Along the Tracks by renegade 150
The extraordinary survival of over thousands of years of Buddhism, Christianity or Islam in dozens of different social formations attests to their imaginative response to the overwhelming burden of human suffering – disease, mutilation, grief, age, and death. Why was I born blind? Why is my best friend paralyzed? Whay is my daughter retarded? The religious attempt to explain. The great weakness of all evolutionary / progressive styles of thought, not excluding Marxism, is that such questions are answered with impatient silence.
– Benedict Anderson (from: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism)
The subject is poverty.
Poverty must be as old as humanity itself.
There have always been poor people and it is more than likely that there will always be poor people. The condition of the poor; their housing, health, education, and welfare have not been neglected in the sense that there have always been people and organizations which have brought attention to these problems and have tried to do something about it. There are countless charities and there have been countless do-gooders who have spent millions of dollars, devoted their careers, and even their lives to helping the poor. Great writers have written great tomes about the lives of the poor. Their words tug at out hearts.
In modern times there have been great schemes to alleviate poverty. The United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary fund have a long history of developmental aid (some of it good and a lot of it bad) designed to alleviate poverty. Millions, if not billions of dollars have been spent on projects to eradicate poverty.
Yet, after all the schemes that have even been proposed and all the money that has ever been spent, here we sitting in our chairs in front of our computers blogging about poverty.
Poverty is real.
There are perhaps as many as billion people living in poverty on the planet. Many live on as little a two dollars a day, live in ramshackle housing, have limited access to health services, education, clean drinking water. You can see it in Jakarta. I saw it and walked among those people. They are simply trying to find a way of making in living in their various adverse circumstances. Circumstances which often serve to keep them in a cycle of poverty which they cannot break out of. In these conditions the people are often exploited. Exploited for their cheap labor, exploited into human trafficking, even exploited for their organs.
Tolstoy and Lenin and Jesus and Ghandi and Buddha asked, “What is to be done?” That was the refrain of the photo journalist Billy Kwan in the movie “The Year of Living Dangerously”.
There are uncountable answers to this question. There are hundreds if not thousands of books which propose workable schemes to alleviate poverty. All have at their core good intentions, are intelligently wirtten, have merit, and are worthy of consideration. Where is the disconnect? Why is there left so much to do?
Not to address the condition of poverty has sometimes led to revolutions, political upheaval, civil war. There are historical consequences to poverty which have changed the fate of empires and nations.
The black limousines pull up to the meeting rooms of the world capitals. World Bank, IMF officials, Finance Ministers, Treasury Department officials. They are not meeting to discuss poverty. They are meeting to discuss how to salvage a global economy that is in the process of melting down. They are meeting to discuss how to salvage themselves from a problem which they themselves have created. And because they represent the power of their governments it is nothing to them to inject 250 billion dollars here, and 700 billion dollars there to prop up an economic system which benefits an elite few while a third of the planet lives on less than two dollars a day.
Here is an aphorism, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. That well describes the modern global economy for the last quarter-of-a-century or more. It might even describe the economy of the last five hundred years beginning from the time when the Dutch parked their ships in Jakarta bay.
More and more I am convinced that the true poverty of this world is the poverty of will. And the will of greed.
It is not the lack of good ideas. It is not that we do not understand or cannot define what the problems are. We do understand. We do know what the problems are. Still, nothing gets done. I am suspicious of this. I think this looks increasingly as if this were intentional.
It’s not that we can’t solve the problem of poverty we just don’t want to for some reason. And this has dragged on for a long, long, long time.
The answers we have at hand to address and remedy poverty require new ways of thinking. These new ways of thinking will have to first address the paramount question of our time: how are we to live on this planet? What kind world do we wish to create?
The old ways have not worked. We are now entering a historical period where this failure will be brought to focus in ways we cannot imagine.
At the core we have an oil economy and a global agricultural system tied to that oil. We, as Michael Pollan has written, are “sipping oil”. That we have tied our ability to feed ourselves to oil production is a dangerous folly. We have altered our own climate as a result of this appetite and now are reaping the consequences. And for the sake of this status quo nations go to war.
It is more than likely that the future ahead will not be pleasant but it will be full of opportunity.
I frankly do not care about the stock market or failing banks or securing the power of the elite rich through loans or printing more money or bailing out their banks or spending more and more and more on the police and the military and leaving the burden of that debt to future generations.
I say let it all crash just like the house of cards it is. The sooner the better.
It is time for a new paradigm. It is time for impatient action.
UPDATE: 11/15/2008
Members of the G-20 recently met in Washington D.C. to discuss the problems of the global economy. The White House dinner menu is posted here: …go to press release>
Menu for the Dinner in Honor of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy
Fruitwood-smoked Quail with Quince Gastrique
Quinoa Risotto
Landmark Chardonnay “Damaris Reserve” 2006
Thyme-roasted Rack of Lamb
Tomato, Fennel and Eggplant Fondue
Chanterelle Jus
Shafer Cabernet “Hillside Select” 2003
Lolla Rosa, Red Oak and Endive
Cider Vinaigrette
Baked Vermont Brie with Walnut Crostini
Pear Torte
Huckleberry Sauce
Chandon Étoile Rosé
###
In a statement, the White House said the leaders “had a good, productive meeting.”
October 15, 2008 at 3:39 pm
while i enjoy reading this subject, it is clear for me that i never have solution to fight poverty
November 13, 2008 at 2:30 pm
[...] Belfield writes about the subject of poverty in Indonesia. He points out that “It is time for a new paradigm. It is time for impatient action.” [...]