Column 09
Serenity, courage and poverty
Give me a little serenity to accept the things I cannot change; give me a little courage to change the things I can change; and above all give me the wisdom to tell the one from the other.
Reinhold Niebur
The quality of your goals determines the quality of your future.
Klaus Kloboll
Sociology of poverty: exploring the causes of poverty.
Poverty research: the attempt to improve the lives of the poor.
The World Bank regards people who have less than 1.25 dollars a day at their disposal as poor. Begging and starvation go hand in hand with the notion of absolute poverty.
Relative poverty: a low ability to provide for oneself compared with the average of the population. (First World and emerging countries)
Marxism: in satisfying needs by means of produced goods, 2 social classes arise: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The proletarian is characterised by owning, in principle, no property and must work for wages for the propertied bourgeoisie. One extreme into which this can escalate is capitalism; the other extreme is communism. A democratic society in which organised employers and organised labour balance each other is the ideal worth striving for.
Poverty, hunger, overpopulation. A system of communicating vessels.
On 19 June 2009 the BBC reported that one billion people are now officially going hungry.
Every year about 8.8 million people, mainly children, die of hunger; that corresponds to one death every 3 seconds.
In 2001, 21% of the world's population had less than 1 dollar in local purchasing power at their disposal and were therefore considered extremely poor. At the Millennium Summit the members of the UN agreed to halve, by 2015, the number of those who have less than 1 US dollar a day at their disposal.
In countries without a state pension system, one's own children are the only provision for old age. Traditionally, a large number of children is considered desirable in order to counteract high child mortality. In many developing countries, resources do not keep pace with demographic development.
The structures of world trade are a further cause of hunger in the developing countries. World trade is dominated by the industrialised countries. In 2000, Western Europe's share of world exports was 39.5%, North America's 17.1%. Africa's share in 2000 was 2.3%.
Knowledge is power. Reading educates. Nothing makes a man more suspicious than knowing little.
Francis Bacon
Poverty, hunger and overpopulation must be deprived of their basis through targeted education. So that those burdened with problems behave sensibly in planning their lives, out of insight.
Sex with condoms that are made available. Against overpopulation and the spread of disease. Taking up educational opportunities. These must be offered by the state with the support of the First World. Furthermore, well-thought-out guidance for life must be offered as reading material.
Through morally and rhetorically valuable argument, educate people to behave in a purposeful, beneficial way.
We always hope for the next day; probably the next day hopes for quite a lot from us.
Ernst R. Hauschka
New Column – page 10
Wishing you a productive work cycle, with warm regards