Daily Independent Online.
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Wednesday, June 16, 2004.
The poor shall always be with you
By Lan G. Udoh
These words, "The poor shall always be with
you", sound like a terrible curse, with which most human beings would want
no portion. But they do reflect the reality of human conditions on earth
throughout recorded history. Today poverty and its close companions, hunger and
disease, stalk the planet. They, however, seem to be partial to some parts of
the world, as will be demonstrated shortly.
Despite the best efforts of governments and
non-governmental organizations at conquering, eradicating or alleviating it,
poverty appears to be running away with victory, as the total number of poor
people on earth steadily increases. Of the world's population of about 6
billion people, 1.3 billion (about 1 in 4) now live below the World Bank
poverty line of one US dollar a day. For Africa, the most poverty-friendly
continent, more than 300 million people (nearly half the population) live below
this poverty line. Of the world's
poor people, about 840 million are malnourished (which is a fancy way of saying
they are starving). As a result, about six million children die from hunger
every year.
To make matters worse, the spread of poverty across
the world is anything but even.
North America, consisting of only two countries, the
United States and Canada, with a combined population of 313 million, is the
world's richest continent, with an average per capita income of about of
US$33,000 and a combined Gross National Product (GNP) of US$10.3 trillion.
Western Europe, with a population of about 390
million, is the next richest region in the world, with an average per capita
income of about US$23,000 and a combined GNP of US$8.8 trillion. The major
economies in this zone include Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy.
It will be explained shortly why a distinction is made between Western Europe
and the rest of Europe, which consists mainly of the Eastern European countries
that have only recently emerged from communist Soviet domination.
Australia comes next. This continent is dominated by
the economies of two countries: Australia and New Zealand. The combined
population of these countries is about 23 million, while the average income per
capita is about US$19,000.
Next in the wealth league table are the Americas, without
North America. This region has a population of about 470 million, and an
average per capita income of about US$4,000. Economic giants, by the standards
of this zone, include Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
Eastern Europe comes next. By Western European
standards, this is a disaster area. It has a combined population of about of
340 million, yet the combined size its economy (GNP of US$720 billion) is
barely larger than that of Spain, one of the less wealthy countries of Western
Europe, which has a population of only 39 million but a GNP of US$588 billion.
The average income per capita for Eastern Europe is a relatively paltry
US$2,100, which is less than a tenth of the Western European average of about
US$23,000. This difference is very striking for peoples of similar ethnic and
cultural roots, and thus merits further analysis.
Asia, with a population of about 3.5 billion (over
half of humanity), has an average income per capita of US$1,100. Asia is
melange of the good, the bad and the ugly. It harbours some of the richest
countries on earth (e.g. Japan with a GNP of about US$4.5 trillion and a per
capita income of about US$36,000), and some of the very poorest (e.g.
Tajikistan and Afghanistan with average per capita incomes of about US$180),
and all shades in between.
The last, and certainly the least, wealth-wise is
Africa. Africa is firmly rooted at the bottom of the wealth league table, most
its countries being run-away candidates for relegation to the fourth world, if
such a classification should be made. Africa has a total population of about
800 million, yet its combined GNP of about USS450 billion (average per capita
income of USS676) is less than that of Spain (GNP US$588 billion and population
of 39 million). Unlike Asia, Africa has no rich countries to mar its landscape
of poverty. It is instructive that, despite its haughty pretensions at African
leadership and its vast oil reserves, Nigeria is among the poorer African
nations, with a per capita income at US$260, of less than half the African
average of USS676. A poverty leader, if you like.
It should be noted the natural resources, i.e.,
non-human resources, have very little to do with the wealth of a country.
Otherwise, Africa, led by Nigeria, Angola, South Africa and Congo (DR), would
probably be the richest continent in the world, while Switzerland and Japan
(per capita incomes of US$38,140 and USS35,620 respectively) would be amongst
the poorest countries, having little or no mineral resources. A recent study by
the Christian Aid organization demonstrates that the discovery of crude oil
deposits have proven to be a curse to underdeveloped countries, increasing
rather than reducing poverty. Diamonds in Sierra Leone and Angola have turned
out to be deadly, helping to sustain murderous civil wars. All these suggest
that wealth and its distribution are inextricably linked with human attributes
and factors. Uncovering these human attributes and factors is the main purpose
of this discourse.
Europe will be used as a case study to probe the
underlying principles and laws governing the issues of wealth and its
distribution.
The people of Europe (Western and Eastern) have, to
a very large extent, common racial, cultural and religious roots. They are
mostly of the Caucasian (white) race. Their cultures are, in the main, products
of the Graeco Roman civilization. Their religious inclinations stem from mainly
Judeo-Christian roots. The significant exception to this is Turkey, which lies
on the cross-roads between Europe and the Orient. Its people, who are of
Ottoman roots, are almost all of the Islamic faith, and are more homogeneous to
the people of the Levant.
Remarkably, despite the close racial, cultural and
religious homogeneity of the peoples of Western and Eastern Europe, there is an
embarrassingly wide gulf between their levels of prosperity. Western Europe's
average income per capita, at US$22,793, is more than ten times that of their
Eastern European brothers, at US$2,115, making the latter very poor cousins.
The most obvious difference between Western and
Eastern Europe, which could account for the striking difference in their
prosperity levels, is their recent politico-economic systems.
The countries of Western Europe have enjoyed
relatively long periods of stable liberal democracy, which promotes and
protects individual freedoms and human rights, the operational word here being
human. Democracy, in this usage, should not be confused with the mere regular
staging of elections, no matter how "free and fair" and the margin of
the "landslide". It should only be seen as related to the genuine
freedom individuals are allowed to exercise their free will regarding all
aspects of their lives (social, cultural, religious, political, economic, etc),
protection of these freedoms by the law, equality of all before the law
regardless of status, respect for and enforcement of the rule of law by
government. One of the logical products of all these freedoms is the free
market-driven economies which are characteristic of really prosperous
countries. It is instructive that the least wealthy of the Western European
countries, Spain, Greece and Portugal (GNP per capita of US$15,080, $1 1,960
& $1 1,120 respectively), are late entrants into this club of liberal
democracies.
In sharp contrast, the nations of Eastern Europe
adopted, or were forced to adopt, totalitarian communist models of government
which were based on the ideas of the- German philosopher Karl Marx. The main
features of these regimes were state ownership and control of almost all means
of production, centrally planned and controlled economies, and the severe
restrictions of individual freedoms and the institutionalized human rights
abuse required to maintain such an unnatural system. All these were supposed to
lead to the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the
much-touted "workers paradise". The abysmal economic performance,
human deprivations and misery, which resulted and were spread to other parts of
the world, constituted one of the main catastrophes of the twentieth century.
This indication of a direct relationship between
prosperity and human freedom is visible across the world. Very rich countries
like the United States of America, Japan, Switzerland, Norway and Denmark, all
of which have per capita incomes in excess of US$30,000, are all very stable
and well established democracies. Japan, which has been a very stable democracy
since 1952, has the second largest economy in the world and is the richest
country in Asia. This is in sharp contrast to most of its neighbours that run
totalitarian systems.
There are apparent aberrations to this trend. Hong
Kong prospered under the de jure colonialism of the British. The de facto
situation was that the residents of Hong Kong (per capita income of US$25,920)
had much more human freedoms (true democracy) than most of their neighbours,
especially mainland China (per capita income of US$840), which is still under
the dictatorship of the communist party. The one-country-two systems agreement
was designed to protect the freedoms of Hong Kong residents, after its handover
to mainland China in 1997 by the departing British. It is left to be seen how
far and for how long the Chinese communist party will respect this agreement.
It should be noted that China, since the rule of Deng Xiaoping, has introduced
free market reforms to its economy, in a grudging concession to the link between
freedom and wealth creation. The ruling communist party has, however, clung
tenaciously to its monopoly of political power, ever ready to deploy extremely
repressive means to maintain it. The Chinese economy has consistently grown by
close to 10% a year as a result of these market reforms. It is safe to predict
that this success will only be temporary, unless greater political and
individual freedoms are introduced as well.
Another apparent aberration is the relative poverty
of India (income per capita of US$450), despite being a democracy since 1947.
This can be ascribed largely to its discriminatory and oppressive caste system,
which locks away a significant proportion of India's enormous human potential.
This discrimination remains pervasive even though it has been outlawed.
Africa has remained a haven for military and civilian
dictatorships, with the latter often staging elections which serve no purpose
other than to lend a gloss of legitimacy to the stranglehold of such regimes
around the necks of their peoples. Struggles to end such dictatorships by force
have, more often than not, led to the tragic break down of law and order and
the descent into warlordism. The carnage in places like Congo (DR), Somalia,
Liberia, and Sierra Leone are illustrations of this. Africa has thus been
rewarded with a rich harvest of poverty, disease and squalor. It has been
posited that the tropics, with its relatively hostile climate and ecology, into
which most of Africa's landmass falls, present severe impediments to development;
hence Africa's state of chronic underdevelopment. This postulation harbours a
lot truth, but it cannot on its own account for the abysmal level of
development in Africa. This is underlined by the fact that Singapore, Hong Kong
and parts of Taiwan, which are all wealthy countries by any standards, fall
within the tropics.
To understand this linkage between prosperity and
human attributes, one has to understand what and who the human being is, its
origin and its purpose of existence. A sketch of this follows:
The human being originates from the realm of
Spiritual Substantiality, which some have learnt to call Paradise or Heaven.
This section of Creation is situated far above the worlds of matter, within
which the earth is as but a speck of dust. The human being started out as a
spirit seedgerm, as a last precipitation of this realm of Spiritual
Substantiality. These spirit-germs are unconscious and not strong enough to
develop to consciousness and self-consciousness in Paradise; the Light-Pressure
of the proximity of God is too great there to allow this. So, when the urge for
consciousness reaches a certain threshold value within the spiritgerm, it is
ejected from the Spiritual Realm in a downward direction, i.e., further away
from the proximity of God, and thus in the direction of the cooling off of the
Light-Pressure, where it has the possibility of developing consciousness and
the self-consciousness of full maturity in the cooler regions of the worlds of
matter. This process is depicted allegorically in the Bible account of the
expulsion from Paradise of man. On attainment of full maturity and
self-consciousness the human spirit returns to paradise (the parable of the
prodigal son), where it can participate in the joyful up-building activity there.
This is the blissful goal of every human spirit that does not wish to be lost.
The worlds of matter consist of the Ethereal Realm,
which some call the beyond, and the World of Gross Matter, the physical world
of which the earth is a part. In the worlds of matter, the interplay between
the Laws of Creation and the exercise of its free will by the wandering
spirit-germ compel it to undergo experiences that slowly mature it. The Laws of
Creation can be summarized as follows: The Law of Gravitation; The Law of
Attraction of Homogeneous Species; The Law of Reciprocal Action. The free-will
of the developing human spirit is crucial to this process of maturation. The
spiritual is of a magnetic nature, tending to attract. The free-will, which is
an indispensable quality of the spiritual, enables it to be discriminating in
what it attracts to itself. The spirit thus attracts only what is homogeneous
to itself, as determined by its free-will. Without the free-will, the spirit
would attract everything in a wild medley of confusion. Without its free-will,
the developing spirit-germ would also not get the experiences it needs to
develop into a mature, self-conscious human spirit. These experiences come as a
reciprocal outcome of the exercise of its free-will, through the Law of
Reciprocal Action (the law of sowing and reaping). The human spirit thus reaps
what it sows.
It can be readily inferred from the foregoing that
any earthly system (governmental, social, economic, cultural or religious)
which restricts, or seeks to restrict, the individual freedom of human beings
to exercise their free-will on all matters that concern them, is directly
negating the purpose of human existence on earth. To recap, this purpose is to
develop to maturity through the experiences gathered from the exercise of the
free-will. Naturally, such freedoms should be limited to the extent that, in
the exercise of its free-will, no human being should be allowed to interfere
with the right of other human beings to exercise similar freedoms; anecdotally,
the freedom of movement of your fist stops where my nose begins. This is what
is commonly referred to as law and order, which is the primary responsibility
of government, i.e., to ensure justice and fair play, and thereby provide the
level playing field on which the human free will can be exercised.
The creativity of the human being lies in this
freedom. It is this creativity which leads to the change of the environment for
the more noble and more beautiful. That creativity which brings about industriousness,
art and the creation of what we call wealth. All this being provided that the
human free will is exercised within the Laws of Creation, which manifest the
Will of the Creator, and not against them. Going against these laws results in
destructivity, not creativity. The results of this creativity, arising from
human freedom, are what Nigerians refer to longingly as the dividends of
democracy.
It is important to reiterate that the human free will
must be exercised in accordance with-the Laws of Creation, if well-being and
prosperity is to be the result of the freedom enjoyed. Through the Law of
Reciprocal Action, the human being must reap what it sows. If he acts in such a
way as to cause poverty to others, then he must reap poverty as a consequence,
to atone for his wrong attitude. If the fruits for this do not ripen for him in
the same earth life, then on reincarnation he would surely be born into
circumstances that force him to experience poverty, maybe in Africa for
example.
Hence, earthly prosperity is predicated on two
factors. One: freedom of the human being to exercise its free will. Two:
alignment of this free will with the Laws of Creation, the Will of the Creator.
The foregoing is not meant to suggest that the
affluent societies of the West have got it all right, vis-a-vis, compliance
with the Laws of Creation. Even the relative prosperity of the West is a
grotesque caricature of what should have been if human beings, through the Fall
of Man, had not wilfully disrupted the plan of the Creator for His Creation.
Through exclusive overuse, over the generations, the intellectual forebrain of
man has been overdeveloped at the expense of the spiritually receptive
hindbrain, rendering the latter stunted and weak. Man's ability to receive
spiritual impressions (higher impressions), through his intuitive perception,
is thus severely impaired, or completely cut off in some cases. With this
inheritance of a distorted brain, man is inclined to be materialistic, using
mainly his overdeveloped intellectual forebrain, with his stunted spiritually
receptive hindbrain seldom called into activity. He is thereby largely cut off
from spiritual guidance, and thus inclined to evil, the dreaded hereditary sin.
It is this sad state of affairs that prevents the
earth from flourishing as was planned by the Creator. It is this state of
affairs that makes man unable to transform the earth into a paradise, an
earthly replica of the Kingdom of God, which we repeatedly promise to do
whenever we pray: Thy Kingdom come.
As long as human beings continue to go against the
Laws of Creation, which are expressions of the Will of the Creator, so also
will the condition of poverty be required to help them atone for their misdeeds
and return to the path of rectitude. Hence, the poor shall always be with you,
a condition that will prevail until after the cleansing of the final Judgment.
• Udoh is of Grailland Publishers, Kaduna
