notes from an impoverished culture

image from the book of the dead: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/03/afe/ho_30.3.31.htm

What is Poverty? How do we know Poverty? Is knowing Poverty an awareness of a lacking? What then is lacking?

In speaking of ideals perhaps in this context it is the lack of love or fellowship which makes one poor? Perhaps in another way of thinking poverty is only the product of a deficit in financial means and what those means provide – food, shelter, education – perhaps this is what is lacking in Poverty.

It seems most generally, Poverty is a lack of something essential. Essentials foster a sense of security and to know Poverty, to lack in some way, is to be insecure.

What culture then lacks? Which culture is it which is impoverished?

Any that does not breed security in its citizens.

We…

Who are “we”?
Those that I live among and that I count myself as one of…
“we” who have been living in a world lacking of an ethic.

It is not possible to cultivate security, richness, in the absence of an ethic.

An ethic is essential. An ethic provides a predictable logic from which expectation is extrapolated to the audience of action.

The problem with a culture lacking a commonly held ethic and possessing only individualized, personalized, hidden or non-existent ethics is an absence of a dependable social reality. There can be no concept of even a Justice in this culture… only an arbitrary illusion which pretends to serve some ideal. If “we” lack an ethic as a culture then we are all on our own without expectation of aid – we are cut a drift and the fabric of our society unraveled –

Describe a thing, clearly, objectively and it will tell you a truth – the description can make apparent the ethic at work. All choices are driven by the logic of an ethic. Choices are evidence of the logic that drives them. The greater the commitment to the logic the more consistent the choices… and sometimes the contradictions between what is pledged and what is done become apparent. To see in this way is wakefulness; it is consciousness; it is a taking of responsibility.