Poverty Delusion
Poverty Delusion
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 Poverty DelusionKeeping people poor is a deliberate political policy that enables the evil elite to remain rich and powerful. Poverty doesn’t really exist in tribal cultures. There may be cycles of variation in the supply of life necessities, but generally Nature provides. Tribes know so much about their unique environment and can roam within it to find their food and health products. No money needed. They have existed like this for tens of thousands of years, if not millions of years. If they have surplus, typically they share. Community wellbeing is more important than individual attainment. So, equality is maintained, wealth hierarchies avoided. They were and are rich in the treasures of Nature and Spirit. For example: We’ve
been manipulated into believing that acquiring ‘stuff’ will
give our lives value & meaning. But this is bullshit & a very
recent deception.
For millions of years humans found meaning in ways that didn’t jeopardize the survival of their own species. (Climate Dad, 20 April 2022 tweet) ...Acoma – the oldest continually inhabited community in North America [by New Mexico’s southwest Indians since 1150]
– is a model of resilience. A community with a holistic,
reciprocal and self-sustaining food system, superbly adapted to the
high desert and capable of weathering extreme drought, climate change,
and violent intrusions by outsiders. (The Guardian, posted and accessed 18 April 2022)
Poverty is really a construct of civilisation and especially colonialism (from 1500), industrialisation (from 1760) and capitalism. Poverty was created to allow a few to steal the land, the resources and the labour of others. To achieve wealth and power. For example, the aforementioned Acoma community were forced by Spanish colonisers to grow wheat, which is not adapted to the desert. Meanwhile, the locally adapted amaranth, one of their main crops, was made illegal. Can you see how this brutality made the Acoma community poor? Their ancestral knowledge was deleted and they had to become dependent on the colonisers. For example: Between
1830 and 1885 the U.S. slaughtered 50 million buffalo — by 1900
only 300 remained — and somehow, Natives were the
“savages?” The buffalo are so incredibly docile until
provoked — they did not deserve to be mercilessly killed that
way. Westward expansion took a heavy toll on everything that was
Indigenous to this country. The U.S. figured that by killing all the
buffalo — they could easily subjugate the Plains Indians —
who relied on them for food, shelter and clothing. It was their —
final solution.
(Lakota Man, adapted 8 October 2021 tweets)  It is only when tribal people are ripped from their culture and from the abundance of Mother Earth that poverty manifests. Other problems come too, like modern diseases, addiction, loss of meaning, mental health crises. Listen to Roy Sesana, Bushman community leader, commenting on forceful resettlement by the Botswana government (cited by BBC, posted and accessed 7 January 2014): "We are now dependent on government hand-outs: we are being made lazy and stupid."
This white supremacist, patriarchal, colonial, imperialist savagery by 'civilised' people against the self-sufficient and sustainable indigenous peoples (NOT 'primitive') means that the latter were denied the free and bountiful treasures of Mother Earth: Today, 4 billion people around the world, the majority of the human population, lack even a single social protection. It didn't have to be this way.
(Jason Hickel, adapted 14 April 2022 tweet) They used to have so many resources and they now have none. Capitalism maintains that it lifted them out of poverty. The truth is the opposite. Capitalism thrust indigenous people into a godless, highly dependent, mentally unstable, health-compromised state. They did this through extreme violence.  Modern education and economics created poverty. Tribal people were wise and self-sufficient. Then they were enslaved by colonialism - not freed or uplifted. They were levelled way down, not levelled up. And they still languish there, forgotten by the media and the Rich World. Where is the justice? Where are the reparations? Surely we need a new money system? This colonial, capitalist system has not only impoverished the peoples of the world. It has also ravaged biodiversity. We are shedding languages, diets, cultures, animal and plant species. Skills such as instinct, intuition have been sacrificed at the altar of tech. Respect for Nature is trashed. The mystery and beauty of the night sky with its Milky Way and many stars is lost. Connection with Great Spirit is ridiculed. Any sense of sacredness is strangulated. Is this the world you want?  Further Quotes It’s crazy when these outsiders come and teach us development. Is development possible by destroying the environment that provides us food, water and dignity? You have to pay to take a bath, for food, and even to drink water. In our land, we don’t have to buy water like you, and we can eat anywhere for free. (Lodu Sikaka, Dongria Kondh tribe, quoted here, undated, accessed 18 December 2013) “The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human (and nonhuman) impoverishment.” (Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization) “They told me they don’t have a word for poverty,” she said. “The closest thing that they had as an explanation for poverty was ‘to be without family.’” Which is basically unheard of. “They were saying it was a foreign concept to them that someone could be just so isolated and so without any sort of a safety net or a family or a sense of kinship that they would be suffering from poverty. (Dana Arviso, Executive Director of the Potlatch Fund and member of the Navajo tribe, who recalls a time she asked Native communities in the Cheyenne River territory about poverty, cited by Teju Ravilochan, posted 18 June 2021, accessed 18 June 2022) “I have been to Bhubaneshwar city. I found that you cannot drink from your streams there, that women don’t feel safe walking around at night, that crossing a street is full of danger. Here in our forests, we are free to go where we want, we have fresh water and air, our women are not afraid … why would I want to give up this life and become ‘developed’ like you?” (An elder of the indigenous Dongria Kondh in India who successfully fought against proposed mining by the UK company Vedanta, quoted in CounterPunch, posted 26 July 2024, accessed 3 September 2024) Resources
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Also see:- Capitalism - Capitalism creates Poverty 10+ World Delusions - Delusion 20 - Rich World culture has saved the Poor World from abject levels of poverty Schooling the Poor World Money articles |
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