TED Talk
Why Poverty isn’t about not having money
By Eni Myrtollari
I hate poverty. Yeah, I know, we all do. But hear me out on this… I really detest it! Let me quick explain why.
When I was a kid, my grandmother, who had gone through wealth and poverty in life, used to repeat: “Damned are those who despite bounty.” Well, to be honest, she said that in Albanian, because she didn’t speak a single word in English, right?! Jokes aside, the point is, long enough people have come to know the importance of wealth or the possession of material goods as the ultimate antidote to poverty.
To me, all this is something much more complicated than richness vs. poorness.
Uh, although it wouldn’t hurt to travel around the world in a yacht once in a blue moon, I guess I am implying that first and foremost we must have the right to live with DIGNITY! Dignity is neither luxury, nor the narcissist need to show off that higher status. It is pure survival!
In an era when a group of a few chosen ones are aiming life on Mars, they are building diamond castles, using platinum silverware like it can make the soup tastier, or doing some other craziness beyond this world, in my eyes it is unacceptable that majority has to live without dignity.
Owning a supermarket cart as a home, eating from dirty floors, lacking basic things and paying crazy amount of money for education – in cases when that’s even an option – I don’t call that poverty, as much as deprivation of dignity, pure humiliation – in other words: dehumanisation. These people are poor because they are being stripped from every small bit of self-esteem and the right to live as humans.
Being poor is the lack of freedom, possibilities, and alternatives to act upon; the suppression of thoughts, emotions, and the ability to put in practice all the above-mentioned. Now, from today on, every time you see a homeless person, think of him as a being in absence of dignity and power to make decisions for himself, or dream for bigger changes.
Being poor isn’t about having money or not, the lack of it determining your every step sure is.
