When I was younger, I used to look at poor people and condemn them for being lazy and irresponsible. It's when I started paying bills that I realized that many lower middle-class lives hang by a thread - a missed paycheck can sometimes be catastrophic.
I often wonder what I would do if I were poor. I'd have hope-I'm a smart kid, eloquent, so I could dig myself out of it. But what of those who, through no fault of their own, are not so lucky? To me, it is an absolute marvel that they don't engage in more mayhem.
If you follow international news, you've probably watched the drama unfold here in Jamaica over the extradition of Christopher 'Dudus' Coke. A resident of Tivoli Gardens, the inner-city community where Coke was from declared on local news that 'Jesus died for us, so we will die for Dudus.' Many people I know were upset by her statement, because they don't understand. Sure he was a criminal. Sure he was involved in drugs and murders. But when he's the one sending your six kids to school, paying for medical care for your grandmother, and providing swift and effective justice, let's just say your loyalties will not be to the state that has repeatedly signaled its lack of care. Fuck the 'social contract.'
* To me, it is an absolute marvel that they don't engage in more mayhem.*
The way the gap (chasm, really) between rich and poor keeps growing makes me worry about more mayhem in the future. People who feel persistent despair and lack of hope (regardless of if that feeling is "right") don't operate in the same universe of "rational decision making". That behavior ranges the full span of self-destructive (what the article was about, mostly) to full on sociopathic.
This is not to say that I have any new or novel ideas on how to fix the problem.
Exactly! The core issue is lack of hope. When hope is gone, all is lost.
And then you see someone driving by in their brand new Mercedes, and you can see in their faces that they've never had to work a day in their lives, it fills you with a boiling rage at the unfairness of the world. To hell with law. To hell with society. I'm gonna get mine. To be honest, it's difficult to blame them.
Note, I've never been poor. Growing up, the only times I went hungry were when I was too lazy to cook - there was always food in the house. So I was kind of naive. I remember my father (he was a pastor) once telling a congregation that he told the Lord that if he ever reached a point where he couldn't feed his family, he would just run away. So I didn't really know the facts of life.
Now, the veil is being lifted.
This, perhaps, is where religion is most useful. If you can convince the poor that there is some sort of 'divine plan,' then people can come to terms with their suffering.
On my way to work each morning, I pass people in the streets, begging alms. They gather at the stoplights, and come to the car windows with their hands outstretched. That is their life, day in day out. Are their lives really worth living? I'm not sure. I'm just not sure.
Maybe Schopenhauer was right about life. I tend toward nihilism quite often these days.
Actually, you are exactly right to be worried. I know because I spent 4 months researching small arms violence (for the Boulder future salon). The Small Arms Survey is an extensive series of research publications from a UN-funded research group in Geneva. And according to them, the single strongest predictor of small arms violence is wealth inequality. The #2 factor is poverty, in absolute terms. My take on this is that inequality creates resentment, and poverty in absolute terms (going hungry) creates desperation. Desperation+resentment is a deadly combination. After that, social attitudes about violence play a big role (For example, Japan since WWII has developed cultural attitudes that inhibit violence, but Latin America hasn't.) Another predictive factor is males ages 15 to 30 who are "unemployed and not in school." Drug trafficking is also a strong correlate with small arms violence. In some parts of Mexico today (cities like Juárez that directly border the US) you can see all these factors at work: higher inequality than the US, higher poverty in absolute terms, weaker cultural attitudes inhibiting violence, and serious drug trafficking, with young unemployed male sicarios.
