructure for our very survival. Outside of this Context regardless of your financial state, you are most likely Poor, Weak and Vulnerable. This is a hard and bitter truth. Harder still is the fact that it will inevitably fall — Nothing lasts forever.

We must accept that the Poor are victims of their Context. It is the Context of their Poverty which is unworthy of our Society.

This Legacy Injustice is sustained by the System that sustains us. We secretly fear that their gain, can only come from our loss. The System doesn’t allow for every child to enter the world with a clean slate and the chance to grow, but instead be burdened with the debt of history. The World was stolen from them before they were born.

The World was stolen from most of us before we were born. Some were even stolen from their homes. Thieves with swords or guns then wrote the Laws. Then wrote history to favor their deeds.

The Establishment continue to write their stories and ours. Some have worked their whole lives to buy back a sliver, or been passed it on by their families. This sacrifice will make them defend the myths of Hard Work all the more. Yet that you have worked hard, got lucky and won, doesn’t mean that many others worked hard, were unlucky and lost. For each generation the levels of risk, resource and opportunity vary. The game of luck is constantly shifting, and the number of “losers” is increasing.

I understand, that after a life of sacrifice and eventual (often insecure reward) you might not want to entertain the notion of luck, or of an unjust system. But that doesn’t change the fact that the System is unjust.

When groups fight for equality it often comes at a cost. The cost is that they must ignore the left behind, the group that remain in some form of Poverty [1]. Time and time again groups have fought to be included, but usually they only extend the Boundary as far as to include themselves. I understand this the fight is exhausting, it’s enough to fight for your own rights. But as long as Poverty exists, then the Boundary may retract and you may find yourself again on the outside of it. We are entering into a period where the castle walls are shrinking, and you may find yourself quickly left outside. These are risks that will always remain, as long as the System is a Zero Sum Game. For me to win, someone must lose. For this to change we must change the rules at the heart of the System, and our relationship to Money itself. Not everything in life is Zero Sum, or needs to be.

When we try criminals, I think we would often be better served if we tried the System as well. Where did it fail them? Was it the boy who stole an Apple and got deported to Australia who was a criminal? Or was it the System that condemned him to Poverty? Is the crime the fault of the Addict, or of the System that failed to provide them with a Nurturing Context that allowed their soul to thrive? Is it just that a human should need to break the law to feed cloth or house their family? If Society denies what Nature provides through threat of Violence, how can we possible call this System Just and Fair?

Poverty is a Social Construct, it is the product of historical and sustained theft.

I’ve seen the Right arguing that healthcare is not a right, and neither is housing, food, or water. These things WERE our right to provide for ourselves in Nature. Since we are DENIED these Fundamental Human Rights to provide them for ourselves by Society, it’s only right that Society provides these things. If it doesn’t do so, Society will fall. If it does we will all experience even deeper Poverty.

When we talk of rights, we must look at all of the things Society denies and that it demands. It demands that we do the impossible. It demands that you work in order to receive what you need, and then doesn’t provide enough opportunities to work. It denies you the right to provide yourself with shelter. It denies you the right to grow your own food. It restricts the flows of knowledge and resource to care for yourself. Money serves as a medium of control, a proxy that allows access to these things as goods. But when you are denied the opportunity to earn enough to meet your needs, it is Society that is a Failure, not you.

Our present Society impoverishes us all in some way. Whether it is through the denial of Material Needs, or Informational and Emotional ones.

Some will argue that only denial of Material needs is fatal. But Suicide is second leading cause of death for young people globally [2]. Suicide is especially high in Young White Males, who are are regarded in many instances as Materially Privileged due to gender and skin color (Society being biased towards those possessing these Material traits). This may be due to them being Emotionally Impoverished by cultural norms and expectations. They are discouraged from developing their Emotional Spectrum, Emotions themselves having become Gendered in their expression — “Men don’t Cry”. Such repression of self expression can only have detrimental effects on young men. It also denigrates those who are better connected to their emotions, if expression of an emotion is weak, then it follows that those who express them are weak.

Women in parallel must exhibit “Masculine” traits in order to succeed, but against a parallel message that such traits make a Woman undesirable. Such critical restrictions to emotional growth have led to many growing up denied essential needs, both in provision and supply. Our Emotional Spectrum is inhibited by our Cultural Norms, with destructive effects.

Access to Healthcare is in a way a form of access to information — contained in those who gained that information at great financial cost. If people cannot access the information they need to keep them alive, they can die. Emotional and Information Poverty can also prove fatal.

For those that have grown up in any form of Poverty, they may not even be aware what they are missing. You can’t miss what you never had.

Instead there is an unknown longing for something never provided, to be filled with what is available and known. This leads to addiction. There are people in the world who never breathed clean air. There were people who never felt Trusted or even Loved unconditionally. Without knowing a thing, how can one know what they are missing? Conversely those who have never lacked them may take them for granted, as they’ve never known their absence. Perhaps this is why denial is practiced in many spiritual traditions.

To know the true value of something, one must know what it means both to have it, and not have it.

To experience what it is to breath fresh air, and to try to breath polluted. To be loved, and to experience the apathetic shallows or loneliness. To experience ignorance, and knowledge. To know ourselves we must understand our Needs, Excesses and Deficits and their effects upon us.

We (mal)adjust to our Contexts. Our capacities, capabilities and desires are shaped by that which we are exposed to. The pursuit of our unknown longings become corrupted and manifest as personally or socially detrimental behaviors.

The system impoverishes us all.

To address the challenge of Systemic Change we must be prepared to accept potential Material Loss. But if we discover and focus on what we stand to gain, then maybe we can find a way.

Would you rather a castle in the midst of Chaos, or a modest home in a garden paradise? You will loose something in the coming change, but regardless of your social position, you perhaps have far more to gain.

So I urge you to discover the ways in which you are Poor, and which you are Rich. Become aware of the ways in which you are privileged, and the ways in which you are limited.

Reflect on where you can grow, and what resources you may provide to others to help them do the same. Develop value beyond Material things, and extend your wealth beyond the boundaries of yourself.

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[1.] Listen to the tale of the Maroons or the for a simple example of this terrible pattern. Or read up on the subjugation of Women following the peasant revolt as a means to appease those who’d already lost so much. This pattern can also be seen in the Histories of Nations — in the UK for example the class structure and democratic system still bears testament to this legacy. Royalty, Aristocracy, Lords, Commons — the ancient hierarchies are preserved by the extension of modest privileges. Just don’t look the other side of the curtain, to the lands we continue to exploit to maintain our position. A poorer member of the UK may not feel any privilege at all, but it’s still a lot worse beyond the border. As long as there are those who are poorer than you, it’s possible for you to be poorer — poverty is a stick the system can beat you with.

[2] Suicide in top 3 causes of death http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs398/en/, Accidents are primary cause which could well be linked to risk taking in the pursuit of acceptance/sense of belonging/alpha posturing http://www.livescience.com/35385-top-10-leading-causes-of-death.html.