The Omni Power Poverty

What is the main denominator behind most major twists in human history? One thing is for sure, that is poverty.

Let’s take a look at the revolutionary stories in the Semitic holy books and we will meet their very first common hero, which is Moses. It remains unclear whether Moses was a Jew, or an Ancient-Egyptian, or an Ancient-Egyptian king who pretended to be a Jew. But we can rest assured that Moses had successfully capitalized the suppression, discrimination, slavery, and thus the very poverty of those Jewish people in Ancient-Egypt. Moses led this poor segment of the Ancient-Egyptian society out of the Pharaoh’s land for a Promised Land where all notions of poverty are imagined to be absent. And the very first reason for this class of people to follow Moses was neither because of his charisma, nor his super strong Yahweh, but it was only because they all were under the circumstances of economic poverty.

The second revolutionary story was about the rebellion of the poor Jesus. This story is set during the Roman occupation in Judea. Just like every populist, Jesus presented himself to be a poor man deadly menaced by the extreme case of poverty; as much as we Indonesian remember Suharto portraying himself to be of a very humble origin, a.k.a. poor. Jesus also preached to the certain class of his society that is the ebonite. And like Moses, Jesus also promised a Promised Land high up there that has no notion of poverty at all. In this utopian land as promised by Jesus, the only thing that exists is the betrayal of any mundane circumstance. So twisted that Jesus world is that the poorest becomes the richest, the sickest becomes the healthiest, and the lowest becomes the highest. I believe one doesn’t need a Psychology 101 to understand the play of extreme self-denial in this hallucination.

The third major revolution in the Semitic family of faith is in Islam and managed by Muhammad. And again the same story of Muhammad’s humble origin arises. It is said that Muhammad was born a poor orphan who later on owed his fortune from his first beloved wife Khadijah. However, the Koran strongly implies that Muhammad maintained his poor life style in his life time, so he was not indulged in his wife’s wealth. He was still faithful in his poverty. The Islamic sources also narrate that his first followers apart from his own family were the poor of Mecca. These poor would then follow him to Yathrib in his historical hijrah. Some Islamic sources also mentioned that those poor fellows did not do anything else in Yathrib, except gathering themselves in the mosque. This phenomenon is so strikingly similar to modern Saudi Arabia, where everything is practically run by foreigners while the natives themselves just cherished the Koran and the promise of Islam.

And the Eastern belief systems are also very much poverty driven too. The major difference with the Semitic faiths is that in the East, the main ‘prophets’ did not need to pretend to be poor. So that, although the story of Siddhartha was obviously motivated by his observation on the poverty behind the wall of his palace, Siddhartha did venture into denying his own noble origin like Moses for instance. Yet, instead of making people believe and explicitly telling the story that he was of humble origin like Moses Jesus and Mohammad, Siddhartha acted upon the life style. As such that Siddhartha made and commanded every wanna-be Buddha to live the life style of a beggar, of the poor. The origin of Chinese philosophy is also very much alike. The life setting of Confucius and Laozi was equally the same, that was during the wartime of a divided China following the breakdown of Zhou dynasty into hundreds of kingdoms.

Isn’t it fascinating that almost all religion and belief systems are somehow motivated by the omni power of poverty? More over, the promises of modern politics are still not deviant from this path that basically promised the eradication and elimination of poverty. All founding fathers of every country fought against this. The French Revolution was somehow caused by a collective disgust of the poor against the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. The American Revolution was motivated by Washington’s unwillingness to pay taxes to British aristocracy and promised the making of a utopian Jeffersonian land where the pursuit of personal happiness would be equally given to its citizen; although Jefferson himself sarcastically wrote his hallucinating utopia after an orgasmic trip over the body of his female slaves. The third world countries are also the same, all of them sealed their independence with a dream of a land where poverty is abolished for their people.

Modern isms are also identical. Communism, capitalism, fascism, socialism, Islamism, Pancasilaism; all these isms in their own way highlight and claim similar promise, that is the eradication of poverty, the sense of equality for all men within the boundary of that particular ism, and the wealth for men.

However, upon quickly observing the similar play and theme in the ancient time to the contemporary time above, we can safely conclude two main premises, those are (1) poverty will always be with us as long as we are still biologically like this, and (2) the struggle against poverty will continue to no end in the history of mankind.

And my very first reason to bring this up to you is because even now we are seeing the struggle against poverty has globally reached a new height.

First, look at America. Traditionally, America is a racially divided country ruled by prejudicism like the white thinks s/he is of the highest race above everybody like in the movie Bonanza, then the black looked down at the white’s cultural depravity, and so on. But today, America has astonishingly found themselves not to be like that any longer. The traditional racial segregation is gone, replaced by the economic segregation. So that, if in the old America the white would feel very uncomfortable being with the black and prefer to be with the white for instance; today a poor white will feel more comfortable being with a poor black rather than with a rich white. And rich white people too will socialize themselves more comfortably with equally rich black individuals rather than racially poor white people. Of course, the word rich and poor here have a lot of aliases, such as un/successful, un/educated, un/exposed, and so on. Let me give you an interesting case when a successful black individual badmouthed the unsuccessful black people and his condemnation on the poor black was cheered up nationwide. That was when Bill Cosby prided himself with his good command of English that actually simply signifies high education and thus economically rich. Bill Cosby badmouthed the poor black people who spoke bad English such as "s/he don’t love me" or even the poor people inclination to use foul words like nigger, fuck, and so on. You need to understand America a little bit to understand the absurdity of Cosby’s accusation and eventually the new rise of economy as the great divide in America.

The problem here is because Bill Cosby has singled out the poor black parents only. And, this is simply not true. Yes, it is true that family matters, so if parents use foul languages everyday eventually the child will start to speak like that too. Yet, peer group also counts. And once we look at it this way, the economic reason will soon crack up. Look, the kind of kids who speak like that actually are not just poor black kids, but basically all poor kids in America, because those kids typically go to public school. Poor Chinese kids, as well as poor Latino kids, they all dress up like the poor black kids, speak equally the same grammatically stupid English, and even equally call their peer using the word nigger. For instance, racially I have a Chinese body and one day I was surprised when there was a black adolescent called me nigger! I astonishingly asked her, “Me, a Chinese? How come!?” And she simply said, “’Cause ye are a nigge!” Semantically even the word nigger is not exclusively for black people only, but for every body who acts and has the attribute of those poor people, no matter what his/her skin color is. Moreover, how about white rap artists like Eminem? The lyrics of his songs are so typical of the poor rebellious black kids, but Eminem himself is white and somehow successful. So, the problem addressed by Bill Cosby actually was not the problem of poor black kids only, but of all poor kids in America. It was not only the problem of poor black parents only, but practically of every poor parent in America. The best way is to overcome this problem is actually simple, just send your kids to the good school so they can be around other good kids and it is guaranteed your kids will immediately change their behavior. However, do you have the money and financial backbone to send your kids there? And yes, in those good school your kids will still be exposed to different colors. In those good school, your kids are actually only shielded from the poor class, not from the yellow or black or brown or white!

Second, if what is happening in America means capitalism fails to bring about the promise of eradicating poverty; then, what happens in the ex-Soviet’s satellite countries are the same too. Right after the fall of communism, those ex-Soviet’s satellite countries are again getting economically divided. You are not what you are, but you are what your economy is. In China a big majority of Chinese people already starts to whisper the return of the Maoist day when everybody was equally poor; not like China now, where the poor remains poor or poorer, while some people get richer and richer. Life back then was hard for those Chinese, but at least they did not feel poor because after all, everybody was poor. And thanks to neo-liberalism, poverty is also globally making a big return. The poor countries are getting much more dependent on the richer ones as they themselves get poorer. Just look at our Indonesia, the poverty rate now is already crazily 40%! Right after we prided ourselves with reformasi.

Are democracy and reformation actually in-themselves bad and corrupt?

Thanks to today social and intellectual cliché, no modern healthy mind would ever say ‘yes’ to that question. Nobody wants to look primitive and backward! However, what those modern men do actually betray what they are afraid to say. And in reality, totalitarianism are really returning everywhere in its many forms and faces!

In Europe totalitarianism is coming back under the disguise of neo Nazism and extreme nationality. In England, the Asian-British people (usually Indian) are under physical attack. In France, the anti-Chiraq chose to vote for Chiraq only because it would block the fascist Le Pen from winning the election. In Ireland, the overseas Chinese is assaulted and asked to leave the land of the Irish people. In Germany, people like the ex-Vietnamese refugees start to go back to Vietnam because they cannot bear the racial discrimination any longer. In Russia, a neo-fascist movement starts to promote the superiority of the Russian people over the other minority from the ex-Soviet satellites in Russia. The ultimate dream of this fascist and racist Europeans is a Father land where everybody is white and equally rich at the expense of the non-white and non-local. All those fascist are somehow experiencing a black-out from the history of Hitler and Nazism.

In many predominantly Muslim countries, totalitarianism disguises itself under the mask of Shariah law. In Indonesia for instance, this Islamist promoters constantly spread out the dream of the old days when everybody was equal under an Islamic caliph. In Kelantan Malaysia, as well as in Aceh, single-handedly the people in the area had chosen to erect the Shariah law. All those Islamist deliberately blind their own eyes on the failure of such Islamic state everywhere in the history, even during the time of Muhammad himself that Islamic state was ended by a big war and massacre among Muhammad’s own family members.

In Latin America countries, now there is a movement called Fidelist from Fidel Castro. This is spearheaded by Hugo Chavez who deliberately badmouth the rich people, and tell them to give away their wealth to the poor just like what Jesus said 2000 years ago. This leftist fidelist is already building its bases among the elites! No wonder all Latin American countries start to revive its version of socialism, liberation theology and to copycat the success of Cuba.

Why all this happens? Because of poverty! Poverty proves to be an omni power element behind every social change. Regarding religions for instance, many theorists talk about fear as the very origin of religion, or the psychoanalytical murder of a primal father. But, how can fear come to us? Well, only if we are poor! If we are poor, we have every reason to fear the world and the future; we will soon start to hallucinate about an other world where the poverty is gone; we have every reason that the rich will step on our misfortune. Fear has an origin, and poverty is the only candidate for its origin.

Indonesia is now tightly gripped and squeezed by poverty, by the very first mover of every twist in the history mankind. How exactly we shall address this problem? Shall we ride on it for our populist goal; or shall we start a collective movement? Shall we manipulate it for furthering up the nation building and thus the Indonesian identity; or shall we just wait until this poverty start to naturally twist the history of the country?

If you start to think about it, I have reached my goal!

25 April 2005
JD