What is poverty? When we define it as the lack of, we may be correct but not completely. We look at poverty as a state of being or a force that creates or is a result of a form of being. Many time we consider ourselves to be poor simply because their things we deem ourselves unable to do, change or create. I n those moments when we are without the means to, we are poor, or so according to our measure.
If that is anything to go by, the world is one big poor bunch of people; every one finds themselves in desperate need of means to change something once in a while. It may not be that we are eternally poor, but we all get to experience the coldness that comes with poverty. Again, that is by our standard of measure.
But we take a moment and think. What do we mean we say that we are trying to eradicate poverty? We are trying to day that we are working to remove that inability. If that is right, and by our standard it ought to be, we are attempting the impossible. As long as we shall live we will always have an inability to do or not do something. We will always find ourselves in a place of incapability. Then we realize that poverty is not a state and not a result of a state. Poverty is who we are or not.
Please follow closely. When a man has a million dollars we would deem him rich. But what happens when he cannot salvage his marriage or when he is the agent of destruction? I will tell you the answer, what happens is that he too realizes how insignificant his million dollars is, or his wife does. If we maintain that poverty is the inability to, we ask ourselves who is unable. The man is or his wife is, but more than being unable, they or one of them presents that inability. They are the source of the inability. And if you go any further, they are the inability.
When we find ourselves in those desperate situations we ask ourselves where the inability is. And if we find it in us we have not to solve the problem but build ourselves out of that nature. Take this illustration; a celebrity took a slum and built it into a city, he then gave the city to the residents who had earlier on inhabited the slum. Months later, the city begun to rot and the water stopped flowing. They told him they could not afford such standards of living. Devastating, ha? Well this serves to point to something more important, the solution to poverty.
Money
When we think of solving poverty we look to money and we believe that if we just inject money into things and places we would have solved a lot. If the above illustration is anything to learn from, we learn that that is incorrect. People present the habitation of poverty. It is in their attitudes, mindsets, and passions and in summary, it is in their nature. It is who we are if we are poor. So how do we solve people if they are the problem?
I say we educate people. But the other question is with what? Not all information is relevant to solve particular problems. We look at money as a tool that solves poverty, when in fact money cannot solve poverty. I here some say that true we need money to solve poverty. That may be correct but the truth is money will only help people realize just how poor they are.
I am kind of stack at this point. I will add to this article later.
Wait for the continuation and I pray that you have got the point for now.
