ON POVERTY
Just as Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny, in a very real sense poverty regresses thinking from gazing into a distant future, to taking comfort in the concept that nothing bad is expected to happen today. One's temporal view contracts to a day, leaving little time to consider much beyond survival. It was the overcoming of this obstacle that began the long march of Man from our hunter-gatherer ancestors to become builders of civilizations and aspiring to the stars. Poverty erases most of the best things about our society, and leaves little more than primal fears and a realization that there really is nothing more than surviving until tomorrow. The glories of our society are revealed to be merely a venire worn over our naked skin.
We have spend generations discussing the elimination of poverty, homelessness, and despair, but have never realized that these evils are not merely wrong, or the diseased soil from which crime grows but, perhaps, the single thing that can change our leaning from the stars, back to the jungle. We will make no real progress as a society until we spend out resources eliminating these last vestiges of our primeval beginnings. Until then, we can make no real claim to civilization, only architecture and technology.
posted by Diogenes @ 2/25/2006 11:06:00 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Awesome blog, vuddy (whoever you are).Happened to pass by your blog by chance and loved it.Very true but I would have liked it, had you tried to throw some light on the probable solution to the raised problem.
The solutions to the problem are manifold. First, and foremost, we need to understand that in an increasingly technologically based society, there will not be "jobs," in the classical sense, for everyone. This, however, does not decrease that person's worth, and we owe our citizens at least a reasonable standard of living. No one should exist in the United States without adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care, a door do shut behind them at night, and even a modicum of entertainment. If we take half of the money from our bloated beurocracies and transfer it to the people who need it, we can accomplish our goals without overtaxing the rest of us. Even if this simple step isn't enought to solve the problem, at least it's a step in the right direction,
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