Make Poverty History (3 of 3)

Poverty is a deep issue beyond simple material needs, and therefore it cannot be overcome through simple economic development alone: even as world hunger is eliminated, this basic ideological and social reality of “poverty” will remain unchanged. The divide between rich and poor is growing, and the poor are still ignored and marginalized.

Any attempt to end poverty must realize the depth of this issue. Sobrino’s says that these efforts must help the poor resolve - “Not only as the insatisfaction of their basic needs, but also as the ignorance and indignity to which they are condemned; the depredation of their cultures and the deviant offense which is done to them with respect to peoples of abundance.”

When faced with those situations of acute human suffering, it is all too easy to become numbed to the overwhelming horror of it all. People become statistics, and they lose their individuality, uniqueness, and humanity. Often, it takes those impassioned expressions of human emotion for us to realize the depth of their suffering - and to see them as human again. It took a mother’s impassioned grieving for her 2 murdered sons finally convinces the king to allow them a proper burial (2 Samuel 21), or the grief of Queen Esther to make the Babylonian king to realize the horror of his plans of genocide. Voices like Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel make it is possible to move past the overwhelming and sickening statistics to understand the full depth of the Holocaust.

Many people claim that, as advocates for the poor, they must be “a voice for the voiceless.” They must bring the concerns and stories of the poor to a society who cannot (or chooses not to) hear them. An important contribution, but it ignores the fact that the poor already have a voice and it is being ignored. Whatever work must be done must therefore help “Amplify their voices” as much as possible. Those who wish to help should not “champion their cause” but instead to work with them to enable the means to tell their own story.

The poor must be given the means of self-expression that will allow the rest of humanity to realize the reality of their sufferings and rediscover their inherent beauty and value as human beings - and the best way to do that is by encouraging and empowering their capacity for artistic expression. Through art the poor can tell their stories of marginalization, poverty and oppression in a way that allows the world to understand the reality of their experiences - making it human. It sounds a bit silly, but art just might be the next great means of fighting poverty.

Of course, this is not to say that “art,” as a pure form, will solve anything. Brutal poverty, starvation, and illness still exist today, and each demands pragmatic and creative solutions (the kind of program that an economist might develop). James had a similar criticism against people that ignored physical needs: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16)

Even within James’ words is the implicit requirement to care for the lost humanity of the poor - from the beginning, he takes for granted that his audience will see the needy as “a brother or sister,” an assumption that should not be made today with our social systems that create distance between poor and non-poor. Even more, plans for economic development operate all too often as if those involved are simple “cogs in the machine,” where they fit into a master plan that ignores the cultural context or worldview, thereby reinforcing the ideology that the “Developed World” knows best, and that all others should take notes and abandon their ways of life.