the rich poor and the poor poor

Yesterday I watched a report on poor people in America. The unemployment rate in that town is 20 %, and it does not seem to be improving. Impoverished people are going to distribution centres for food packages and soup kitchens for a free hot meal.

Memories of childhood went through my head. When I was 12, my mother, sister, brother and I moved to another country due to a war. My father stayed behind for a year.

We were so poor that we couldn't afford any firewood. My mother and I used to go out in the middle of the night to nearby farms and steal firewood from their sheds. We would walk back home with heavy loads of wood, and I remember hating and cursing my life a whole lot because of it.

We were receiving food packages from the Red Cross. There was Swiss cheese in there, and Danish cheese, and powdered milk, clothes detergent… it was nice stuff, but I still felt like I was robbed of my dignity. I went to a school, where all the kids bragged about how rich they are, and I felt very inferior to them.

I wore clothes from my rich cousin. She grew up in a household where everything was in abundance, and she was always willing to share anything she hadn't formed a particular emotional attachment to. I remember when her mother told her to gather some toys for my siblings and me. She started throwing in Barbie dolls, but her mother stopped her, saying: "No Barbie dolls, please, they are too pricy after all." I used to feel very hurt by this fact, thinking how unfair it is that rich people are worthy of Barbie dolls, while others aren't. I felt spite, envy, longing, pain, but mostly fear. I feared that I will never be able to relax and enjoy my life, like my cousin, who was born into a rich family. I feared and spited the fact that poor people like me in this world have to work through the good part of their lives for measly numbers, which are up to 100 times lower than the ones my aunt handles with, only to end up with a pension that barely gets them through the month.

As I grew older, that fear eventually turned into a compliant, but spiteful resignation. I gave in to the idea that I will have to work in jobs that do not necessarily interest me, but there was always the underlying hope, that something will happen, and save me from my wretched destiny.

I was very unhappy because I was poor, and I developed a food disorder. I noticed in the report I was watching, that most of the interviewed poor people are obese, probably due to the same reasons as me. They are comforting themselves with food, which is similar to shooting up heroin, because eating causes an endorphin release in the brain. It's similar biochemical processes.

This very well shows the entrapment of the human being by its own mind and the world system, and the duality of humanity's existence.

What came to mind, after remembering how I felt when my family got a food package, were the facts about North Korean children, for some reason. It could have very well been Indian, African or Chinese children; they all suffer the same… and much, so much more than I ever have.

Those are the children on the other side of the world, the poor children, who actually have nothing to eat, because they were born on the bad side of the world system. At least I was a poor child born on the good side of the world system. In food terms there's the poor rich, the rich rich, the rich poor, the poor poor, the dying poor… and we all live on this planet, which provides food for all! The whole thing reminds me of a giant gyroscope. We're all on our particular points of the circles, and we circle and bypass each other, unable to stop.

It is time to stop. Food in this world is a necessity, like air and water. Everyone is born with a right to it. Being born on this planet means that we have the right to exist on it - for free - or rather - for the labour of our hands. I am pretty sure that starving people would gladly invest time and labour in growing their own food, if only they weren't robbed of that chance by being born into the current, compassionless system.

The system does not support life, it supports death. Death for money. Money=death, abuse, poverty, slavery, cheating, lying, deception, competition… all the monsters that thrive on someone else's pain. It is time to investigate a new system, because the end is pretty near. The extinction of the middle class, due to the application of interest, is upon our doorstep. Soon the poor will start to attack the rich for food, and then - System Failure. www.equalmoney.org www.desteni.co.za