Poverty’s Lovers…
“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” –Aristotle
Poverty, the breeding ground for ignorance, has been the catalyst for many individual crimes and rebellions, with subsequent coups of third world governments; but revolution and crime are not the only children of poverty. If poverty is the parent, he can choose between two lovers, passive acceptance and ignorant rebellion.
Passive acceptance is accepting without participating in the decision process and not resisting or arguing. There are those who, through ignorance, have concluded that there is no hope for change. Many of these people allow life to pass by with no thought that anything could be different. For thousands of years the lowest caste of the Hindu religion was made to believe (through violence if necessary) that they had no hope. Their job was to passively accept their fate and live in abject poverty. In America, there are people, like the poor in the Appalachians, who have not been relegated to a caste system that keeps them in bondage, but to a state of poverty and a cycle of ignorance that is just as insidious and effective as a socio-religious decree. They exist and perpetuate their muted life to the next generation, ignorance birthing ignorance, passively accepting their fate because they have no mechanism to engage for change.
Most crimes committed in American cities are committed by impoverished young men who have found themselves in a desperate struggle for more than material wealth; they are in a struggle for an identity that is larger than the poverty that keeps them bound to governmental assistance and crime ridden housing projects. These acts of violence can and should be seen for what they are: the natural response of a person who is “fighting the system that keeps them down.”
The violence is the symptom; the true problem is that they are in the midst of an ignorant rebellion. The term “ignorant” in its Latin root means “not aware” and is the state of being without knowledge. In many communities the lack of quality education afforded to children along with the apathy of their parents in regard to becoming educated is the root cause of the problem. Many come to see violence as an escape from poverty through the glamorization of drug use and gang persona by rappers like 50 Cent or Eminem. It can seem so much easier to rise above poverty and obscurity by selling drugs or leading a gang, than by staying in school, especially in a school that has a low quality of education, and becoming educated.
In a larger context, many national governments have been overthrown by rebellions only to be replaced by men or women that are as corrupt as the despot that was removed. The subsequent government is sometimes as bad or worse. The reason this can and does happen is because the populace at large was not educated. They have no more knowledge to work from than they did before the rebellion they were a part of was “successful.” As the new government begins to assert its dominance through oppression, a new generation of rebels gathers to fight again.
There is a third lover, one whose child is the beginning of hope, her name is informed resistance. Ignorant rebellion and informed resistance are not the same, they are not even related. Where ignorant rebellion is a reaction, usually violent, to a situation; informed resistance is a preconceived action. It is based in understanding, through knowledge, because of education and takes a course that transcends the barriers of both poverty and ignorance. If we were to study the lives of men and women who have risen above poverty or succeeded in spite of violent surroundings, we will see people who are not violent, who are not rebels, but are usually peacemakers who fight using ideas, not fists or weapons.
Our job as parents, educators and citizens, is to promote education to the next generation. Our foreign policy as a nation should be education first, than financial aid. We are the stewards of the children entrusted to us; let’s empower them to be informed resistors. They need to know that they can resist oppression and bondage only when they do it from the firm foundation of knowledge.