Natural
laws we may never modify,
embarrass us as they may.
Walter Pater
When you take the
world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and divide by the
world’s population, the GDP per capita comes to approximately
$8,000. The world’s per capita income is roughly $10,000.
So if the pot is big enough to include everyone, why and to
what extent have we not been able to eliminate poverty? And
if the answer to eliminating world poverty is a distributive
one, what are the obstacles and why can’t we remove
them?
-- 30 thousand people
perish everyday from starvation
-- 890 million people are chronically undernourished
-- 660 million people live on less than $2/day
-- 17 billion dollars was spent in pet food in US and Europe
in 2007
-- the GDP of the 41 most heavily indebted poor countries
(567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s
7 richest people
-- in 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for
76.6% of total private consumption; the poorest fifth just
1.5%
-- the world’s billionaires -- just 497 people (.000008%
of the world’s population) -- were worth $3.5 trillion
(over 7% of world GDP)
We claim we
care, our democratically elected governments make the claim
for us when our best intentions falter, all the while a
holocaust is taking place on our watch as 30,000 people
(mostly children) die every day from hunger. Notwithstanding
the brave efforts of Millennium Summits and philanthropic
NGOs, why are we unable to convert best intentions into
deeds? Or, allowing the facts on the ground to report back,
why don’t we care?
According to
the numbers, the gap between rich and poor is widening.
The media tells (tolls) on an almost daily basis of government
getting caught with its hands in the till, lining its pockets
with exorbitant sums of tax payer money, some of which has
been designated for aid. For all its grandiloquent gesturing
and espousing of humanitarian principles, the sum of deeds
left undone by government speaks to one irreducible fact:
it doesn't care.
Communism was
the first serious attempt to break down the distribution
barriers that were erected and lorded over by capitalism.
By legislating out of existence poverty and private ownership
(and God), Communism empirically demonstrated that care
could be implemented on a large scale, that no one would
be left behind. The result was a rigorously uniform population
of, alas, unhappy haves, because human nature was
recklessly written out the Marxist-Socialist equation. It
would take no less than 3/4s of a century – in 1991
when the Wall came tumbling down – to exorcise the
spectre of Communism, and for disabused socialists to acknowledge
that nothing satisfies the human spirit like inequality.
So if the haves
are happy in their having -- that is blissfully unmoved
by the misery of the have-nots -- the fault must lie not
in the stars but in intractable human nature that always
seems to get the upper hand when push comes to shove, when
dollars designated for the dispossessed and dying end up
in the purchase of jewelry or second car (care spelled without
the ‘e’).
Could it be
that as a species we are hard wired to care for only our
immediate family, and in certain instances extended family
(uncles/aunts, cousins), where care reveals itself as an
unbroken continuum of physical, emotional and financial
sacrifices extended unconditionally to a select few? In
an earlier age, we also cared for members of the tribe because
it best guaranteed the tribe’s survival. To be noted
– with due irony -- that we, in the 21st century,
who pride ourselves in our science, technology and medicine,
personally cared for a greater number of people when we
were confined to caves.
So how can we
do better knowing in advance our best intentions are no
match against the imperatives writ in human nature that
predict 999 times out 1,000 we’re going to spend $1,500
on a flat screen TV when that same money could feed and
save the lives of 300 children (at $35/year) for one year?
Short of sending
ourselves into the heart and horror of the world’s
great suffering, at which point it becomes impossible to
self-indulge at the expense of human life, the only alternative
is to engage or activate a competing genetic disposition
that will impose correct behaviour. If we could collectively
come to the understanding that we risk perishing as a species
if we fail to equitably distribute the world’s wealth,
you can bet your undonated dollar that what has to get done
will get done – that the DNA driven fear and response
mechanism will produce a result that has thus far eluded
what reason articulates is our duty.
What distinguishes
the present from all preceding ages is the disproportionate
power wielded by the unelected and disenfranchised. Norbert
Weiner, in the 1950s, writing about the implications of
the then burgeoning globalization of the planet, understood
that when you arm yourself you arm the enemy. From terrorist
activity that has destabilized life and government in Iraq-Bagdad,
Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Israel, Mumbai, Pakistan, Kashmir, Madrid,
Nigeria, that insight has become a fact of everyday life.
But despite
the death counts, the message has not been granted its gravitas:
that the have-nots have had enough, and all the religion
and law in the world cannot guarantee their orderly conduct.
Globalization has assured their enlightenment -- the better
life is attainable before the afterlife – while the
Internet provides for their empowerment: instant how-to
access to manufacturing and detonating bombs; planning terrorist
attacks; the nurturing and setting loose of suicide bombers.
What we haven’t ‘yet’ read about is the
detonation of the chemical or dirty
bomb that will instantly and indiscriminately
kill millions of people and bring about a new world (dis)order
founded on the paralysis of conventional power.
To be in denial
entails the deliberate exclusion of facts and information
that would otherwise explode an unrealistic assessment or
viewpoint. In the fairy tale As the World Binges, the wealthiest
nations of the world have managed to hi-jack the term ‘globalization’
and spin it into an economic template of tidy consequences.
But the concept, as originally formulated by Marshall McLuhan,
means if we don’t concern ourselves with the unhappiness
of the Mohammeds of this world, they will become our problem.
Globalization is a quantum equation that describes the planet’s
interconnectivity where the single wag of any fibre optic
tail moves every dog. Which in concrete terms means the
cause and effect that link endemic poverty, terrorism and
Armageddon is not a far fetched gothic fantasy. The dirty
bomb will soon be a mere disconcerting click away. From
the Philippines, Myanmar to Thailand, there are more and
more instances of the erstwhile unrevolted have-nots breaking
rank, refusing worship at the altar of compliance and acquiescence.
In his Seven
Deadly Spins, Geoff Olson points out that
what characterizes the have-nots is envy, which can lead
to anger, and then revenge if our institutions fail to defuse
that anger. And when the dust settles and the have-nots
are still denied a piece of the pie, headlines are made.
Non-entities cum terrorists, clutching after any straw of
meaning, desperate to preserve what remains of sense of
self, find their preservation best safeguarded by an algorithm
whose endgame is to bring the haves, their culture and institutions,
to their knees, and then some -- where every means justifies
the end.
So far, terrorist
bangs have been relatively small because the dirty bomb
hasn’t been exploded. But its day will come if the
haves continue to dwell in what can only be described as
a state of surreal disconnect that is tantamount to rolling
dice with manifest destiny. As Exxon, government and big
banks fiddle, and our watchdogs are being wined and dined
by lobbyists, the age of the aggrieved has snuck up on the
horizon, its eyes and ire fixed on the west.
If there’s
a pre-emptive remedy before the “blood-dimmed tide
is loosed,” it’s pedagogical. The wealthy nations
of the world can be taught that it is in their best interest
to level the playing field, that their self-preservation
is best assured by a deliberate and revolutionary redistribution
of the world’s wealth. Less than that, they are signing
on to a paradigm that will condemn them to living in post-modern
fortresses inspired by the medieval example of Carcassonne,
and burying the dead on a scale that will make the plague
look like a walk in the park.
Barack Hussein
Obama says 'yes we can.' I say,' we (the species) damn well
better.' Homo sapiens is decisively at the crossroads one
big-bang removed from the abyss where starvation, poverty,
HIV and malaria have become the breakfast of champions for
the freshly minted radicalized fanatisized of the planet.
The choices
are bleak: either Care Now or Apocalypse Now.
