Poverty: A Corrupted Word

Poverty is a word with a broken meaning because it's directly related to money. Money itself is a disturbed concept and force in modernity because we've empowered it as a god, an over-arching force, and the telos above all others. Because of this association with money, we don't correctly assess what poverty means. Societies of various cultures, historical periods, and rural settings may not have had the "material wealth" or technology of today, but they have/had many uniting and cohesive forces beyond just crude assessments of monetary achievement. In his book "Poor People", William T. Vollman categorizes the elements he's learned about true poverty from his interviews with people all over the world.

What Mr. Vollman has extrapolated upon in some of this chapters are the following characteristics of poverty which he listed as separate "phenomena". They are:

*Invisibility
*Deformity
*Unwantedness
*Dependence
*Accident-Prone-ness
*Pain
*Numbness
*Estrangement

I'm still investigating his fascinating insights into the realities and perceptions of poverty all over the world. This is all very important to understand as the human experiment moves forward. In my summary, my understanding of poverty thus far may be stated as "the state of not fitting in and being susceptible to injury or harm". Keep this in mind when assessing the systems, policies, and creeds of our world and how they can be more inclusive, supportive, and empowering to all.

Peace @ClumsySilverDad