Extreme Poverty and its affects.

Extreme poverty, you see it on TV you read about it in the newspaper. But no mater what they tell you no one can really understand until you have been there yourself. You see the kids who are literally falling apart you see grown men eating sand just to stop the pain of hunger. It is something that we try to ignore whether you want to believe it or not us in North America try to ignore it.

When you see these starving kids on infomercials and public service announcements what do you do? Chances are the majority of you change the channel and look the other way. I am not saying you are bad people but I am saying you don’t know what it is like over there, neither do I. I can try to understand but until I or any body goes over there they will not understand what it is like.

One third of the world lives in this type of hell, One Third! By the time it takes you to read this far another child had died. Every three seconds one-child dies you do the math. Eight hundred million people suffer from malnutrition where thirty three percent of kids in North America are over weight. North American spend one hundred billion us dollars on fast food in one year. You could feed every single man women or child suffering from extreme hunger for a year with that and still have money left over.

Did you know if the US cut their military budget by a fraction they could end world hunger? But they don’t. Everywhere in the world people are dying every time you blink someone else has to suffer. But this suffering is in vain it is possible to feed these people but we don’t.

Why don’t we? It is because if the governments used that money to feed those kids we would have to lower our standard of living. That is something we do not want to do. We are living like kings we spend more money on things for our personal enjoyment then almost all those countries have put together. The suffering is real and no matter how many times we turn the other cheek it dose not go away.

What are your opinions on the suffering going on? Do you think we should do more to stop it? Do you think we are doing too much? Or do you just not care? I think I have made it clear what I think, but just for the record I think it is not necessary and we should do a hell of a lot more to end this pain.

I agree. Millions are people are starving as we speak - and most of us aren't even concerned with what we'll eat tonight. I realize that we need to do something about it, but what?

Our church youth group supports a little boy named David in Honduras, and each week we take up an offering to meet our $-per-month requirement. Doing something small like that puts the matter in perspective, but doesn't fix anyone else's problems.

How should we go about solving world hunger? We could all give money to organizations to feed people in other countries, but that wouldn't solve the problem, merely delay it. Once the money runs out, they'd be without food again. It depends on the country, the willingness of the people to work, the economy, and their treatment from other countries.

Sadly, I don't ever see world hunger being solved, but that's not to say that many people won't be helped by individuals giving money to charities/funds. We do the best we can with what we can, and hope we can make a difference.

I agree with you D3PyroGS that all we can do ourselfs in sponser one child and help them. But it just pisses me off that us as a country or countries sit on all this money and have so much while others are being killed off by the simplest desies because they dont have medicin. It's not fair that they have to suffer while we live with all that we have. I do what I can myself i am looking into sponsering a child when I get a job(Soon).

But when I am talking about US's military budget if they cut it by a fraction each year they could feed all those without food. That is a fact i can look it up if you like. I am not telling everybody to stop world hunger bcause alone we can't but i am saying that if we work together we can take alot of it out.

my church sponsers a child and my family sponser two but I just wish that some people would stop looking the other way and see that there need is real and something the goverment invented to take there money.

But in the end we can only do so little as one but I refuse to belive that we cannot end world hunger. If the entierty of the rich world(1/3) would each give money and with alot better funding by the goverment we could end world hunger i just don't see it happing any time soon.

I find it a very confusing situation, because if the country is so barren, if the water is so polluted, how is it that humans can survive there at all? As cold hearted as it sounds, isn't letting them die better than supporting them to create a new generation to repeat the same cycle?

For the record, I'm not a fan of 3rd world exploitation at all, I think that not meddling in their affairs would probably cause us to have to rethink how we do things and would probably cause a lower standard of living here. But is our willingness to exploit the root of the problem, or is there more to it? I don't know enough about the topic to say.

Originally Posted by Thorn

I find it a very confusing situation, because if the country is so barren, if the water is so polluted, how is it that humans can survive there at all? As cold hearted as it sounds, isn't letting them die better than supporting them to create a new generation to repeat the same cycle?

the truth is that they could get water by digging wells and that water would be clean but with out the proper equipment they can't dig wells to make there water clean.

It is hard to explain but let me try. One of the main reasons the countrys are so barren is nature but at some point the nature there will pick up and things will grow if we can help them untill that time comes they will be able to get there own food and the cycle will stop.

I guess we are should help those in need so there way of living will get better, untill then all we can do is help them survive without pain.

Hope that awnseres your questions fell free to ask more.

Allow me to be a little bit too brief for the moment. It's not as easy as you think. Financial aid is analagous to prescribing morphine for cancer. It might cut down on the pain, but you might also become dependent and the problem doesn't stop.

I recently spent a week in the Dominican Republic to witness and experience the poverty. I've been there, you could say. I'm not in a good emotional state to say a lot about it right now, but I think I have a reasonable understanding of what the world's poor is going through and what they think (not to say that they have a single universal frame of mind, of course). I'll expand upon this later when I feel up to it.

Originally Posted by Trico

Allow me to be a little bit too brief for the moment. It's not as easy as you think. Financial aid is analagous to prescribing morphine for cancer. It might cut down on the pain, but you might also become dependent and the problem doesn't stop.

I recently spent a week in the Dominican Republic to witness and experience the poverty. I've been there, you could say. I'm not in a good emotional state to say a lot about it right now, but I think I have a reasonable understanding of what the world's poor is going through and what they think (not to say that they have a single universal frame of mind, of course). I'll expand upon this later when I feel up to it.

I tend to agree with what I'm supposing your response to be. There is not a lot you can do. The main source of the hunger that you're describing is not because people simply have not, it's because what they have is being taken from them. Oppressive regimes, corrupted law enforcement, and ethnic bigotry all go to the same conclusion: some group of people or another are not going to get regular meals for a long time (In addition to rape and abuse but that's another issue). What does one do? As I anticipate that I will be called a bastard for the following, keep in mind that this is not an issue for idealists.

Occupy your mind with other things. Adopt a kid, vote democratically, give to charity, all of these things help the immediate problems but do nothing to help tomorrow's.

While you may think that you're making a difference, rest assured that it's not a big one. About the only thing that you can do to not be sucked into infinite depression on this issue is to think about other things. Or, incidentally, join the peace corps.

There ARE things that can be done.
The sooner that people feel responsible about those uinfortunate people dying elsewhere, the sooner these problems can be solved.

Think about it this way ( especially you Thorn); if you saw a starving child on the side of the street would you help them or walk away? or would you stand there asking irrelevant questions like: "why has this happened to the child?" and "who's fault is it?" ? I will boldly claim that at least 90% of you will no doubt try to offer some help or take the child somewhere where aid will be provided. However, this emotional instinct seems to disappear and become non existant when and if the kid lives in another country. It suddenly becomes the "politicians" problem.

I believe that that therein lies the core of the problem. People living comfortable lives don't see it as their obligation to help and aid those less fortunate. How many of you take it upon yourselves as an obligation to give a certain percentage of anything you earn to those in poverty? sure, you might not be a millionnaire and you, on your tod, might not be able to rid the world of starvation, but the cumulative effect can be staggering.

I am muslim and I believe that Islam, like other religions, enjoins people to give to charity to do good deeds but, unlike other religions, provides a practical framework by which we can CARRY those things out to rid the world of such injustice. Islam prescribes a system of Zakaat (obligatory annual charity). Islamic law prescribes that every person who has a saving that exceeds the nisaab level i.e. more than 85 grams of gold, should give 2.5% of that saving every lunar year in charity. If every rich person in the world gave Zakaat sincerely, poverty will be eradicated from this world. Not a single human being would die of hunger.

Another unjust practice happily accepted by most "civilised" humans of today is interest. This is a framework by which rich countries get richer and poor countries get poorer as they're stuck in an infinite loop of paying and repaying debts to those countries, monsterous in wealth (i.e the US and Britain) when they are obviously in more need. If interest ( at least for those third world countries) are scrapped altogether, we'll remove this huge unnecessary, cruel and unjust burden on those people.

And before I start getting those people repeating the ol' "oh but our country helps a lot of those countries out" etc etc. Purchase and read the following book: "Confessions of an economic hitman". Read to see how low a country and politicians can stoop.

To conclude, things CAN be done. It is just not financially and personally profiting for those who live solely for themselves.

Poverty has many causes, and throwing money at people isn't gonna help. If you want to put your money to use, donate it to organizations that are helping change. Poverty is usually due to the actual governments of those countries, outside ownership, and infertile land.

Personally, I'm hoping to genetically modify foods for third world countries after I graduate. If it makes any sense to anyone, I'm thinking of working on ways to help the symbiotic relationship between rhizobium bacteria and plant roots (the bacteria help supply nitrogent to the plant). Doing so would dramatically increase the protein production, and reduce the need for fertilizer. Protein deficiency is the main source of malnutrition, and this would help get rid of a lot of it. Scientists have engineered "golden rice" which has vitamin A in it. This will probably end up saving millions of lives, since something like 8 million people die each year from vitamin A deficiency.

Of course, first we need to get passed organizations like greenpeace, that put all their money into PR and don't listen to reason. GM crops were donated to a country in Africa, and then environmentalist organizations told the government the foods were poisoned. The foods were then locked up. The poor people broke into the supplies and ate the foods, and surprise surprise, no poison.

But GM crops are obviously not the only thing necessary. We need a combination of government reform and technology introduced to these countries, and I don't think either will work without the other.

But giving money to the individual people is just a band-aid solution.

I think the only remotely long-term solution is to teach people how to become self-sufficient (the one good legacy left behind by European Imperialism). You can give people all the money and all the food in the world, but it can only last so long. When they can learn to get their own food and make their own money--then you breed prosperity. Personally, I think we need to work on the more developed countries first, and then move on to the less developed ones, since population (and, through that, potentially wealth) increases over time, and then we'll be more capable to tackle the bigger problems in the poorer regions.

Gm foods? Please.

There's already enough good food growing in the world -- if you wanted to make it even more abundant, all that's necessary is a switch to a more plant based diet. We feed the vast majority of food grown to animals in farms.

I can't accept GM foods because that means implicitly accepting the actions of companies like Monsanto. Monsanto is certainly not helping eradicate poverty, but rather is contributing to its spread.

Golden rice may have viatmin A, but it doesn't actually get absorbed by the body. There are countless other available natutal sources of it.

Originally Posted by Trico

Gm foods? Please.

There's already enough good food growing in the world -- if you wanted to make it even more abundant, all that's necessary is a switch to a more plant based diet. We feed the vast majority of food grown to animals in farms.

I never said it was to make food more abundant. I'm talking about increasing the vitamin content.

I can't accept GM foods because that means implicitly accepting the actions of companies like Monsanto. Monsanto is certainly not helping eradicate poverty, but rather is contributing to its spread.

So if a bad company does a certain thing, it means that certain thing is bad too? Making hamburgers or fries means accepting the actions of companies like McDonald's.

Golden rice may have viatmin A, but it doesn't actually get absorbed by the body. There are countless other available natutal sources of it.

I checked PubMed articles, but they all seem to disagree with that. Perhaps you could give a source? As for other sources, there are many countries where rice is the staple food, and these countries suffer the most from vitamin A deficiency. Obviously these other sources aren't doing a very good job. "Natural" does not mean "better." What's your solution to vitamin A deficiency?

I'm really impressed with this thread. Yay for productive conversation!

Anyway, I wanted to mention a few things. Anime Queen: I agree with you so hard it nearly brings me to tears. People can do things. But the dont! The lack of options, which I described earlier accounted for that. Pretty much the only thing you can do on a large scale is to vote democratically and hope that liberal congressmen and executives will help those nations.

Trico: Have you read anything by Peter Singer? Singer does a lot of work with environmental ethics and has written a few papers on ethical reasons for vegetarianism. You might want to check him out. I've read lots of philosophy in my day, but his is some of the clearest wrting of a philosopher ever. In any event, he has some statistics that I think you might like to quote, namely: 90% of the energy that we give animals via grain goes to waste i.e. feces and the like. Also, An animal requires 10 times the amount of land for plants to make a serving of food. that is to say, if one acre of oats made one serving of oatmeal, 10 acres of cattle farming is required to make 1 serving of beef.

Madhatter: I'm rooting for you. Does the answer lie with science? I often have a take on that; however, this time I do think you're right.

I have never heard about this golden rice thing before right now. Do you care to explain how it is made, and some of it's benifits.

I think the only remotely long-term solution is to teach people how to become self-sufficient (the one good legacy left behind by European Imperialism). You can give people all the money and all the food in the world, but it can only last so long. When they can learn to get their own food and make their own money--then you breed prosperity. Personally, I think we need to work on the more developed countries first, and then move on to the less developed ones, since population (and, through that, potentially wealth) increases over time, and then we'll be more capable to tackle the bigger problems in the poorer regions.

But if we leve them too long they will die out and part of revlation will come true and i am sure no one is ready for the end of the world.

I dissagree with you saying we should teach them to be self scufficant, they have no way to get food due to the severty of the land they live on. There are also no jobs to get money from, all they do is work so they and there children can just survive another day and that is no way to live.

If only there was some way to tap into the underground rivers to help those contries that are goig threw droughts, grow food. I say the only thing we can do is help with what we can and hope others follow by example I for one do not wan't to see one third of the world die.

I checked PubMed articles, but they all seem to disagree with that. Perhaps you could give a source? As for other sources, there are many countries where rice is the staple food, and these countries suffer the most from vitamin A deficiency. Obviously these other sources aren't doing a very good job. "Natural" does not mean "better." What's your solution to vitamin A deficiency?

My only offhand source is Heather Eaton (Phd in theology, ecology, and feminism, professor at St. Paul's University), who gave the information in a lecture I attended.

I honestly just don't have the time at the moment to put more research into this topic, but I will try to get back to it in a few days.