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The violence of poverty against the true human potential

Francisco Miraval                                

A number of years ago I read that Gandhi once said that poverty is the worst form of violence. However, it is just recently (and only partially) that I began to understand the meaning of that statement.

I am taking an online course with Dr. Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University. The title of the course, “How to change the world,” led me to immediately enroll. And the quality of the material and of the discussions surpassed my expectations. In one of the lectures by Dr. Roth, I finally began to see the connection between violence and poverty.

At a global level, it is said that a person is poor if his/her income is $1.25 a day or less. In the United States, poverty means to earn $17 or less. However, as Dr. Roth explained, lack of money is but one of the many elements of poverty. There are also other elements, of equal or even greater importance.

Poverty, I just learned, means not only low income, but it also means the lack of opportunities for a person to achieve his/her true human potential and, even more, it also means the lack of opportunities for that person to be part of a group or a society where his/her potential is appreciated, celebrated, promoted, and accepted, that is, a society that allows that person to develop his/her potential.

In other words, poverty is an attack against the humanness of human beings by depriving them of the opportunity to know themselves in all their true potential and, therefore, stopping them from making contributions to the level they could otherwise make. That’s why Gandhi said poverty the worst form of violence.

I can’t understand or accept why it took me so long to begin to understand something I should have known a long time ago and that new it seems so obvious. After all, if poverty could be solved with many and resources, we should have solved the problem of poverty many years ago.

It is easy to donate money or resources and donating has a cathartic effect on the consciousness of donor. However, committing oneself to dismantling the structures preventing us from achieving our true potential is more difficult and risky, because it means that you are really committed to change the world. And the first step to change the world is to change the definitions you use.

If poverty is creating inhuman human beings, then many people with low income and resources, but who never lost their humanity, are not really poor at all. On the other hand, those other persons with untold millions and immensurable wealth, if they are disconnected from their own human potential and the potential of other humans, then they, in spite of their money, are poor.

I wonder how different the world could be if, in addition to creating opportunities for authentic human development, we could replace the human poverty of the rich with the human richness of the poor. Perhaps it’s just another Utopian thought.

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