Letting Poverty Speak

The Past Revisited

A friend lent me a book by Renato Constantino, because I left the Philippines for the US as a young boy and I knew scant about the history of my birth country.  It was a densely-written, virtually picture-less book, but I read it section-by-section to grasp what I hardly ever learned.

For about 350 years, from the early 1500s to the late 1800s, Spain had a stranglehold on the Philippines, named after its King Philip II.  Their colonization not only claimed whatever riches the country had to offer, but also dismantled the very engine - its land - for the sustenance of the people. Besides economic and political, Spain suffocated whatever religious or spiritual livelihood that people had, with its Catholic inculcation.  It was one thing to keep them oppressed and impoverished.  It was something more altogether to hold the Philippine natives hopeless and fearful.  

In a way, the US "liberation" of the country led to another century of a more subtle, perhaps more pernicious form of colonization.  The Americans infiltrated our heads with their books; commandeered our tongues with their language; and wormed their way into our everyday life with products that, to us, came to be named simply by their brands:  for example, Colgate (toothpaste), Scotch Tape (transparent tape), and Kleenex (tissue).

I  argued before that wealthy families and powerful factions then took on the oppressors' mantle; kept the people mainly oppressed; and sustained an arguably marginal, impoverished country up to the present day.  It's a case of the Philippine people colonizing one another, which is precisely what the Spanish did centuries before, in enticing village leaders with amenities, in exchange for controlling their people to serve the Spanish mandate.      

Globalization of Poverty

Little did I know that other countries adopted this template for colonization, such as Britain, Holland, and France, and their subjects were countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Subcontinent.  Once again, it was about plundering the natural resources of the indigenous people, commandeering their economic engines, and building wealth from their know-how.

Activist filmmaker, Philippe Diaz, gathered the impoverished, the knowledgeable, and the concerned into an outstandingly moving, very informative film - The End of Poverty? - about the heartbreak we know.

It is staggering to think that poverty:

• Is far more of a global phenomenon than many of us can imagine or care to acknowledge, affecting even wealthy nations to some notable degree.  
• Traces its roots back at least 500 years, and very much thrives now through neocolonialism and neoliberalism.
• Is so entrenched not just in economics and politics, but also in policy, culture, even technology, so as to make it extraordinarily difficult to eradicate.    

In one way I understand it, globalization is the spread of products and services and the reach of organizations to markets across countries.  There is no way to compartmentalize this merely as business purpose, no way to simplify it as just a good thing to keep pursuing this purpose.  No, inevitably and inviolably, globalization affects the very whole of our lives, in the ways that Diaz gets across in his film.  Some aspects of it are simply not for the good of people!

The terrible irony, as he suggests, is that poverty underpins and enables this sort of globalization.  

There is an imbalance between the 'Have' (mainly from the northern hemisphere) and the 'Have Not' (mainly in the southern hemisphere).  I argue that one reason such an imbalance has persisted, even worsened over 500 years is because it actually achieves an equilibrium that resists disruption or change, by dint of the mechanism that created this imbalance - colonialism.  The powerful want only more power, the rich want only more wealth, and the poor want neither but their simple livelihoods and choices.          

The Core Algorithm

The Core Algorithm begins with the end in mind:  Eradicate poverty.  

I am not the first, and will not be the last, to pose this as an aim.  I simply want to join the efforts of Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi, of Muhammad Yunus and Jacqueline Novogratz, of Bono and scores of others.  Ambitious, perhaps.  Foolish, even, to think I could join them.  

But, you see, it isn't about the notoriety or recognition that these luminaries have.  Rather, it's about the resolution of a worldwide problem that I believe I can help formulate more comprehensively and enact more effectively. 

Theory of Algorithms

Theory of Algorithms is the conceptual framework, which The Core Algorithm operates from; which promises to solve any and all problems; and which offers a complete epistemology that guides effective problem-solving.

A core precept is letting a problem speak for itself, and it is important that we listen earnestly, ask questions, and think deeply, in order to grasp this problem truly well.      

It may mean revisiting our assumptions and findings on poverty.  It may mean suspending judgment, advice or solution, in situations that seem more than compelling, but prematurely so, to judge, advise or solve.  It may mean dispensing with, or seriously revising, those ideas, models or approaches that don't really work.  

Many of the difficulties were run into, in solving poverty, are due, I believe, to an insufficient understanding of, and even misguided notions about, what it is.  At best, we fall short of solving it.  At worst, we actually perpetuate it.

Listening to Poverty:  Tales the Poor Tell

The following stories are from The End of Poverty? and Diaz lets the poor themselves speak.  The timings on the lower left corner of the images are when they speak, so feel free to shift the video cursor accordingly to hear their stories directly.  

In Brazil, Luciana's husband lost his job five years ago, due to staff cutbacks, and has been unemployed since.  The family struggles to put food on the table, and provide for their other basic needs.  When one daughter died, they had to beg for money to bury her.

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In Bolivia, Eduardo Yssa speaks with muted anger and hurt about how colonialism robbed his community of its language and culture.  For what purpose, he asks, but to submit to their whims and make servants of him and his people.  It was a colonization of the mind - that is, psychological, religious, and cultural - as author and professor, Serge Latouche, describes it.  

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In Kenya, this gentleman relates how the government struck a partnership in 2003 with an American company - Dominion Group of Companies - to invest in their village.  Without talking to the villagers, company staff surveyed and cleared some land, and built a dam that overflowed and destroyed their crops and homes.  The very means of their economic survival and shelter were laid to waste.  

What's more, the company apparently conducted aerial spraying, presumably to protect the crops they planted, but resulted in some children becoming ill and dying from insufficient care.  With waters abounding, I gather, mosquitoes, and consequently malaria, became another after-effect of such plundering.  

Still more, the benefits of such "investment" were ferried to the US, so the local people could no longer benefit from their own land.  

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Listening to Poverty:  UN Speaks of Complexity

The United Nations spoke out during the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty a few months ago.  When we listen actively, we learn that poverty is woven into the very fabric of our lives and our society, including (but not just) lack of income and means.

“As governments struggle to balance budgets, funding for anti-poverty measures is under threat. But this is precisely the time to provide the poor with access to social services, income security, decent work and social protection,” [UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon] said. “Only then can we build stronger and more prosperous society – not by balancing budgets at the expense of the poor.”

“There is educational, cultural, scientific and social poverty, which is the corollary of material poverty and must be combated with the same determination,” [Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Bokova] added. “Poverty results in deprivation of individual capacities for development and in the lack of autonomy. Poverty eradication entails building each person’s capacity to create wealth and to tap each human being’s inner potential.”

[UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, Magdalena Sepúlveda] also highlighted the financial, social and physical barriers that prevent the poor from accessing justice and perpetuate and exacerbate their disadvantage, noting that they are often unable to seek justice due to the cost and time of travel to a distant courthouse, fees charged for filing claims or lack of free, quality legal assistance.

No doubt due to this complex weaving, the 2015 Millennium Development Goals is a melange of tall orders that span worldwide ails, and we see what it lists first.

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The United Nations maps out its mandate:

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which range from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.

I am not sure how realistic these targets are, given that we're just two years away, and by its own review the progress against eradicating poverty is modest at best.  I tend to believe that because it took centuries to get to this point, it may actually take centuries to eradicate it.

Let's Keep Listening:  How the West Sets Itself Apart 

I am intrigued by historian Niall Ferguson's TED Talk - The 6 Killer Apps of Prosperity - that is, critical  success factors for the West.  The analogy to an application ('app') is a stretch, I think, even though it is a familiar term for those of us fortunate enough to live in a high-tech world.  That aside, you may wonder, as I did, whether Ferguson relies on sarcasm and pun around the true key word - 'killer' - to convey his main message.    

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It may be easy, and understandable, to feel enraged with what the West has done to perpetuate poverty via its monetary regulations and economic policies (i.e., neoliberalism).  But I urge us to set aside that rage, for the time being, and study the factors that underpin its prosperity, because it may offer insights and ideas about eradicating poverty.  

If the world were an enormous, intricate family house, it means that we open doors to rooms we hadn't entered before and listen to conversations going on in those rooms.  

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1. Competition (rf. Britain), as opposed to uniformity (rf. China), among corporations and between corporations and sovereignty.
2. The scientific revolution (e.g., Newtonian physics, applied to ballistics), as opposed to theocracy.
3. Property rights (e.g., Canada), as opposed to elite ownership over land (e.g., Mexico).
4. Modern medicine (which doubled life expectancy), as opposed to sorcery.
5. The consumer society (i.e., so an industrial society can sustain itself), as opposed to life based on bare necessities (e.g., Gandhi may have "institutionalized poverty").  
6. The work ethic, as opposed to the leisure preference.    

In the end, Ferguson argues that the rest are closing the prosperity gap with the West via these very mechanisms of the West.  In turn, the West may have neglected to evolve its own mechanisms, thus slowly losing ground on prosperity and perhaps gradually killing off its killer apps.      

Case in point about the ascendancy of the rest is this brief talk by economist Daniel Altman on Big Think - Another BRIC in the Wall?.  BRIC refers to Brazil, Russia, India and China, and it was Goldman Sachs' term for highlighting countries with huge markets, and therefore huge potential, for business.  Except Russia, the BRIC countries are non-West. Moreover, Altman encourages us to consider other countries - Peru, Turkey and Malaysia - all outside the West.  

For now, closing thoughts

Clearly poverty has a multi-faceted, multi-determined phenomenology; defies easy or quick-fix resolutions; and demands ongoing efforts to understand it, in order to better resolve and ultimately eradicate it.

In this article, I simply wanted to map out some key sources, as a means of building our grasp of poverty.  Many more abound, of course, such as:

• Anup Shah's Global Issues, which gathers information and insight on issues that affect us all
• a playlist on TED on The Quest to End Poverty
• Wikipedia's crowd-sourced knowledge on Poverty   

As part of offering practical ideas for eradicating poverty, I plan to ask tough questions, for example:

• Poverty has existed well before the 1500s, for example, around the time of Jesus Christ, so does it serve a purpose for humankind by virtue of its having lasted so long?
• Can we motivate the wealthy and powerful to help the poor, not necessarily by redistributing what they have, but by finding alternative ways for them to get more of what they want?
• How do we effectively reach seven billion people, that is, the majority of whom are impoverished and the rest of whom may need help in other ways?  

So, in my next article, I will outline The Core Algorithm for eradicating poverty.