How to be poor can halt you.
One in eight Americans is poor; but also, one in three Peruvians. In the richest country in the world and in a third world country like Peru, it is equally shameful. In both societies, poverty tries to be made invisible, hidden, denied; the poor are intended to be blamed for their condition; fallacious reflections such as «teach to fish instead of receiving» and similar thoughts appear; Faced with the grotesque spectacle of poverty, we disconnect our capacity for empathy.
As I indicated earlier, only two out of three Peruvians do not suffer the blow of poverty; the ruling class, the middle class, those who enjoy the privileges of access to the media, to social networks, to health, to minimum food, to a tribal network that sustains them. It is very easy to lose the ability to empathize with that «third person», that other human being, dispossessed, hungry and ignorant – «it is their own fault» – repeat the most cynical.
Before launching opinions and repeating common places, have you ever asked yourself the question: do you know what it is like to live in poverty, to feel the desperation of the present, permanent hunger and the absence of alternatives?
The Pulitzer Prize-winning American social scientist Matthew Desmond gives us a first-hand account of the harmful effects of life in poverty and its effects on individuals:
«Poverty is the diminution of life and personality. It changes your way of thinking and prevents you from realizing your full potential. It reduces the mental energy you can devote to decisions, forcing you to focus on the last stressor—a late gas bill, a lost job—at the expense of everything else. When someone is shot and killed, children living on that block perform much worse on cognitive tests in the days after the murder. Violence takes over their minds. Time passes and the effect fades until someone else falls. [18] Poverty can cause anyone to make decisions that seem ill-advised and even, downright stupid, to those of us who are not bothered by scarcity.[1]«
Life is hard for everyone; it forces us to make decisions permanently for our future and our families will depend on them. But, as Desmond points out, poverty produces physiological changes that diminish the decision-making capacity on which survival depends.
In addition, it interrogates us through a very common situation for those of us who have had the misfortune of going through a serious illness or that of a family member:
«Have you ever sat in a hospital waiting room, looking at the clock and praying for good news? You are there, locked into the current emergency, next to which all other worries and responsibilities feel (and are) trivial. That experience is something like living in poverty.[2]«
In the face of illness and poverty, life alternatives diminish, options become even more scarce, it is the time for metaphysical prayers, due to problems that the mind loses the ability to process.
«Poverty is often material scarcity, stacked on top of chronic pain, stacked on top of incarceration, stacked on top of depression, stacked on top of addiction, and so on. Poverty is not a line. It is a tight knot of social ills. It is connected to all the social issues we care about—crime, health, education, housing—and its persistence in American life means that millions of families are denied security and dignity in one of the richest nations in the history of the world.[3]«
Poverty affects the minds of those who suffer from it, in short, it stupefies; If we add to this a poor diet, the incidence of anemia that affects almost half of Peruvians and that produces pernicious effects on the mental development and cognitive abilities of children, it is easy to deduce that it will be one of the factors that feeds resentment, incapacity and generalized violence. Poverty is the raw material of a society in which life becomes a perverse game for survival.
If you are reading this, it is because you have access to the internet, social networks and a sufficiently comfortable life to be able to waste your time reading me; You’re a privileged person and that’s good. But the best thing is to reflect on those privileges: How did you obtain them, in what family were you born, what is your last name, what is the color of your skin, what school and university your parents were able to send you to, what is your social network and what are your talents?
The answers will help you to achieve better empathy with that third Peruvian victim of poverty, rethink your contribution to society and choose rulers who demonstrate the same empathy as you. Only in this way can we understand that the poor are not poor because they want to.
[1] Desmond, Matthew (2023-03-20T22:58:59.000). Poverty, by America (English Edition). Crown. Edición de Kindle.
[2] Ditto
[3] Ditto. The study is being conducted in the United States.
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