The issue of poverty has been on my mind lately. I suppose that's thanks to various conversations I've had with friends, some of whom hold similar beliefs to me and many more who don't. Being under 30, most of my peers are left-wing, which means they blame upbringing, capitalism, and broken social programs for almost every instance of poverty. Even drug addiction is a wholly secondary cause in their minds, with the aforementioned being a prerequisite to addiction and homelessness. However, there is a rather large flaw in their reasoning - where does the individual's will and attitude figure into it all?
Poverty has several definitions that reach all branches of social and hard science. The "poverty line" is unhelpful for this very reason. People can be malnourished, deprived of psychological affirmation, and even spiritually depressed, all of which are different forms of poverty. Sadly, most people link economic status to one's happiness - but that begs the question as to why people in mud huts look happier than we do stuck in traffic. Many people in the West who are below the poverty line live in conditions that remind us of Oliver Twist and Les Miserables, but those same people in the mud huts have clean swept floors and tidy living areas.
This is why I can't buy the purely economic, environmental, and familial definition of poverty - the examples of individual triumph via one's attitude, self-discipline, and work ethic are too many to be an anomaly. But if poverty is more closely linked to one's attitude than to one's family history or one's economic status, why then are so many impoverished in such a rich country as Canada?
One is tempted to answer this question while hiding behind "brutal honesty," but that would be disingenuous. Nobody actually wants to stay addicted to drugs, or continue the cycle of abuse that one experiences in certain relationships. Human beings want to be happy and joyous, not downtrodden and despairing. So what's the answer? Ultimately, I believe that street people doing hard drugs are just as impoverished as students binge drinking and rich people having extramarital affairs. All these people have one thing in common: they mistake a less than perfect action for true happiness.
This gets at the heart of true poverty, for holding any belief or committing any action that is below one's human dignity impoverishes us and our species. It's understandable why people do it: when the necessities of life via war, famine, and disease have all been solved, the scale for excellence becomes infinitely steeper, and therefore less than perfect actions become more alluring. The idea that the welfare state perpetuates drug abuse is a joke, since even the middle and upper classes have their own safety nets in the form of bankruptcy protection and so on. We live in a time where mankind must struggle very little to just squeak by, and this has impoverished our society to pander to the lowest common denominator at all levels.
I'm not excusing the systemic issues facing our nation via the rise of China's cheap labour or the ever expanding use of drugs. I'm simply pointing to a bigger problem that affects us more than any single environmental circumstance ever could.
Poverty is a state of mind and attitude. It is the place that a human occupies when we settle for less than what is true, good, and beautiful. And if that is the case, the joke is on all of us, even those who happen to own houses. For poverty cannot be hidden by riches, but only overcome from within. This radical definition certainly puts the words of Jesus Christ in a new light: I am only with you a short time, but the poor will always be with you.
Perhaps he meant all of us.
