The enigma that is poverty analyzed around the world

There are many rational ways to compare countries: predominant religious beliefs, governmental… There are many rational ways to compare countries: predominant religious beliefs, governmental structures, gross domestic products. All of these can be categorized and lined up next to each other on bar graphs in order to give a handy assessment of what lies where.

This is how we can determine that America has the strongest military presence in the world and that Saudi Arabia dominates the world’s supply of oil. It is possible to concoct charts of which nations have the most unemployed workers and what percentage of citizens live below the poverty line.

Poverty, however, is not as tangible a beast. Some would define it as not being sure where tonight’s dinner is going to come from. Others would constitute it as being the point where one only earns enough money to cover basic provisions. Mother Theresa, who surely was an authority on the matter, famously declared, “Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.”

People in America have a tendency to group the homeless together into a category of unsavory or lazy individuals who have made bad choices in their lives and would rather live them out in pathetic fashion on the streets than work to rise up out of their current status. Such a pat analysis misses numerous situations and predicaments that we barely consider as we pass one more “waste of life” camped outside Hillman Library for the night.

When I was fortunate enough to briefly visit India, I witnessed the nighttime spectacle of literally throngs of families lined up in makeshift homes along the streets as far as my eyes could see. How could so many have found themselves with no ceiling but the stars, given all the non-governmental organizations and relief groups in the world?

I wish I had the optimism of those who dole out the occasional handful of pocket change to homeless people on the streets. It isn’t that I admire them for being kinder, but rather for their reasoning that this particular sip of water or dollar will make any difference. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness,” but I find myself too overwhelmed to consider one match.

Roosevelt’s proposal that there should be a universal standard of human rights is similarly hopeful and a concept that one wants to embrace. Despite all our differences, we are entitled to the same rights and liberties bestowed upon us by virtue of humanity. But a common standard of rights is an assumption built upon theoretical quicksand.

Poverty cannot be gauged. Who’s to say who has a better quality of life? Is it the laughing and smiling children of Chennai who spend their days and nights running in the streets and playing cricket amidst rickshaw traffic and laughingly trying to rip off Western tourists? Or maybe it’s the lethargic, typical American prepubescent who spends adolescence staring in apathy at the buzzing of electronic screens all day. Could it be the street urchins who gossip all day and rise up and down in their sleep in relation to their neighbor’s breathing? Or is it the American professional who moves every 18 months to a new administrative post and never exchanges more than a pleasantry with any of his neighbors in seven different cities?

I cannot responsibly assert that the legless vagabond has a better life than the software guru without sounding cocksure and naive of true suffering. But I am unsure of whether human beings were ever designed to live in the splendor that is average Western life. Poverty cannot be ended any more than terrorism, drugs, bad dreams or heartache. It needs to stop being labeled as one ill condition to be slaked and accepted as what it is – an intrinsic part of the human experience, more for some than for others.

E-mail Daron Christopher your definition of poverty at djc14@pitt.edu.