At any rate, here follows one more sad and probably useless categorization of the "dimensions of poverty."Weakness, traditionally, is not seen as a virtue. Nor is weakness recognized as one of the more prized traits. Indeed only coward pacifists who are usually more two-faced than they are principled or more principled than they are loving, only these and idealistic college students and a few radicals who have forgotten even how to pick their nose (or picked it too often), only these are foolish enough to claim weakness as virtue--well, these and Jesus, but of course he meant it much differently.
The terminal cancer patient who believes in cures, isn't he better off? The "healthy" soul who looks forward to tomorrow, which is a day nearer the grave, the man who knows that the Americans will do something, the homeless men who marry prostitutes for money, the strivers and opium addicts alike, the devotees of placebos and the strategists who can solve all the difficulties provided only that it is given to them to dispense more aid, better directed, why not cheer them on instead of pity them?
I propose that false hopes are as good as true, provided that they cause no harm; and that anyhow between true and false we can but infrequently tell the difference. --Oksana had said: I was the kind of person who always had hope and never begged. --Now she always begged. --Shall we demean her former hope by calling it wrongheaded? --Until he's dead, who am I to say that the cancer patient is truly terminal?
Every man is rich or poor; says Adam Smith, to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. But after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a small part of these with which a man's own labour can supply him.
Well, then, what if, as did Thoreau, one rejects the division of labor?
Children, the unemployed, artistically inclined imaginations such as Elena's, all such people live in an undivided or at least less divided world.
People who by First World standards are underemployed, people with slow lives, divide their labor less than others.
Might there accordingly be some way for them to redefine their necessaries, conveniences and amusements back within reach?
Could it be that sharing resources and responsibilities works best when there is not much to share?
In that case, people with almost nothing and people with almost everything might be better off than the ones afflicted with relative poverty--who have enough to lose but not enough to be happy.
I prefer to hope and believe that a culture of communalism, however attenuated it may become as a result of material enrichment, can mitigate each and every one of the phenomena of poverty. Invisibility, deformity and unwantedness cannot defeat true neighborliness, at least not all the time. Dependence and accident-prone-ness are more powerful monsters: A band of refugees, or the dispossessed homeowners of Nan Ning, might start their journey to hell with all the mutual goodwill in the world, but should the impoverishment be poisonous enough, any resistance to it, single or collective, will be ineffective. But even if no other sustenance is available, unfortunate people can offer each other comfort, as they can when they have no medicine for pain. I remember the mothers and fathers who sat with their sanctioned children in Saddam Hussein Pediatric Hospital; my government would not let any medicines through, a freedom-loving policy which the doctors bitterly assured me had caused numbers of these children to die needlessly; but surely they were better off dying with than without their parents rocking them in their arms. As for numbness and estrangement, the same considerations apply.
Jesus, when he said, blessed are the weak, did not mean, and no way he ever could have meant, pursue weakness. Or go out there and get it for yourself. To think such a thing is just plain stupid at best. At worst, it's a vile form of hypocrisy and pompous patronization that leads to pleasuring oneself with the smell of one's own farts.
If I were to be such an asinine product of wealth and spoil as to suggest that weakness were a virtue, not only would I be considered arrogant, but I'd also be found guilty of an evil that disqualifies me from participation in the human race. It's not like that's happened to anyone before.
But for a moment, indulge me by withholding your indignation. Weakness can be a virtue. It takes a weak man to say this. And, though I may not be weak in some ways, I am weak in others. It has to do with benevolence, which is also a virtue. While it requires humility to accept benevolence, it requires weakness to be received. Charity always involves benevolence. This means Charity requires weakness. But what gives so many instances of charity their off-key twang is not that it involves weakness but that it only acknowledges that benevolence can flow one way.
When was the last time you accepted benevolence from the object of your charity? If no instance comes to mind, it is because you are not charitable or because you cannot see that an object of your charity has the capability (potential) to be benevolent towards you. Accept benevolence from the poor--they have it to give and often give it in greater quantities than the rich--and you do much for yourself. If you are not interested in your self, but rather in the selves of your charitable objects, you should recognize that you will never be able to refer to someone who receives your charity as anything but a nameless "they" or an even more distasteful "object of charity", in fact you just might find that you are not even benevolent.
But beyond this, if by some chance you are convinced a little, you are going to have to not only acknowledge your own weakness in order to receive benevolence, you are going to have to pursue this runt virtue in order to acquire it. Don't forget that virtues are formed by habits.
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