The Poor on the Road to Utopia

Just like mental patients suffer from many simultaneous determinant factors, not just one or two, poverty is also caused by the convergence of different factors in a person's life, before it manifests economically. Right wing pundits have often blamed the poor themselves for not working hard enough, not saving deep enough, not thinking smart enough, not having characters or guts enough. Left wing pundits have often blamed society, or technology, or globalization, or foreign outsourcing, or part-time employment, or low minimum wage, or big corporations, or anyone and everyone else except the poor themselves. The truth is stranger than fiction, and each case is unique. Poor people are poor not because they want to be poor, not because they make themselves poor, although there are contributing factors, and also actions they can implement to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, to use an old cliche.

The road to utopia for the poor is not the same as the one for the rich, which is another story. Indeed, the road to utopia is different for each individual, as diverse as individuality in our society.

For some, the first step towards utopia is to conquere substance abuse and addiction of any sort, including behaviorial addication, such as gambling, shopping, etc. For others, the first step is to conquere inner demons; while for others, it is to face up to external bullies. However, there is a general plan for all that has proven successful for many in the past. A whole industry has grown out of books such as Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, or Anthony Robbin's series of Awake the Giant Within, or numerous other books aimed at those who want to become empowered for self-transformation. The key is empowerment, and self-transformation. We cannot change other people, and depending on our position in society, often, we cannot change much of our external conditions. For the poor, the powerless, the only reality they can change is themselves. And the first step towards utopia is to change themselves so that they are empowered, to make more changes, both in themselves, and in the world. With time, and cumulative changes, like compound interest, their wealth in transformation will grow and pull themselves up and out of poverty.

The problem for most people is time. Most people today have been conditioned by media and technology to expect instant gratification. We see it in children today far too often, and in adults, too. Another cliche says that Rome wasn't built in a day. Poverty will not be eradicated in a decade. Children expect to live the same standard of living as their parents, but don't want to work at the same level of productivity, and long hours, and intensity. Expectations and attitudes are the most serious roadblocks on the poor's journey to utopia. The roadblocks are fed by the circumstances beyond their control, such as social conditions, and prejudices. The truth is stranger than fiction. Poverty is not the result of the poor's own doing, nor is it the result of social injustice. It is a manifestation of individual and social attitudes towards life.

Until we, as individuals and as a collective society, change our attitudes towards different aspects of life's meaning, utopia will be forever out of reach. Our progress is merely a spiral running in circle, getting nowhere with more technology, faster and faster, staying alive longer and longer, doing nothing better and better, and leaving the earth for our children and grand-children, a little poorer and poorer with each subsequent generation.

The road for society towards utopia is the same as the one for an individual: a spiritual transformation of empowerment, not only of the self, but also of others, and of society as a whole. For the poor, when their circle of influence include only themselves, the road to utopia is mostly self-transformation; for the rich, with progressively larger circles of influence that come with greater wealth, the road to utopia is social-transformation as well as self-transformation. Changes must come first from within. Even for the poor, with limited resources, they can affect others in their lives, in day-to-day living. Christ has said that it is harder for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. I have always puzzled over this. For anyone who has attempted to change their old habits, old attitudes, old prejudices, it is not far-fetch to believe that it is more difficult to change the neural pathways we know and love, than it is to change the physical world we can manipulate.