Global Poverty - so What?

In response to Candace Hurlock's article "What Can We Do About Global Poverty", I thought the article was big on philosophy yet devoid of solutions. That's not to say that the topic isn't timely or important, particularly in the case of child labor and child exploitation.

I believe Ms. Hurlock's heart is in the right place, but I was disappointed that she didn't offer any ideas on how a disaffected world citizen could help. Based on her profile, she appears to be an educated young woman with an idealistic perspective. Nothing wrong with that. On the other hand, I am probably more than thirty years her senior and my idealism has given way over time to cynicism.

Well, I'm not so cynical as to be incapable of sensitivity towards my fellow man (and woman). It's just that I have a different point of view towards global issues. That point of view has evolved over the last fifty years of my life, and curiously enough, technology has played a major role in my psyche's shape-shifting.

Here's my take on why I should not be / can't be worried about global poverty: there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it as an individual. Notice I didn't say that I shouldn't be concerned about children, toddlers, etc in the situation she described. I have come to the painful conclusion that it's not my problem.

Do I get choked up when I see starving children in (pick you country)? Do I get outraged over human rights abuses in (pick your country)? Yes, I do. But all it does is raise my elevated blood pressure even more. And my wife tells me to stop yelling at the television…

My theory is that Ms. Hurlock and the rest of us are victims of technology in this regard, specifically in the communication arena. Through an insidious process over time, we are not just reading about this issue, we are directly confronted with it in our living rooms, our Blackberrys, etc.

Look at the timeline of the evolution of communication. If you lived in the United States in the 1700s, you were lucky to get news of the closest largest city within a certain number of days. Messengers carried news via horseback, city newspapers published and distributed them. I live in Central New York, and probably would have been able to get a copy of Monday's newspaper on Friday if I was lucky. If something major happened in Europe, I wouldn't find out until a month or more later.

In the 1800s, the railroads carried mail and news print in a more rapid manner. But again, the news events would be "old news" by the time I bought the paper.

The telephone and electricity revolutionized a lot of things, bringing the news to us much more rapidly. Now we have satellites in geo-synchronous orbits, instantly relaying events to us on a "live" basis. We are slammed between the eyes with graphic, live video feeds of wars, starving children, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc., without the luxury of being able to process and digest what we are seeing. Our ancestors in North America had some time to ruminate over what they read; we don't.

I mention all of this, as I firmly believe we are in an information-overload culture and it has transferred to our individual mindsets. It's very similar to the sensory overload reported by pilots of the F-15 jet fighter. The highly advanced heads-up display gave them way too much information to process and the basic art of flying became almost secondary.

As a matter of fact, people in their twenties have grown up with cable news networks, and it's their baseline. My baseline was black and white TV, without any dedicated news shows. You had to wait until the evening news came on, unless it was of major importance. I only remember two times when the normal programming was interrupted: during the Cuban missile crisis and when President Kennedy was assassinated.

Okay. The first part of my theory is that we are driven neurotic, primarily by cable news reporting and suffer the psychological effects of being helpless in the face of terrible events.

The second, and most important part of my "so what" to global poverty is that we ARE helpless in trying to correct it. I've donated money in the past to different global relief agencies, only to find out later that the money never gets to the intended victims. Oftentimes their brutal dictator siphons the international aid off into his personal agenda, allowing his own people to starve to death. Kim IL Jong is a prime example of this.

You also have to address the other inherent aspects of why there is poverty and abuses: Corrupt governments, cultural mindsets that are radically different than ours, economics, etc.

I also can't solve world problems. It may sound ethnocentric, but I believe we should take care of our own people first. I place family before anyone else, then local people, then out of state, etc., in that order.

There are children who don't have shoes and go hungry right here in the United States. Appalachia is a good example. Before I send money to a corrupt government in Africa, I will try to help fellow Americans.

We can pressure our governments to put pressure on the corrupt governments to end human rights abuses, but it's even more complex than that. We can boycott certain large chain department stores that buy products from these countries that employ child labor, but we wind up paying more to shop elsewhere.

I feel Candace's pain, I really do. But my idealism has been supplanted by realism. I just need to turn the TV off…