Why Poverty Continues To Prevail

8/2/2019 Why Poverty Continues To Prevail

1/10

Why Poverty Continues To Prevail In Our World

by Ahmed Olayinka Sule, CFA

Illustration by: Janet-Lange and Dutheil


2/10

Why Poverty Continues To Prevail In Our World

By Ahmed Olayinka Sule, [email protected]

http://about.me/ahmedsule

Remember the poor - it costs nothingMark Twain

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little ofyourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize

your true potential.Barack Obama

People can be so apathetic. They continue to ignore the real people trapped in poverty and

homelessness. It's almost maddening.Daphne Zuniga

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, amuch greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

Mother Teresa

On a Friday evening in April 2012 during a visit to Barcelona, I sat down somewherealong the Passeig de Grcia avenue. Around 6:30pm, as Barcelonans were eitherheading home, shopping or getting ready for the weekend, an event occurred whichgot me thinking. A middle-aged man who was suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS)appeared on the street with a brown cup in his hands. As he struggled to walk alongthe pavement, he suddenly stopped and with his wrinkled hands he slowly lifted upthe cup, hoping that the pedestrians walking along the busy Passeig de Grcia would

put some money into his cup.

After a couple of minutes, with nothing coming into his cup, the man walked a fewmeters along the busy street in anticipation of getting a better response from thepedestrians. What should have taken him ten seconds to get to his new destinationtook him about forty seconds to achieve because of his ailment. After forty seconds,he then arrived at his new destination along Passeig de Grcia.

For the next forty-five minutes, I observed the interaction between the man beggingfor money and the pedestrians walking along Passeig de Grcia. There must havebeen one thousand and five hundred people who passed by the beggar. The onethousand five hundred pedestrians could be classified into five different groupings.

The first groupings of pedestrians were those who frowned at the beggar as theypassed by him. The frowners looked at him straight into the eye and walked pass himwithout dropping anything into the cup. The second group of pedestrians comprisedof those who did not even notice the beggar. They must have been preoccupied withshopping, preoccupied with rushing to get home or preoccupied talking with theirfriends. In short, they were too preoccupied to notice the man in despair. The thirdgroup that engaged with the beggar were those who must have been observing thebeggar from a distance. I am not really sure how many people fall into this category,but I know for sure that I was part of this category. This group observed theinteraction between the beggar and the other pedestrians from afar, however, they

did nothing to solve the plight of the beggar.


3/10

The fourth group of pedestrians were those who flipped a coin into the mans cupwithout maintaining eye contact with the beggar.

As a side note, among the hundreds of people that passed by the beggar, there wasa little girl walking along Passeig de Grcia with her mother. The girl who must havebeen five years old stopped and looked at the man with compassion as he struggledto hold the cup and maintain his balance. As she stopped, her mother held the girlshand so that they could continue their journey. However, the little girl refused tofollow her mother and continued to look at the man with compassion. In order todistract the girl from focusing on the man, the mother put her hands over the girlseyes. Once the girl was unable to see the beggar, the mother effectively succeededin making the little girl continue the journey.

The fifth group of pedestrians were those who immediately turned their face awayfrom the man as soon as they saw the man with his outstretched arms.

After forty-five minutes, I got up from my seat, went to the beggar and put money into

his cup and left. As I looked into his cup, I realised that for all his efforts standingalong Passeig de Grcia for forty-five minutes, he received only a couple of coinsfrom the over one thousand five hundred pedestrians that passed by him.

The forty-five minute event at Passeig de Grcia is a useful symbol to understandwhy poverty continues to prevail in our world today. In this article, I will use theinteraction between the beggar and the pedestrians at Passeig de Grcia as atemplate to analyse the worlds attitude towards the poor and others at the margin ofsociety.

In understanding why poverty persists in our world today, it is important to analysethe interactions of the five classes of pedestrians and the beggar at Passeig de

Grcia. In short the poverty on the Passeig de Grcia pavement leads us tounderstand poverty on the worlds pavement. For the purpose of this article, I usefive descriptors of the Passeig de Grcia pedestrians mentioned earlier to describethe various attitudes of people towards poverty:

The Frowners: comprises of those that looked at the beggar straight in theeye and frowned at him. Frowners have a dislike for the poor.

The Occupiers: comprises of those too busy and too preoccupied with theirown life to notice the beggar. Occupiers busyness ensures that they ignorethe poors plight.

The Observers: comprises of those that observed the beggars plight and didnothing to solve his plight. Though observers see the sufferings of the poor,

they remain apathetic to poverty. The Throwers: comprises of those that flipped or threw a coin into the

beggars cup without maintaining eye contact with the beggar. Throwers offershort-term solutions to poverty.

The Deniers: comprises of those that turned their face away from the beggarupon sighting the beggar. Deniers, deny the existence of poverty.

If Canaan was described in Scriptures as the land flowing with milk and honey,Passeig de Grcia could be described as a street flowing with opulence and luxury. Itis one of the most expensive avenues in Europe and it plays host to some of theworlds most exclusive brands such as Ferrari, Rolex, Tiffany and Cartier.Paradoxically, in the oasis of opulence that is called Passeig de Grcia, there was aman and this man was sick- and this man that was sick was poor- and this manwho was sick and poor had to beg. This man thought that the best way to get help


4/10

was to go to the richest street in Spain and beg, hoping that his problems would besolved on the rich pavement of Passeig de Grcia.

Was his problem solved? Did his poverty end? No it did not. Why? Because thebeggar encountered the frowners, the occupiers, the observers, the throwers and thedeniers at Passeig de Grcia.

Like Passeig de Grcia where a man had to go begging on a street paved with gold,the world is also a place where despite the abundance of rich resources, billions ofpeople live in poverty. According to the World Bank, the world Gross DomesticProduct at current prices is $63.12 trillion. With the world population currently atseven billion, the global GDP on a per capita basis translates to $9,017. Howeveraccording to the World Bank, nearly three billion people live below the internationalpoverty line of two dollars a day.

It should therefore not be out of place to ask: Why billions of people around the worldare poor? Why millions of people around the world are homeless? Why billions of

people around the world do not have access to adequate healthcare, water andeducation? Just like the man at Passeig de Grcia, the poor in most parts of theworld are struggling because they keep on coming across the frowners, theoccupiers, the observers, the throwers and the deniers in lifes journey at theindividual, corporate and governmental levels.

In the next couple of paragraphs, I will discuss in detail the role of each player in thepoverty continuation chain

The Frowners: often have a dislike for the poor. They are of the school of thoughtthat believes that if a man or woman is poor, it is because they have chosen to bepoor. They look down on the poor and treat them as non-humans. The frowners

relegate the poor to the status of things. They are strong believers that if the poor areto rise above their condition, the poor should lift themselves up by themselves andfor themselves. The frowners oppose government policies such as welfare benefitsand healthcare reforms, which could help the poor. When it comes to the poor, thefrowners often use the moral hazard argument to discourage the implementation ofpolicies to lift up the poor, by arguing that such programs will only encourage thepoor to be lazy and do nothing. Frowners are at the forefront of scrounger rhetorics.They assume that all people benefiting from government welfare programmes aremilking the system and lazy. The frowners take a Social Darwinian approachtowards poverty. They believe that life is a rat race in which only the fittest will andshould survive. They regard the poor as lazy, immoral and weak. They haveconfidence in their own wealth, fame, career, connections and education, so they

cant understand why people chooseto be poor.

The frowners lack a human soul and I guess these are the people Jesus must havereferred to when he said: watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; amans life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

At the government level, the frowner mentality is demonstrated when governmentofficials demonise the poor in order to gain public support in withdrawing whateverlevel of support the poor get from government.

The Occupiers: are not as ruthless as the frowners. Instead, they are so busy withtheir own life that they have no time to notice the sufferings of others around them.Just like the occupiers in Passeig de Grcia, who were so absorbed in their ownworld to notice the condition of the beggar, the occupiers in other parts of the world


5/10

live in wonderland. While it is good to be concerned with ones own welfare, familyand career, it is equally important for one to be his or her brothers/sisters keeper.Unfortunately, the occupiers are caught up in their own world, which beclouds theirview of the world of the poor.

Occupiers are too occupied with their own family to see the sufferings of millions ofother families trapped in the poverty cage. Occupiers are too occupied with puttingfood on their table to be bothered about the man next door that has nothing to eat;occupiers are too occupied with climbing the social ladder to be concerned about theneeds of those at the bottom of the social ladder.

The occupier is caught up in the routine business of life and so has no time for thepoor. As a consequence, they are too busy with their careers to see the tears of thepoor; they are too busy with their friends to hear the silent whisper of the poor sayinghelp, help, help and they are too busy with their comfort to feel the pain of the poor.

They believe that their money, talents, skills and education is meant to be used only

for themselves and the people they love. They are the me, myself and mine people.They are self-centred and self-seeking people and because of this selfish attitude bythe occupiers, the poor do not get help. Unfortunately, they fail to realise that theseshort-term traits of self-centeredness, and self-seekingness, will in the long runtranslate to self-contemptuousness. To the occupiers, Martin Luther Kings commentthat an individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines ofhis individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity, amounts toblasphemy, heresy and gibberish talk.

At the corporate level, organisations adopt this occupier mentality when it carries outactivities that benefit the organization and staff without regards of the impact on thewider society especially those at the margin of society. An example of this occupier

mentality in the corporate world can be seen in the sweatshops of Asia where largecorporations exploit under aged workers who work under very inhumane conditionsall in the name of increasing profit margins. Another example is the case of therecent financial crisis in which a number of institutions rewarded workers withbonuses running into millions of Dollars even though the activities of some of theseemployees led directly or indirectly to thousand of suicides, millions of job losses andbillions wiped out of peoples pensions.

Governments operate this occupier mentality when it pursues policies to protect itsinterest to the detriment of the people at the margin of society. One area where thisis glaring is when governments spend astronomical amounts on defence at theexpense of other expenditures that could help lift the people on the margin of society.

For instance, despite the fact that in the UK, youth unemployment is over twentypercent (fifty percent for black youths), the British government recently deployed the1 billion HMS Dauntless destroyer to secure the coast of Falkland Islands, which is12,700 kilometers away from the UK. In another case, the Indian government openeda commercial bid to equip its air force with one hundred and twenty six multi-roleaircrafts valued at $10 billion even though around forty percent of the Indianpopulation lives below the international poverty line. In Nigeria, legislators earnalmost $140,000 a month, while the government continues to drag its feet toimplement the minuscule minimum wage of $90 a month.

The Throwers: unlike the frowner and the occupier, the thrower engages with thepoor. She also attempts to solve the paupers problem by throwing him a coin.However, despite the sincere intention of the thrower, the poor still remain in thesame condition. This is because the thrower addresses the symptoms rather than the


6/10

root cause of the poverty. When the throwers at Passeig de Grcia threwcoins intothe beggars brown cup, they did not look him in the eye. The lack of eye contactsymbolises the throwers inability to critically look at the structural factors that causesthe poverty in the first place. It also symbolises the throwers inability to see the painin the eyes of the poor.

Throwing money at the poor without addressing the root cause of poverty will not gofar in eradicating poverty. Martin Luther King caught this many years ago when hesaid: True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see thatan edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. Structural barriers such asracism, inequality, poor education, inadequate housing, among other barriers wouldneed to be pulled down in order to give the poor a fair chance in life. In the race oflife, the poor are at a competitive disadvantage. They are expected to complete therace of life on a racecourse filled with obstacles and hurdles right from the beginningof the racetrack to the end of the racetrack. It is therefore necessary for theseimpediments to be removed so as to create a level playing field. In this way, we canmake poverty history.

Corporate bodies can also exhibit the thrower mentality. For instance, somecompanies encourage employees to go to socially deprived areas to help mentorchildren, teach children, build fences and paint walls, even though these samecompanies employment policies do not give people from these deprivedneighbourhoods a fair chance of getting employed in the company.

At the governmental level, many rich countries give overseas aids to a number ofleast developing countries (LDC) in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Even thoughthese overseas aids run into billions of Dollars, they often come with conditions,which are detrimental to the recipient countries. These aids flowing from rich to poorcountries have sometimes created a dependency culture in which the latter becomes

dependent on the former. To make poverty history, the rich countries would need topull down some of the barriers that continue to impoverish the poor nations. Forinstance, agricultural subsidies paid to US and European farmers have succeeded inputting African farmers at a competitive disadvantage. These subsidies, which totalaround $300bn a year, drive down prices and the resulting cheap agriculturalproducts produced by USA and European farmers, are then dumped into Africathereby making the continents agricultural sector less viable. These agriculturalpolicies are hampering economic development in Africa. According to a Christian Aidreport, trade liberalization has cost sub-Saharan Africa around $275bn over the past20 years. Furthermore, high tariffs, some as high as 300% are imposed on Africanproduce, thereby denying African farmers access to international markets. Accordingto the World Bank, rich countries export subsidies and tariffs cost poor farmers

around $100bn annually in lost income.

These subsidies have resulted in mass unemployment and an unprofitableagriculture industry in the continent. According to Mike Moore, the former Director-General of the World Trade Organization, the total value of Organisation forEconomic Co-operation and Development (OECD) agricultural subsidies are two-thirds of Africa's total GDP and abolition of these subsidies will give Africa as muchas 4 to 5 times all the combined debt relief and overseas aids. Furthermore, thecontinuous delay in concluding the Doha round of talks continues to hamper farmersin poor countries.

The Observers: see the poverty in the land, they are also aware of the devastationcaused by poverty, yet inspite of this knowledge, they do nothing about it. Apathy is akey characteristic of this group of people. Inequality, racism and poverty prevail as a


7/10

result of their silence. These people remain apathetic for a number of reasons. Firstthey believe that poverty will always remain, so there is no need to do anything. Thisis a flawed reasoning because it fails to take into consideration the fact that changedoes not come on a platter of gold. It occurs when people stand up and work towardsbringing change. President Obama eloquently stated the need for people to throwaway apathetic attitudes when he said: one voice can change a room, and if onevoice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it

can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it canchange a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world."

Another reason why observers are sometimes apathetic is because they fear that ifthey become vocal on issues relating to poverty and social justice, they may bebranded troublemakers, they may lose their jobs or they may lose their friends andinfluence.

Apathy in the face of injustice can have devastating effects, afterall EleanorRoosevelt was right when she said: So much attention is paid to the aggressive

sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too littleattention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the longrun can have a more devastating effect.

The Deniers: are those who deny the existence of poverty or its impact. Theychoose to deny the existence of poverty because it makes them sad. In otherinstances, they choose to focus on the wealthy aspect of life because they associatewith only the wealthy. They dont come across the poor in their day-to-day living.

The deniers use statistics, percentages and numbers as excuses to deny the realitythat many people are living on the margins of society. For instance, in countries likeNigeria where millions of people live below the poverty line, deniers try to deny the

existence of poverty by saying things like: there is no poverty in Nigeria, afterall therichest man in Africa is a Nigerian or there is no poverty in Nigeria, afterall Nigeriasgrowth projection of 7 percent makes it the third fastest growing economy in theworld.

Deniers are also susceptible to being deceived by tokenism. Once they see a personcross a high hurdle, they assume that every one else has and should be able tocross the hurdle. If a group has been marginalised because of the colour of their skinor socio-economic background, the deniers fail to see such injustice and will focus onthe achievement of the token black person or the token traveller or the token femalehigh flyer.

Another characteristic of the deniers is that they discourage those who want to makea change. From the Passeig de Grcia avenue illustration, the woman who tried toprevent her daughter from showing compassion to the beggar could be described asa denier. Deniers sow seeds of discouragement in the heart of those willing to helpbecause they deny the existence of poverty. Like the woman who covered herdaughters eyes, deniers put a veil across the eyes of potential helpers by eitherridiculing them or encouraging them to focus on more mundane things. So they couldsay: at least the poor are still alive, so why bother about them; you have got tofocus on your career, rather than the poor.


8/10

So from the above, one can see that we live in a world that is accustomed to notcaring about the poor or those at the margin of society. Having a compassion for thepoor is seen as a form of weakness and one can be accused of having a victimmentality. The first and greatest commandment, which the Master taught us: Thoushalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy

mind has been replaced in our world with another commandment that says: Thoushalt hate the poor with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

Any society that has no regard for the poor and the people at the margin of societyhas lost its soul and is on its way to hell where there will be "wailing and gnashing ofteeth". A society that can spend trillions of Euros to bailout financial institutions andyet watch millions of people go homeless has lost its soul and is on its way to hellwhere there will be "wailing and gnashing of teeth"; a society that encourages corruptpoliticians to siphon almost $130 billion out of a country within eight years and yetwatch millions of children go to bed with a hungry stomach has lost its soul and is onits way to hell where there will be "wailing and gnashing of teeth"; a society thatspends billions of Dollars on nuclear weapons to maintain military supremacy and yet

watch millions of people die because they have inadequate medical coverage haslost its soul and is on its way to hell where there will be "wailing and gnashing ofteeth".

Though I have spoken about the reasons why poverty continues to prevail in ourworld, I will be doing the reader a great injustice if I stop here, without discussingwhat can be done to address the poverty in our world.

If the world is to become a more just place, one may have to examine the side noteof the event that took place at Passeig de Grcia. As explained earlier, I mentionedthat there was a little girl who saw the beggar and stopped. This little girl wasdisturbed by the beggars plight. She had something that all the other one thousand

and five hundred people that walked pass the beggar did not have: EMPATHY. Inshort, if poverty is to become history, the solution would not be found on the brow ofthe frowner or head of the occupier or the eyes of the observer or the hands of thethrower or the brain of the denier. Rather the solution will be found in the heart of theEMPATHISER.

Empathy is the capacity to see the world from the prism of another person. It isputting oneself in someones shoes. It is important to differentiate empathy fromsympathy, as what the poor needs is empathy and not sympathy. Sympathy is adistant feeling, while empathy is a close understanding. A sympathiser pities thesufferer, whereas an empathiser not only pities the sufferer, but also shares in thesufferers emotional pain, as a result, she has a better understanding of what the

sufferer is going through. A sympathisers sympathy is detached from the suffereronce he is far away from the sufferer, whereas an empathisers empathy is stillattached to the sufferer even if he is far away from the sufferer. A sympathiser sees asufferer as another person, whereas an empathiser sees the sufferer as herself.

Barack Obama once said: we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culturethat too often tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe,and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfishimpulses.If governments, businesses and individuals can move away from either asympathising or selfish spirit towards an empathising spirit, then perhaps endingpoverty could be achieved in our world. Viewing poverty from the perspective of thepoor will accelerate the urgency on the part of mankind to do everything possible toend poverty.


9/10

Over a hundred years ago, William Booth, the founder of the Salvation army whenencouraging his congregation to become more compassionate about human soulssaid: most Christians would like to send their recruits to Bible college for five years. Iwould like to send them to hell for five minutes. That would do more than anythingelse to prepare them for a lifetime of compassionate ministry. Perhaps if the frownercould spend five days in the poor womans hell on earth, his frown towards the poorwill be converted to a smile; perhaps if the occupier could spend five days in the poormans hell on earth, her busy attitude towards the poor will be converted to acompassionate attitude; perhaps if the observer could spend five days in the poorwomans hell on earth, his apathy towards the poor will be converted to action;perhaps if the thrower could spend five days in the poor mans hell on earth, hershort-term gifts towards the poor will be converted to long-term structural solutions;perhaps if the denier could spend five days in the poor womans hell on earth, hisamnesia towards the poor will be converted to remembrance and love.

Selah

Ahmed Olayinka Sule, [email protected]

April 2012

The views stated in this article are personal to the writer and does not represent the views oropinions of any company or organization with which the author is or was associated.

Ahmed Sule, 2012


10/10

Appendix 1

Some information sources on ending poverty

http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/takeaction/

http://www.whiteband.org/

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/aboutus/who/aims/our_aims.aspx

Documents

Why Poverty Continues To Prevail