

Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions (2013) - paulbaumgart
http://theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-brain-on-poverty-why-poor-people-seem-to-make-bad-decisions/281780/

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jmathai
Having some folks close to me that are trapped in the cycle of poverty this
article felt quite refreshing.

I don't know if it's true but it helps explain that I don't understand the
plight of poverty because I've never experienced it.

Being an engineer I can think of all the ways people near me in poverty can
find a way out. I've even worked with them on some plans to do so. They
haven't worked. It's frustrating.

Acknowledging that I don't understand moves me from frustration to empathy
which is a much better place to be.

~~~
mercer
Indeed! I've had many friends who were really poor, and initial attempts to
'help' only lead to failure and frustration.

So far, the only approach that has had some effect was to take them out of
their environment entirely. This 'shake-up' of their patterns usually had
positive effects, even if they fell back into their previous patterns. But
obviously this is a drastic and often impractical measure...

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decentrality
yes, nuerologically true. poverty is lockage in left prefrontal: security.
almost total dependency and constant paralysis, waiting for the three
unavailable essentials of a self: it's all but locked out of expertise (left
frontal), imagination/legacy (right prefrontal) and freedom/assertion/truth
(right frontal).

it takes extreme effort to break free of, chemically; it is counter-current
from that point to build pathways out, by pure will, which is largely if not
totally depleted by fear

