What is modern poverty? Loneliness. What should Christians be doing about modern poverty? Visiting

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Christians have become very mixed-up about poverty.

The idea (which I have heard from the current leaders of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches) that alleviation of poverty is a particularly urgent task of our day and ought therefore to become the major priority of the Christian churches is especially misguided - indeed, not just a mistake but actually a dangerous and harmful policy.

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The fact is that poverty, in the Biblical sense, is pretty-much abolished from the modern world. 

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/almsgiving-what-ought-christians-to-do.html


Biblical poverty was about working all the hours of the day and indeed being worked to death, starving to death, dying of disease... it was about death.

In the modern developed countries, by contrast, so-called-poverty is characterized by what the Bible would have called something like 'luxury and idleness': over-eating, obesity, alcohol and drug over-use, and un-employment (not working), and by living longer than anybody in history - but having on average few children.

In undeveloped countries, nowadays, poverty has a lot more hunger and disease than in developed countries - but is nonetheless characterized by societies rearing unprecedented numbers of children, with the population being added-to faster than ever in the history of the planet: an extra billion people every 12 years since 1975 and another billion expected in the next 14 years.

(As context, there was only one billion people in the whole world circa 1800 and it took more than a century to add the next billion.)

Thus Biblical 'poverty' was about populations collapsing due to famine and plague - while modern 'poverty' is about luxury and idleness in the West, and an exploding population in the poorest nations.

Two different things.

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Furthermore, Westerners live in a world with a previously-unimaginable focus on this-worldly materialism, a world of short-termist hedonism, addiction to technological distractions, and intolerance for discomfort, a world of grotesque spiritual deficiency - so that to ask for a greater focus on relieving material poverty is precisely the worst possible emphasis for Christian leaders to recommend.

A greater focus on examining the distribution of material resources and on re-distributing material resources is exactly what we do not need; exactly what would be most harmful  to us - it is even further to subordinate Christians under the Marxist materialist preoccupations of Leftism.

I regard such policy as following the agenda of The Adversary, not of God.

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(This is why the secular Leftist mass media have given such a positive reception to Pope Francis. Because he is assisting their demonic agenda.)

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But we are told that the poor are always with us - so who are they?

I would say that the modern poor are the lonely.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/what-endemic-loneliness-tell-us-about.html

Therefore perhaps Christians could or should focus on the area of greatest need - that is to say visiting the lonely - as with the Biblical instruction to 'visit orphans and widows in their affliction' - but expanded to visiting the lonely of whatever nature or cause.

(I hasten to add that up to now I have personally failed in this, as in so many charitable imperatives. This is a case of don't do as I do...)

Visiting would therefore be a more worthy and more necessary aim, less counter-productive and less actively-harmful, than pandering to the already dominant corrosive priorities of Leftism; which merely fuels the tendency to see the world primarily in economic terms.

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Nonetheless, if modern Christians were to focus much more on visiting the lonely, they would not have the slightest difficulty in finding people who needed to be visited - in contrast to the way that people have great difficulty in finding people who resemble the Biblical depictions of poverty. 

To find the lonely, Christians would NOT have to travel thousands of miles to war-torn Africa, or home-in on disaster zones; they would not even need to cross to the other side of town. 

Christians could just step-out of the front door of their home or office, turn right or left - it doesn't matter; and walk for just a few seconds or minutes to find someone who needs visiting. 

Because loneliness is everywhere in the modern world. It is the main form of modern poverty.

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Almsgiving - what ought Christians to do about it in a society without Biblical poverty?

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Not, surely, to scour the world in search of genuine poor to whom we can then give alms.

Not, surely, to import genuine poor in vast numbers such that they can be sustained by coercively-extracted taxes.

Not, surely, to redefine poverty in relativistic rather than absolute terms (so 'the poor' are 'always with us' - but not because there are always poor people, but instead because there is always a bottom ten, or twenty, or whatever, percent of the population as defined in some statistically-measurable definition of wealth.)

Not, surely, to deliberately create and sustain local poverty in order that alms may be given them.

Not, surely, to equate taxation with almsgiving (nor to equate bureacratic organizations with 'good works').

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But if not, then what?

The short answer: Christian evangelism.

In a society where there is no real Biblical poverty - almsgiving (and good works) should focus on evangelism.

Specifically, on gaining converts, on deepening the faith of the converted, on supporting good teaching, on making the sacraments available, on spiritual activities (supporting Christian works, monasticism etc).

How best this may done is a matter of judgment, and discussion - but evangelism ought to be the focus, ought it not?

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NOTE 

On the definition of Biblical Poverty see:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/biblical-poor-do-not-exist-in-west.html 

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Who are the poor? The traditional poor versus the modern poor; nature and personnel

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The identity of the poor and the nature of poverty both changed utterly at the industrial revolution.

In terms of the nature of poverty there are striking contrasts. For example, the traditional poor were thin, starving, and spent most of their tiny income on food - but the modern poor are obese, eat too much, and spend most of their income on entertainment, distractions, fashion etc.

The traditional poor worked very long hours, day after day - the modern poor do not work

And so on.

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But the traditional and modern poor are different people altogether.

1. The traditional poor were dead, or soon to be dead.

And if they themselves did not die, then all of their children very probably would.

(Pretty much all of the children who survived themselves to reproduce, were from the upper and middle classes - a small proportion of the population (?15 percent) produced nearly all the offspring who survived childhood.)

2. Therefore the traditional poor were a temporary class - always going extinct, but being replaced by downward mobility from the middle and upper classes.

3. In consequence, the traditional poor, while they were briefly alive, were recent descendants of the middle and upper classes - they had wealthy ancestors and probably wealthy relations.

The traditional poor were in effect 'distressed gentlefolk' - for instance the offspring of the younger sons, plain sisters, rebellious, idle, sick, unintelligent and unlucky members of the middle and upper classes.

4. Traditional poverty was therefore a temporary transitional state en route to (not long delayed) death.

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1. The modern poor are first and foremost alive, not dead.

2. Furthermore the modern poor will raise - or have raised by someone else if they cannot or will not raise them for themselves  - nearly as many children as they produce. Since the industrial revolution and for the first time in human history the poor have a higher Darwinian 'reproductive success' than the wealthy.

3. Thus the modern poor are mostly the descendants of previous poor.

4. The modern poor are therefore a permanent (multi-generational), self-reproducing class.

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In sum the Industrial Revolution did indeed create poverty - but not in the sense most people believe. The Industrial Revolution created poverty by keeping the poor alive, and allowing them to reproduce  - and making the poor into a permanent and self-replicating class.

In effect, and paradoxically; the Industrial Revolution has been blamed for keeping poor people alive and the children of the poor alive, rather than killing them all (or almost all) by starvation, disease and violence.

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Reference
This is a developed summary and interpretation of Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms (2007).

See also
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/biblical-poor-do-not-exist-in-west.html
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The tragedy of human life? Akenfield... again

From the movie Akenfield (1977) - a horse-drawn reaper binder - in action, from a distance; surely one of the most poetic of Mankind's machines (although very hard work for the horses). 

I am re-reading Ronald Blythe's Akenfield again, this time as an audiobook, and am again finding it a deeply moving experience. 

This applies especially to the earliest section, that has the old farm workers and their wives "speaking" about the span of their lives - memories and experiences which go back to the end of the 1800s, but which especially focus on the early years of the 20th century. The two World Wars loom large, but also the Agricultural Depression of the 1920s and 30s. 

The village is composite, and the people in the book are anonymised - their raw words have been selected and arranged by the poetic-pen of Blythe. It was published in 1968, and stories are from interviews in the preceding years. 

I first read this book when it was recently published and I was 14 or 15 - it was recommended by my favourite history teacher; and it had a lasting effect on me. 

I was made starkly aware of the qualitative transformation in the comfort and convenience of ordinary rural people's lives over the middle decades of the twentieth century. 

Listening again; I can see that my own reflections went beyond those of the author himself, who talked with the people and gave them each a voice and perspective  - and I think they still do, but differently. I suspect that Blythe himself drew rather different conclusions from his own work than I get from it - then and now. 

Fifty years ago; I saw the vast improvement in the security and abundance as having solved the age-long problem of material - or Biblical - poverty reported by the older Akenfield residents - the chronic hunger, insufficient and worn clothes, wet and cold, severe overcrowding; the serious lack of time, drainage of energy, cultural impoverishment, and infrequent fun.

My youthful conclusion from the contrasting interviews with younger people of the village - confirmed by my own experiences and observations - was that the recent abundance, the all-but universal comfort and convenience, was being dissipated in the quest for ever more of the material "goods" that had been had been in such short supply. 

Instead of saying "we have enough", people were saying "we want (even) more".  

Instead, my idea was that we should be striving in the direction of creative achievement - arts, and sciences - and building a world with wholesome (folkish) communal activities such as singing and dancing and crafts. 

I ignored the book's story of the decline of religion - by which Blythe mainly means serious and frequent church or chapel participation - because at that time religions seemed obviously untrue; and the descriptions of the olden-days life of church and chapel were without any appeal to my young self. 

Nowadays, I am more intrigued by the way that people regard their lives, taken as a whole - what they seem to think their lives were "about". 

For many of the villagers, "life" seems to have been about some aspect of the village. Even the religious ones seem to think of it in terms of communally recognized activities. 

I see this now, with a different generation of the oldest - and in my own, now-old, generation - a tendency to look back and seek, bring-forward, various achievements; usually from earlier life, or recently, or perhaps those of family - and to regard these as justification. 

The younger or fitter elderly seem nowadays to be justifying their lives in terms of continuing activities - the "I am busier than ever since I retired" sort of thing. 

In Blythe's 1979 book about old-age - The View in Winter, based on interviews with the elderly (a book which I did not much like) he concluded similarly that the things to strive for in old-age was continued activity and engagement for as long as could be managed. 

Blythe himself lived to the age of 100 and was writing - and writing well - into his nineties; but (as so often happens nowadays) he was apparently afflicted with dementia for the last decade-plus, and dis-engaged from reality. He continued living in his own house and alone (he never married), but with a great deal of essential outside help - as he had advocated as best for the elderly several decades earlier. 

Yet I find this kind of advice about old-age - staying active and engaged, living in one's own home etc - to be better than most alternatives, but merely a temporary and very partial palliative, when it comes to understanding and justifying "what my life is about". 

Such reflections always lead to the solid insight that human life, as such, is tragic. If life is about what happens during life - it cannot help but be sad, one way or another. 

Because real or supposed achievements in the past, or by the now-deceased, do not really mean anything of themselves - no matter how often or vehemently we may repeat or pretend they do. 

But some things that happen in our lives go much deeper than others, and are experienced as much "better". 

Nostalgia for being-active, working-hard, social engagement, or for the fun (of various kinds, including the obvious...); are simply not very profound - no matter how we spin it with words, pictures, or stories. 

Or, if such things genuinely are regarded as the most profound experiences of our lives - as so often seems to be the case (by self-report); then that does seem ineradicably, and finally, tragic.   

Is there are permanent and complete cure for this mortal life on earth?

Is there are permanent and complete cure for this mortal life on earth? 

Or are there just temporary and partial alleviations of the problems of living? Are there merely palliations that leave the essential problems untouched - of which the primary problems can be summarized as evil and "entropy" (aka death). 

Most of modern discourse on values and policies proceeds under the lie (whether explicit, or more often by implication) that partial and temporary would-be improvements will solve The Problem under discussion. 

This is, indeed, the basis of the entirety of this-worldly, materialistic "leftism" as it emerged in the late 1700s, displaced and co-opted religion, and now exerts totalitarian control over much of the world. 

The lie is that leftist reforms make a fundamental difference, that their "answers" will fundamentally transform the nature of human life - but they never do, and cannot. 

Generations of waxing and enforced pacifism, socialism, feminism, antiracism, environmentalism etc. have led to a world in which all of the problems these ideologies are supposed to address, are instead perceived - by those who are most leftist - to be in a state of crisis, or indeed emergency. 

e.g. Feminist rhetoric and discourse perceives the condition of women here-and-now, to be as essentially unjust and oppressed as they did in 1800, or 1900, or 2000. Nine generations of incremental feminist reform, the transformation of society, the inversion of legislation; and yet, for feminists, the fundamental problem is untouched. Two centuries of what Feminists regard as quantitative palliation and alleviation - yet the qualitative problem remains as-ever. 

Biologically speaking; many diseases have become curable; infant and child mortality has been reduced from about 60% to about 1%; and the average lifespan in The West has been extended about thirty years - yet the existential problems of disease, ageing and death are the same as ever. There are many new and effective means of medical palliation - yet "the problem of pain", of human suffering, is still present as always.   

In economics; prosperity/ comfort/ convenience has rocketed in The West since the Industrial Revolution, and "Biblical poverty" has been abolished; yet the profound civilizational problem of the rich versus poor remains - and is rapidly increasing. 

The nature of this mortal life is such that nothing material can be done from within to cure its core problems; and anything short of cure leaves the problems qualitatively untouched. No amount of justice eradicates our perception of injustice, no amount of egalitarianism dents our perception of inequality here-and-now, no amount of delaying mortality leads to a solution to disease, ageing, and death. 

It is a case of cure or nothing. 

Alleviation or palliation don't make a fundamental difference. Either evil and entropy are eradicated permanently, or things will be essentially the same. 

That is the problem of which Heaven is the solution. 

Resurrection to eternal life in Heaven is an everlasting answer to entropy and evil. 

Do You want it? Is it truly possible? 

These are (ahem) important questions - or, so it seems to me. 

So do not You be distracted by claims of what can only be partial and temporary palliations of this mortal life; that leave fundamental matters essentially unchanged...

Seek first The Answer.