We Can Eliminate Poverty and Save Our Beautiful World
Most of the world’s people are poor, and poverty interferes with and diminishes poor people’s lives. For that reason alone, we should all be interested in the elimination of poverty. What is often harder for us to see is that when inequalities exist in the access to, control of, and distribution of resources, everyone’s life is diminished. We humans are just beginning to understand that poverty in any city, suburb, rural area, or country hurts everyone and even threatens our existence as a species, as well as the existence of most other species. As much as we do not want to think about it, global poverty is a problem that we must face and figure out how to solve if we want future generations to flourish.
As children, none of us, from any economic class, wanted to look out and see our world the way it was. We wanted things to be right for all people. We were born with open and caring hearts, and the many unjust and difficult things we experienced, and watched others experience, hurt us. In addition to our caring hearts, we were born with great minds, eager to learn and figure out solutions to problems. When we saw things that were not right, we tried to make sense of them and make them right. But we were children, with a limited understanding of what was happening in the world, and our efforts were defeated over and over again. We had to settle, when we knew things were not right.
We reached adulthood with heavy recordings1 of discouragement in our minds, and it has become difficult for us to think clearly about the challenges confronting us today—especially oppression, liberation, and the need for leadership. Far too often when we face big problems, irrational self-defeating messages come to the front of our minds and confuse us about what is possible. No matter what our class background, class-based distresses interfere with our ability to feel good about ourselves, feel hopeful about our future, be in good connection with others, and think and act powerfully. They interfere with our ability to think about eliminating poverty and solving the many other personal, local, national, and global problems we human beings need to solve—and soon.
With such a long history of defeat, do we dare think we can change things?
In spite of our fears that things will never change and that we are not enough, we can eliminate class oppression, and the many other oppressions that divide us, and we can eliminate poverty. Class oppression has been a part of societies for a long time, and we humans have come to believe it will always be with us. To ensure the survival of our species, we must think better about global economics and turn things in a direction that is workable for all people and all species, and for our air, land, and water. None of us can afford to turn our eyes away. We are all needed to take on2 the many challenges that lie ahead. And we will not be alone in this endeavor. Awareness is growing, and people all over the world are trying to think about and organize for change.
As thousands of years of our history have shown us, doing the right thing can be a challenge for us humans. The confusing, painful class-based distress recordings we have been saddled with pull us to make many irrational decisions. In particular, we tend to give up when the going gets tough, and to get harsh and self-centered when we feel most alone and our fears about our own life surface. To have the successes we want, we will have to tackle, in earnest, the project of helping ourselves and all humans break free of the class-based distress recordings that are the only real barrier to our thinking clearly and acting powerfully.
Why Re-evaluation Counseling?
Now, with RC, we have a powerful liberation tool for freeing ourselves of class-based distresses and making our lives all that they can be. By building supportive listening relationships and discharging, we can move toward the greater clarity of thought we must have to set big goals, create unity of purpose, and build effective alliances. We can think about and put into place the personal and political policies we need for us to enjoy our lives and create a world free of economic injustice, oppression, and endangered species.
As RC’s International Liberation Reference Person for Raised-Poor People, I am offering on the RC website3 a longer overview of poverty and class oppression. I hope it will help us discharge our way to ever clearer actions and policies. Whether you are a raised-poor person or an ally to raised-poor people, you can use the theory and the action steps in sessions, support groups, and workshops to promote discussion and discharge.
As we liberate our minds from painful emotions and the confusions we carry, we will be able to change the economic policies that have, for so long, disregarded the well-being of most of the human population in the service of a few—policies that now show the same disregard for all the precious species living on our earth.
Thank you for caring.
Gwen Brown
International Liberation Reference
Person for Raised-Poor People
Wilmington, Delaware, USA
1 Distress recordings
2 “Take on” means confront and do something about.
3