Poverty 2.0

Today I came across a heap of challenging quotes whilst doing some preparation (sorry all my followers on Twitter & Facebook).

The two that followed on nicely from yesterday's post were:

"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." Stephen Jay Gould

"That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen." Michael Harrington

If we are to take seriously the idea that each person has dignity and worth because they are created in the image of God then poverty is the greatest challenge. We are the first generation in history that has the capacity to abolish abject poverty (people living on less than $US1 a day) in our lifetime.

Our society is built on the fact that you walk into a shop and consider an item based on its price, functionality and appearance. We put no thought into where it was produced. How much carbon, water and other precious resources were used to produce it? How much the person who produced it was paid and in what conditions they worked? Who is making the profit from the item and where are they spending that profit?

I wonder how our spending habits would change if we asked those questions as we stood in our supermarket or shopping mall? Perhaps we should carry around a picture of a poor African child when we shop. Perhaps then the poor Einstein's of our world wouldn't be forgotten.

Sorry if that sounds a bit preachy, but I am asking myself as well.

P.S. I have decided that I am going to add to the bottom of my days post any interesting articles/webpages I have come across that might be of interest. They won't necessarily relate to the day's topic but I hope you find them as interesting as I did.

What I read today:

New Atheism has five distinctive doctrines