Re-Think Poverty
When we desire more than enough, we feed a system that creates poverty at all levels
The planet Earth is abundant, teeming with life, and offers almost endless resources for every living being. Yet, there is one species that knows poverty—us, humans. We are the only creatures capable of creating poverty amidst abundance. Not only do we define ourselves through poverty, but it is also embedded in the deepest layers of our mental structure.
This is why there is an urgent need to rethink poverty and, in turn, rethink richness. Poverty and richness are intertwined, like light and shadow. One cannot exist without the other.
In nature, poverty and richness do not exist. A lion eats when hungry and stops when full, leaving the rest for smaller animals, birds, and insects. All animals have a natural limit, which we can call "enoughness." There is no desire for more than what is enough. This concept is simple, universal, and perfectly balanced with all other life forms. Yet, humans are different—humans never seem to have enough, and so poverty and richness emerged.
How poor is our vision of poverty, and what it means to be rich, we see perfectly reflected that the association we have according to both is money. Today, when we say someone is poor, it means he has no money, and when we say someone is rich, it means he has more money than he needs. But this is not surprising in a world where money is god. The tragic of poverty is, on the surface, the lack of money, but underneath there are profound implications that give to this superficial vision.
The root cause of our self made poverty is that we have lost our connection to life
Our view of existence, and the way we experience life, inevitably lead to poverty. We experience life as something that is not enough, something we need to improve. We feel separate—from nature, from others, and from life itself. On one side are humans, and on the other, everything else. On the personal level, we experience life as something that happens to us, as though there is a small “me” inside who is living a life separated from life. This little “me” always wants more. We are all on a journey for more. Even at a spiritual level, we seek enlightenment. Most of us buy material things to fill this inner void, only to wake up the next morning with the same unconscious desire for more.
The most devastating consequences of this desire for more can be seen in relation to power. Powerful people have everything materially, yet their hunger for more is the greatest of all. When someone already has everything and still wants more, they live in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction—a kind of hell. The only thing left for the powerful to crave is more power.
I have traveled around the world, and one thing is certain: the less material wealth people have, the stronger their connection to life, and the more human they seem. When we have nothing, what we receive becomes enough. Happiness is found in enoughness, not in wanting more. The poorest people on earth are not those lacking material wealth, but those in first-world countries, where we have more than enough, yet it never feels like enough.
The famines we witness, in real time, on television today are the consequences of our insatiable desire for more. It would be easy to provide food for all humans, but we have created a system that makes this impossible. In our need for more, we speculate on food in stock markets, and we wage wars in our pursuit of control and security. Meanwhile, we idolize the rich, and in our desire to become rich ourselves, we feed the very system that creates poverty.
When we desire more than enough, we feed a system that creates poverty at all levels. The pursuit of material richness is only possible when others are poor. Living on a planet of abundance, yet constantly wanting more, creates hell on earth. Rethinking poverty requires us to relinquish the desire to become rich and to recognize that life itself is more than enough. There will never be more than life.
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