Helping the Poor Help Themselves

The old saying, "Give a man a fish, and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and feed him a lifetime." applies equally to children and the poor. Instead of giving them unconditional handouts, it is important for their development to build self-confidence by catching the fish themselves, instead of being fed it. Welfare cheques and allowrances are good up to a point, like first aid from the Good Samaritan for the robbery victim, but more important than the material blessing, is the spiritual blessing of earning a living.

Almost all of the most effective international aid programmes in undeveloped nations are the ones that help the people help themselves. Instead of pouring unaccountable billions into an economy clouded by corruption and inefficiencies, the best practice is to permeate the local economy with experts who do not do the work, but mentor, and advise the motivated energized people themselves.

Similarly, to help the poor, the three steps of first aid (immediate concerns like food and medical needs), security (housing and minimal steady source of income), and long term health and fitness (confidence, abilities, education, etc) are essential and must be approached one step at a time, according to the need of the individual.

In the extreme cases, which are most of the ones when we consider the bottom ten percent of society, the first step must be a resolution of addiction, malnutrition, and other medical problems. Without doubt, the necessary care exceeds the capability of almost any single private citizen, except perhaps the very rich, i.e. the top 5%. However, it is more strategic for government agencies to provide first aid, because they can be more intimately engaged with the people who needs help. Instead, the rich should provide funding and supervision of the third step, when these people have found security, and ready and able, most importantly, motivated to stand up for themselves.

In other words, the responsibilities of government agencies should be to help the poor to recover from catastrophic and traumatic events that caused their poverty, while at the same time, help motivate them with hope and opportunities. The responsibility of the rich is to provide the opportunities, to ensure that even the very poor has the same opportunities that the rich themselves enjoyed.

The key to utopia is the coordination of government programmes with private charitable efforts to achieve the same goal of building up each individual's sense of responsibility and service to society. When both the rich and the poor feel and do the same, when the lion and the lamb lie down together, then peace and prosperity will be on earth as well as in heaven.

Helping the Poor

When we understand a little of what makes people poor and what makes people happy, we are ready to attempt a first approximation to the solution of poverty, and devise a plan to help the poor.

Ancient Chinese traditions have a wise saying for good government: love the people as you would your own children. In the case of poor people, this adage is particularly apt. Poor societies require a paternalistic government to lead with vision and disciple in order to evolve out of poverty into prosperity. In addition to the ordinary duties of coordination and execution of day to day governance, the government of a country facing any crisis, especially poverty requires firm and proactive leadership, to influence with vision, to lead with clarity, and to execute with firm resolve. It is not sufficient to have a vision of utopia; it is not sufficient to have the political savvy and skills to push through legislations and lead in the poll; it is not even sufficient to have the strength and charisma that carries a nation through hard times. All the virtues are simultaneously necessary for success.

Most important of all the virtues is the ability of sound financial management. Without exception, every great nation rise on the foundation of a frugal leader, who paved the way of prosperity for future generations. It is a common mistake for left-leaning governments to exhaust the treasury and goes deep into national debt while trying to hand out numerous and generous assistance to every citizen, mirroring the unconditional bottomless love of a parent for a child. Yet, just like a child being smothered with too much love, the poor in such society falls into a trap of dependency that takes generations, if ever, for them to rise out of.

On the other hand, those governments at the other extreme, offering no assistance whatsoever to the poor, allowing them to live or die by their own industry, are no better than those parents who neglect their duties to protect, nurture, and nurish their children.

The true path must be a middle road, where assistance is granted conditionally, depending on forever changing circumstance. How, then, should a government help the poor? Each nation face a unique set of circumstances that require a unique path to a solution. Anyone who offers a panecea is suspect, but sound financial management must be a prerequisite because nothing can be done, unless there is enough money to pay for services. And along the same line of reasoning, any plans that destroy the financial health of a nation is almost certainly bad, except in extreme circumstances, such as the need for a defensive war. Each nation, and the people in it, must consider the circumstances carefully and decide according to their own collective conscience.

Meanwhile, for an individual citizen, what can be done to help the poor?

Christ's story of the good Samaritan is a good illustration of the kind of help that is appropriate. When faced with a victim of robbery in desperate need, the good Samaritan helped in three stages:

1. first aid - providing medical aid, food, and water
2. secure shelter - taking the victim to a familiar hotel to receive better care
3. long term solution - before moving on with his own business, he left clear instructions and money for the inn keeper to provide long term care, until the victim is fully recovered.

All too often, we provide a little first aid, and go on our way. That's what many well-intentioned among us do when faced with the many beggers and pan-handlers on today's urban streets. Yet, Christ taught that it is not enough to simply provide a little aid. To love is to sacrifice, and the Good Samaritan sacrificed his convenience, by taking the victim out of his way to a safe place, where long term care and shelter was available at his own cost. Furthermore, he made certain that someone familiar and trusted would continue to care for the victim.

How does that story help us help the poor in today's infinitely more complex society?

We need to first of all understand that the problem is much more complicated than one can imagine, and the solution is more than simply throwing money at it. The poor is a collection of individuals with diverse needs, and diverse problems. There isn't a single solution that will help them all. However, there are common characteristics that a society can generalize into social programs, and individuals can participate as a part of the solution.

The three part solution of the Good Samaritan is a good starting point:

1. first aid: food banks, homeless shelters, and welfare cheques only provide the basic minimum to meet the needs that all people require
2. low cost social housing, workfare and other social programs provide the next level of secure shelter that gives poor people stability

Most socialist countries have done well up to this point, and yet, the level of poverty is stubbornly high.

What is missing in most cases, is the final step to lift the poor from their immature state, from their weakened economic health into vigorous contributors of society.

The final portion of a solution to poverty must necessarily be long-term:

3. There are many examples in under-developed countries where international aid have proven very successful. Mentoring programs, micro-loans, and specialized schools, just to name a few, have been extremely successful, and cost-effective. These same techniques and programs can certainly do wonder for the poor in wealthy countries. The only missing ingredient is political will. There is little glory in doing social work.

Until teachers and social workers receive the same respect and adoration that movie stars and atheletes get from society, media, and children, our society will be forever trapped along with the poor in our society, outside the gates of utopia. There will always be crime, and depression, both emotional and economic. There will be always speculative bubbles, because concentration of wealth has proven again and again, that when the rich has too much money, and little meaningful purpose to spend it, they will find a way to waste it.

Utopia is a society where the even the poor is happy, and the rich has meaningful lives. And when the poorest ten percent of utopia is helped to the point where they rise to the average, while others, less poor originally, become the bottom ten percent in a richer society, and receive the special care. Eventually, since the special care programs are so effective in lifting people's standard of living, ten percent at a time, almost everyone in utopia will be poor, receiving special care at one time or another. And as a corollary, almost everyone in utopia will be part of the top five percent who will be providing funding and direction for these ever changing special care programs for the "poor".

With a clear direction for these programs to help the poor, the next step towards utopia is to ensure that these programs are executed effectively, which means that the under-paid and over-worked teachers and social workers must be a part of quality control methods that ensure the increased funding to social programs reap the expected harvest in terms of happier and more fulfilling lives. There must be measurable deliverables, and milestones that can provide clear signals to the front-line workers in this war against poverty that we are winning the war one battle at a time. And just like any war, each member of society must contribute to the logistical support for the frontline, either directly or indirectly.

In utopia, each member of society must be fully commited to help lift the whole to a higher plane, in order that no one is left behind.

What makes the poor poor?

Why is there poverty? It is not like death and illness, a natural part of human existence. Or, is it?

What made the difference among the developing countries, the developed countries, that allowed them to remove poverty from among its citizens?

Why, even among the most prosperous nations in human history, is there poverty, side-by-side with luxurious wealth?

Is it a law of human society that there must be a gulf between rich and poor, and the twain shall never meet?

Is Marxist theory about capitalist society correct, at least concerning exploitation and class struggle? Can liberal democracies win the final battle in the Cold War? If globalization cannot bring happiness to all, then surely the remaining poor, and getting poorer, people of the world will eventually unite to bring a new world order. Maybe not in the near future, but perhaps within three generations. Can we condemn our grandchildren to wars and revolutions that, if Bill Joy is right, will be certainly Armageddon. Afterall, for the poor with nothing to lose, MAD is not out of the question. What the jihad suicide bombers do today, will be but mere prelude to the devastation of Mutually Assured Destruction in the future dystopia.

What makes the poor poor? What can we do to make them rich, or at least, comfortable?

The early American founders thought it was freedom. Given that they had bountiful resources, and a huge continent left to explore, to exploit, they were probably right.

Thomas Jefferson thought it was education. Witness the success of the American century, he was probably right.

The new liberal democracies in East Asia believe it has to do with industrious hard work, and social stability. Witness their amazing economic prosperity, they are probably right.

Yet, even in America, the land of golden opportunities and dreams, there are more than a fair share of people living in dreadful poverty, generations after generations, passing inheritance of not wealth nor the pursuit of happiness, but poverty and misery. It remains to be seen, if the new capitalist converts in East Asia can surpass their American teacher, and create social stability in the form of utopia without poverty.

To understand the poor, we need to see not a collective, but the individuals. Each poor person has a unique history. As in medicine, many diseases share a common symptom. Not all poor people are created the same. Each has a story to tell. Some are made poor by circumstances beyond their control, like childhood poverty that cling to them worse than ill-fitting clothes; others are made poor by personal choices and bad judgment, like addiction or investment or greed; others are made poor by global shifting winds, from globalization to global warming to oursourcing.

Most of all, the root cause of poverty is a lack of education - not only an education in the traditional sense, the three R's, and the new skills in computing, but also an education in life - the life skills one need to survive, to excel, in making fuzzy decisions answering questions that have no clear answers. Traditional education requires memorization of facts and procedures. Life requires more than that, and many of the poor are poor because they find it difficult to live in a world without structure, without clear boundaries. Their own internal compass is confused. That's why historically, poor countries have always done better with a strong autocratic leader. In liberal democracies, the poor also need a strong paternalistic government, or organization to provide the strong structural foundation from which to rebuild their lives. A major failure of today's liberal democracies has been the inevitable lack of strength in organizations that are suppose to help the poor. The left is warm and fuzzy with desire to help, the right is hard-nosed and hard-hearted with an attitude of let them pull themselves up by their own bootstrap like everyone else. In fact, the poor needs someone in the middle, with a firm hand, a warm heart, and a clear head to guide them on a long road to maturity. Like a child, the poor does not need a parent's unconditional hand-out, nor a parent's total neglect, but a responsible parent's guidance one-step at a time.

The family of nations, like all families, have members who mature at different speed. Some mature faster than others. Whether we stick together in a family, depends on how each member is treated. As M. Scott Peck pointed out, a community can be formed only when all the members in the group are willing to empty themselves of their own personal perspective, to all others, each of the others, to enter, and to accept each of the others. The mature rich nations of the world can continue to eat, to drink, and to be merry, while the still maturing poor nations of the world watch helplessly while a part of their inheritance goes up in smoke, and smog, to become a part of global warming. If we think Bill Joy's vision of the future dystopia where rogue individuals can wreck havoc on the world, if we think the Armaggedon described in the book of Revelation, are but mere speculations of distant improbable events, then the lesson of the past has taught us that we will be sure to be poorer together, perhaps not today, not this century, but certainly within our life time of our children and their children.

If a budget surplus of the Clinton years can be turned into a budget deficit of the Bush years in the span of a few years, imagine what a decade of ill-management will do.

What makes the poor happy?

If utopia is a place where even the poor is happy, what do we need to meet this minimum requirement?

What makes the poor happy, is probably the same as what makes everyone else happy:

1. to have met the basic needs for food, shelter, safety
2. to have the love and support of family and friends
3. to feel a sense of belonging in the greater community
4. to contribute in a meaningful way to others
5. to know that living has made a difference

Some smart person has actually wrote a thesis on the hierarchy of self-actualization, but I can't recall it exactly, and don't feel like looking it up. I am sure it is easy to google.

Most socialist countries attempt to provide for minimum basic needs, like food and shelter. Depending on the justice system, most people also feel safe.

The universally increasing divorce rate, and the ever climbing percentage of people living alone, combined with the stubbornly persistant high rate of children living in poverty, all point to the great distance we have to achieve utopia.

Global village or not, each individual probably feel more alienated from the rest of society than they were a few decades ago. Hence the popularity of Friends on television, and SMS among friends. Of all the relationships, friendship has adapted best to the new electronic age.

As Walt Whitman, I believe, once said, the majority of us live lives of quiet desperation. The poor, especially, live from day to day, lonely and despairing.

What can society, and the richest 5% of society, do to ensure utopia is real?

Nurturing Individuals

In order to create Utopia, we must first create sustainable communities. In order to create sustainable communities, we must first nurture individuals to take part in communities.

The reason why some groups never form communities, while other groups coelesce into communities quickly, is that the individuals in communities require a certain maturity, and forming a community require individuals to take a leap of faith that is too much for some, but not for others. Returning to Christ's parable of a camel through the eye of a needle, the broken hearted and the meek may inherit the earth precisely because they are the ones who are ready and willing to become empty, to accept a new future, while the rich and famous are too full of the present, the happy indulgent materialistic moment, to surrender their control.

I believe that Utopia has a place for everyone, anyone, regardless of any notable difference in characteristics. No matter the race, sex, etc, the only requirement for a person to be in a community, and therefore our Utopia, is the willingness to commit to the hard work necessary to progress through the four stages of pseudocommunity, chaos, emptiness, and finally into community. This means the four tools of problem solving, and dealing with life's difficulties, must be a part of the participant's repertoire: delayed gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balance. These skills are not the special birth-right of any one group of people, nor are they exclusive to any one. Indeed, one of M. Scott Peck's insight into human nature is that to be human is to be able to change, to transform by a strength of will alone. With enough time and effort, anyone can achieve proficiency in these skills, and therefore, qualification to participation in a community.

The health of an individual is therefore predicated on the person's ability to change, to delay gratification in spite of media frenzy for impulse buying and almost uncontrollable desires, to accept responsibility for one's situation despite of life's difficulties and injustice, to dedicate one's daily living by principles based on truth, rather than falsehoods, lies, or fantasies, and most of all, to live with balance and moderation, never falling victim to the deceptively attractive road of extremism.

The responsibility of society, or a sustainable community, is to nurture each and every individual towards healthy independence, living according to these principles, and avoiding the pitfalls of easy and exciting living. The ones who need nurturing the most, are those with the least power or influence over their lives, the poor. Until a society has learned to care and nurture for all its poor, it can never reach Utopia, which is, by definition, a society where even the poor is happy.

The Health of An Individual

In order for there to be an utopia, there must be a framework to build and, on occasions, to dismantle communities. Communities are made by individuals; so healthy communities that form utopia, need healthy individuals. In addition to the usual physical health of an individual, there is the more relevant health in spiritual and emotional terms.

M. Scott Peck wrote in his book, "Road Less Traveled", "Life is difficult". Creating utopia is to promote the health of individuals, overcoming life's usual difficulties. Indeed, utopia is when all individuals are empowered to overcome life's difficulties, and live happily ever after NOT because there are no more problems to be solved, but because they are empowered to solve these problems, with tools, with technologies, and most of all, with knowledge and wisdom.

And again we come full circle back to the nomadic technologies that started this blog. Are they tools to free us, or traps to bind us? Are the new technologies, such as the Internet, nanotechnology, biotechnology, etc, tools that will save us and usher in a new age of happiness, or the weapons of mass destruction that will bring us to the brink of Armagadden? The answers to these questions, I believe, can be found in understanding how these technologies affect the health of each and every individual in our society. And since each individual is unique and different, the understanding is complex, and the process to achieve understanding is a long and complicated interdisciplinary journey that includes roadtrips into diverse topics, from psychology to philosophy, from sociology to political economics, and from science to technology.

It seems that this blog began as an innocent attempt to get myself online, to test the waters of the weblog phenonmenan. Yet, it evolved, as all things Internet seem to do, into quite an interesting journey into destinations unknown, with a long itinerary ahead. It looks like I am about to embark on my own Road Less Traveled. It would be wise to prepare for the long journey ahead, and list the necessary supplies.

The skillset listed in Road Less Traveled are four ways to deal with difficulties in life; they are problem solving tools. They are like a Swiss Army knife for life - a generic tool that is useful for many situations. These four tools are:
1. delaying of gratification
2. acceptance of responsibility
3. dedication to truth
4. balance

In addition to these, I think there are also additional skills which are essential in community formation:
1. civility
2. tolerance
3. emptiness
4. love

They correspond to the four stages of community formation:
1. pseudoCommunity
2. chaos
3. emptiness
4. community

The first four tools are for the individual's internal self. They have little to do with relating to others, and more to do with an individual's internal dialog. The second four tools are for the individual's external self. They rely on the first four tools to build beyond the internal dialog, to continue with an external dialog, a conversation with others.

The Trees in the Forest

While it is nice to talk about communities, and frameworks to build communities, it is equally, if not more, important to consider carefully the individuals who make up any community. M. Scott Peck wrote his classic spiritual transformational book, "Road Less Traveled", many years ago. It describes the journey of his own spiritual transformation, and what it means to be a spiritual being on this journey of life. In order for communities to overcome the obstacles of a lack of commitment, or exclusivity, or totalitarian rigidity, or lack of communication, each individual must first overcome their own obstacles for spiritual growth. Amazingly, the obstacles for individuals are remarkably similar to the obstacles for communities. Commitment, tolerance, flexibility and willingness to submit to another's authority, active listening and willingness to hear another person's voice, these are all essential to a person's spiritual growth, as well as the health of a community. Without them, a person can not enter into the state of emptiness, the state of Grace, that is required for a group of individuals to enter into community. Unlike an actual forest, each and every tree in the forest of individuals must be healthy and thriving, in order for the whole forest to be healthy. A deficiency in one tree is a deficiency in the whole. The old small town culture of caring for each member reflects the same understanding of individuals in a community.

How do communities of individuals maintain a healthy commitment for each other? How do diverse different individuals form contrasting background and history tolerate each other, not only in formal structured situations, like meetings, but also in daily surprising encounters when each person's own little idiosyncracies represent point of friction and annoyances for everyone else? How can confident and over-achieving individuals with strong opinions, high energy, and sharp focus share with others and not become involved in conflicts of personalities or opinions? Indeed, all the other necessary ingredients in a person's spiritual growth begins with the quality of active listening, or willingness to hear another person's voice, to be emptied of one's own voice, of one's own opinions, of ones own expectations, of one's own prejudices, and most of all, of one's own habits and old assumptions. Only when we are emptied of ourselves, can we become a bigger self, to rise to the next level of a spiritual being, to connect with another person.

When any particular tree overshadows the other trees around it, the forest loses the charm of cohesiveness of purpose, and the aesthetic unity of the forest is lost to the majesty of the singular tree. Similarly, although each individual is unique and special, perhaps because every individual is unique and special, no singular individual should be placed above all others. The concept of a divine right to rule has been proven wrong in history. No singular individual or any group of individuals has the right to overshadow all others, no matter the reason. Christ set the extraordinary example of washing the feet of the disciples as a clear demonstration of this lesson. Each tree in the forest deserves our respect and admiration. A community is only healty when there is this atmosphere of mutual respect and admiration exists among all the members of the community, including those who are newly joined, or even, those who are from outside of the community. When the forest can care for each and every tree within it, then and only then, it is a sustainable forest.