when you hear that phrase, The Great Depression, what do you think of?
some words that come to mind: crash, 1929, dust bowl, unemployment, poverty...etc.
I'm taking an English seminar this semester on The Great Depression. Authors write about it with such emotion and passion, exlaiming the terrors of those years and blessing the future with hope that such years will never be seen again. T.S. Eliot in his poems goes as far as to suggest that it might have been better if everyone had just started off poor and then they wouldn't have had to go through the pain of losing their possessions and livlihood during the Depression.
Well, guess what? Those years are here again. They have been here for many years. Though I guess that depends on how you define "here." There are people who have lived in their own "Great Depression" for years, for their whole life. Heck, there are countries that have lived that. Sure, there are lots of reasons that the American Great Depression was unique, and it deserves a place in history books. Older folks who think back to the depression still shudder when they think about the hardship endured then. Where are the poeple shuddering for the hardship going on in the inner cities now? In countries whose modern histories could be labeled "The Great Depression?"
"It's not the same," we say, "because that country isn't America or those people aren't really a part of America. They were never the great sophisticated and industrious country that we were so therefore their current situation isn't as much of a downfall. They're used to it. It's just another one of the differences between America and other places. They're supposed to be downtrodden and we're supposed to be a superpower. That's how the world works."
America had less than 30 years of 'depression' and we have a whole genre of literature to go along with it. We have classes and textbooks about it. What if those years of depression were multiplied by 10 and then 10 again, and again, until they took up the span of a country's post-colonial history. There are millions in America who have felt and lived the emotion and hardship of the Great Depression for their whole lives. They've been jobless, hit by unfortunate circumstances, forced to move around, and sure, sometimes they've made some bad choices. But haven't we all? Why don't my bad choices affect me the way the bad choices of minority groups or poor people's do?
Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, and the command stretches us to consider who our neighbor is, ultimatlely expanding our body of "easy neighbors." What would it look like if our country took on that challenge? We would be able to say then, that the Great Depression is "here" because it is with our neighbors, whom we love. Our Great Depression looks puny compared to what millions go through every day. That is not meant to minimize the American Depression, but rather to maximize all of the others. What would countries like Rwanda or Darfur give to be able to say they just had two decades of Depression but then pulled out of it. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to look back in history and pinpoint the beginning and end of the 'bad years.' Poverty, I think, comes from the inability to do that. From the inability to look back on your life and see clear turning points and change. In daily life a lack of money translates into a lack of options, which is perhaps a more accurate defintion of poverty. Without options, it's hard to have distinct change or turning points.
Let's think life as a wheel with six spokes. The outer rim of the wheel represents wholeness, adequacy, "enough." Simply the condition of having one's actual needs met. The six spokes would be: economics, health, learning, environment [and what it provides for you...often a living], social/sociopolitical, and spiritual. Each of those spokes deserves it's own paragraph [that'll come in the next post]. I believe God cares about each of these spokes. This model would work...except the spiritual spoke is a part of all of the others.
At its very core, poverty is a mind-set that goes far beyond the tragic circumstances. It is the cruel, destructive message that gets whispered into the ear of millions by the enemy Satan himself: "Give up! You don't matter. Nobody cares about you. Look around you: Things are terrible. Always have been, always will be. Think back. Your grandfather was a failure. Your parents couldn't protect or take care of you. Now it's your turn. You, too, wil fail. So just give up!"
"Unless there is an intervension of love and hope, these seeds of apathy lead inevitably downward to an even lowe rdeath sentence called fatalism The very word stinks of death. It is the bottom- aslow as a human being can sink. When the human spirit becomes truly fatalistic, it is almost impossible to retrieve. This is complete and utter poverty, the end of the road."
-Why doesn't Poverty just go away?
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3 comments:
Now this is what I was talking about!
It's interesting that you choose the Great Depression as a framework for discussing poverty.
Macroeconomics has basically two goals: find out the reasons for economic growth, and find out the reasons for business cycle fluctuations.
The Great Depression was a shattering event, and it had a huge effect on economics for two reasons. First, it caused people to lose faith in the market system and call for more government regulation (more on that later). Second, it focused economists attention on the business cycle over long-term growth.
Afterall, why should America focus on understanding growth? We've always been blessed with it. But avoiding another GD, now that was a priority! And our efforts have basically worked. We haven't had anything close to the GD since, or even anything close to the other depressions before the GD. In fact, recessions have gotten steadily shorter and milder.
However, this focus on business cycles carried with it a corresponding neglect of questions of long-term growth. In particular, why is America (and the West generally) wealthy while many other countries are not? How can those countries achieve economic growth like ours? Why are certain people, localities, and ethnicities in our own country so much poorer than the rest? Is there any way to bring economic growth to these impoverished communities?
Today, economists have a pretty good idea of what caused the Great Depression (though it's still a hotly debated topic) and how to avoid one in the future. But we don't have a very good idea about how to solve the permanent state of depression called poverty.
"Why doesn't Poverty just go away." A book made popular by an economist at Columbia, Jeffrey Sachs, made a lot of Americans in 2007 ask the same question. His book was "The End of Poverty." No one seems to reverse the question and ask why poverty continues. Of course it is slightly implied. Poverty will never end. That is, the definition of poverty will always involve the comparison of one's wealth with another. And when I say wealth here, I don't mean merely financial stature, I mean human capital (education) and social capital (networks, family wealth/prestige, etc.)
If we look at it this way, maybe macroeconomics should change its basically goals. Instead of doing what Penn's traditional econ department does (and many, many other conservative econ departments), we should aspire to UChicago's progressive econ department and use econ tools to study the social causes of the poverty vortex. I unfortunately do not have the math skills to go into graduate work in econ. Jonathan...maybe you?
I wouldn't equate poverty with depression as quickly as Jonathan has though. To bring mental health into the discussion, there is much stigma involved with depression. Rates of depression is much greater in inner city, low income communities although they are rarely diagnosed. And indeed it is a vortex - many homeless habitants of the City have undiagnosed mental problems. Equating poverty with depression brings even greater stigma to the socially marginalized.
What a depressing topic.
So what does Jesus have to say to people and societies that have lived with poverty as a perpetual fact of life? Certainly he does not promise material prosperity. But he does promise release from poverty's hold, because his kingdom is not an earthly kingdom, and his salvation is not always what the world would call salvation.
If it were, we would be in sorry shape. Even the rich man fades as the flower of the field. "Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and are dead."
Jesus goes farther. "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."
Without love it's easy to take that truth and say that we don't need to help those in worldly poverty. That's bad. But it is very reassuring to see that these monumental problems which are much larger than us are much smaller than him, and that our cursed, hungering bodies are not the end of the story.
And, of course, speaking of things bigger than us "For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.'"
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