“The rich man will sell you the rope to hang himself if he thought he could make a dollar off of it.”
“If the poor people in America stood up, they would outnumber the upper and middle class by millions of people. Why do millions and millions of people let a few control how they live?”
There is no reason to view the poor as stupid or in any way different from anyone else, says Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in the UK. All of us are simply human beings, making the best of the hand life has dealt us. If we understand this, it won’t just change the way we view the lives of the poorest in society, it will also show how misguided many current efforts to tackle society’s problems are – and it will suggest better solutions.
Evolutionary theory predicts that if you are a mammal growing up in a harsh, unpredictable environment where you are susceptible to disease and might die young, then you should follow a “fast” reproductive strategy – grow up quickly, and have offspring early and close together so you can ensure leaving some viable progeny before you become ill or die. For a range of animal species there is evidence that this does happen. Now research suggests that humans are no exception.
Certainly the theory holds up in comparisons between people in rich and poor countries. Bobbi Low and her colleagues at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor compared information from nations across the world to see if the age at which women have children changes according to their life expectancy (Cross-Cultural Research, vol 42, p 201). “We found that the human data fit the general mammalian pattern,” says Low. “The shorter life expectancy was, the earlier women had their first child.”
– Emily says:
We learned in Owners of America: A Documentary about the End of an Empire that population growth (besides the apparent current phenomena of low income mothers having 5 kids just to get more welfare which is a current social trend not historic) – that population growth in 3rd world countries is greater than developed nations because in most poor communities it takes several in a household to perform the many duties it takes to make it in the world. Having three kids to help farm the land is better than none or just one.
Once a nation becomes more and more industrialized the need for more children starts to diminish. It’s at this pint families trend toward fewer children and living in bigger cities where they no longer work on a farm or in a community co-op type setting.
So is simply giving condoms and educating these people about sex the answer? Not completely. And even though industrialization leads to debt….it’s really the best answer to the help the world’s poor people. I wish I could say the rich is compassionate and care about the downtrodden and will help them outright….but they won’t. Maybe they will at least give them a job.
