Maslow's Peak: Reports From the Left
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That which doesn't kill you doesn't always make you stronger.

12/15/2011

18 Comments

 
The idea of struggling against odds is stirring.  Many people have memories or family stories of hardship that serve as inspiration.  Overcoming obstacles is a pivotal life experience.  But it would be unconscionable to allow segments of society to be exposed to preventable adversity in hopes that they might flourish under pressure. 

_And who would think otherwise?  Well, recently in a comment on another post, I was asked for the liberal viewpoint on this question: "When it comes to poverty, is all suffering bad? Why or why not?"

I don't know that there's a liberal viewpoint on this, but it's an easy question to answer. 
Yes.  When it comes to poverty, all suffering is bad.

Picture
_Legions of people throughout time hold their humble beginnings as one of the best things that could have happened to them.  Many have found poverty be a circumstance that forced them to fight for survival and success, to appreciate what they have now, and to be able to see others with more compassion.  One of the most adaptive character traits a person can have is the ability to grow stronger from suffering.

But while overcoming the barriers set up by living in poverty can be empowering if certain variables are present, such as a strong family system, a helpful mentor, success in school, or an exceptional individual vision; it must be remembered that it's the act of overcoming hardship that promotes confidence and further success, not the hardship itself.  When the means aren't there to convert hardship into fuel, overcoming it is not always a realistic expectation.  The hardship itself, and the suffering it causes, cannot be viewed as a good thing.

_ One of the most important concepts explored in religion, philosophy, and psychology is the value of transcending suffering.  This is a process supported by society when people face any kind of suffering, whether it be from dealing with cancer or grief, from violence or sexual abuse, from the loss of a job or a divorce.  But is the same process possible for the suffering that comes from watching your kids go hungry?  What if a violent event is not an extraordinary but a daily occurrence?  What if the loss of a job leads very swiftly to the loss of a home?  Being laid off may challenge a middle-class person to reevaluate their career or go back to school.  For a low-income person, it could mean moving into a shelter.

People in poverty suffer from everything everyone else does, but with fewer resources.  It is much harder to take a hit when you are already down.  Lower-income people are more severely impacted by things that can strike anyone, like a natural disaster or the loss of a loved one, because there is often more financial devastation that occurs in the wake of these events.  For example, a middle-class person who is in a terrible car accident is more likely to have auto insurance, medical insurance, paid sick time, a comfortable environment to recuperate in after leaving the hospital, and adults with flexible schedules and transportation who can help out.  If you've gone through something like this yourself or with someone close to you, you know what enormous obstacles are faced at such times for people in any economic circumstance.  Insurance doesn't come close to covering all the costs.  There are things like physical therapy, co-pays and deductibles, lost work time not covered by benefits, and the many incidental expenses that rear their heads in a crisis.  People without insurance, without a strong family structure, without any paid sick time, living in a small or ill-equipped home, may not ever fully recover.  Injuries can become permanent disabilities.

There is always the potential for someone who has experienced any type of suffering to eventually learn to use it as fodder for growth.  But I see absolutely, positively, no value whatsoever in allowing poverty to exist anymore than we can help it.  It is simply much less possible to find meaning in being hungry or cold, especially over many years, without hope, than it is to find meaning in suffering on an existential level.

Moments of grace can take place when light is seen at the end of a tunnel.  If one keeps trudging, it is possible to one day feel oneself to be the better for having walked through it.  But if the tunnel only stretches further at each turn, or grows darker from additional burdens, how often can that transcendence occur?

So, when it comes to poverty, is all suffering bad?  For me, the most fundamental answer lies in the philosophy that inspired the framework for this website, Abraham Maslow's theory of the Hierarchy of Needs. 

Only when people have food to nourish their bodies should they be expected to turn their suffering into food for the soul.
18 Comments
Greg Dant
12/15/2011 11:23:19 am

Can I respond or am I still on probation? ;-)

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Julie link
12/15/2011 11:57:26 am

You're only on probation on facebook.

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Greg Dant
12/15/2011 01:11:12 pm

Oh Goodie!

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Greg Dant
12/16/2011 10:19:54 am

I will not frame my response around my own personal experiences with suffering, but rather around over 50 years of being close to poverty and nearly 30 years of working with the poor, homeless, disabled, disadvantaged, and just about every other type of human discard that our society contains. Many times I have witnessed the good that can come from suffering, even if the ultimate outcome was not positive. Suffering teaches empathy, it teaches patience, and it teaches grace. We all suffer at some point and all suffering cannot be eliminated (nor should it be). Also, no one will ever convince me that people feel pain more intensely simply because they are poor. That holds true for material, physical, and emotional pain. Your focus seems to be mainly on material suffering, but it is not material suffering that seems to cause people the most grief. Over the years I have witnessed a number of people (some young, some older) lose their battle with death and some of them suffered terribly. It seems that nearly all of them learned something from their suffering and died at some level of peace. Terminal illness is the great equalizer in our world, it seems. Money won’t save you from that…just ask Steven Jobs. One personal note that I will throw in is that my best friend of almost 40 years died a bit over a year ago at a rather young age. He suffered physically, materially, and emotionally for practically the entire time that I knew him; yet he was the kindest, happiest, most empathetic and generous person that I ever was blessed to know...From him I learned that suffering can be a great character builder, even if one does not overcome their challenges. Suffering in life is a given…misery is an option! Oh, don’t take any of this to mean that I think that anyone should go hungry. In our society if people aren’t feeding their children, they simply are not aware of the resources (public, private, and individual) available.

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Julie link
12/16/2011 12:07:33 pm

Here I sat, reading your response, having various thoughts and opinions, considering what follow up questions I wanted to ask you about your views, what challenges I wanted to present based on philosophical disagreement, and what points I wanted to agree with, when I got to your last sentence.

If you have worked with the poor for 30 years and believe that to be the case, you and I are working with a different set of tools. I don't know where it gets us to talk about the rest of it.

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Julie link
12/16/2011 12:25:34 pm

Maybe I'm doing the same thing I accused you of doing earlier this week when I say we are working with a different set of tools. I will take that back, and challenge myself to understand how someone presumably working with the same set of tools I am, AND having so much experience with poverty in America, could write that last sentence.

I want to understand.

Greg, there is no end to the barriers to getting basic needs met in this country for people who are already on the skids. There are millions of kids who don't get enough to eat. How could you not know that? There are not enough people to staff food banks, there are not enough dollars to supply food and distribution equipment, there are people who don't qualify for supplemental food because they make too much but not enough to get by - haven't you worked with a food bank? I could swear you mentioned that. Haven't you said you have worked specifically with people who fall through the cracks? How can you and I have such similar experience but see such different things...

As for the question of suffering, I think we may be on different paths with our thinking about that too. It seems patronizing - almost dehumanizing - to sort of decree that someone else is in a position to learn and grow from the obstacles in their life - that is such a personal journey.

My focus is only on material deprivation in that having to be preoccupied with material concerns at a subsistence level precludes the luxury of drawing insight and inspiration from psychic and emotional suffering.

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Greg Dant
12/16/2011 12:26:44 pm

And I'm telling you that we have had more calls to feed people over the years than I can possibly remember. Sometimes we do it long term. Last year we kept a family of 9 fed for months and months because there was a problem with processing their foodstamps. That one touched my heart in such a way that I took it on as a personal project. It was a very rewarding experience. That family is doing much, much better now. We have never had a problem identifying resources and we have never sent anyone away without helping them, unless they were trying to play us. There are lots of us out here doing this. I guarantee you that we have done this long enough that we can find resources in virtually any community. In fact, we have actually assisted people out-of-state, too. Yes, I can and will be very, very resourceful on behalf of those that need help. I'm not doing for me, I am doing because of God.

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Greg Dant
12/16/2011 12:35:30 pm

I'm not telling you that it is easy. I'm telling you that there is no reason for anyone in America to be hungry, especially in light of the dollars spent. I believe that our food pantry is feeding upwards of 4000 families a week and that does not include all of the emergency home visits from scores of our local pantries. We pay something like a few cents per lb. for food from the wholesale food bank. Another thing that occurs to me is that the Federal Government could save a ton of money and help more people simply by insisting on better pricing from major food chains for food stamp recipients. They spend billions of dollars a year, which surely could buy some negotiating power.

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Julie link
12/16/2011 12:41:27 pm

Trying to go back now to the rest of your comment, before that flight of fancy you took at the end. :)

I'm trying to figure out if some of the things you are saying about the good that can come from suffering are meant to agree with what I said about the same thing, or if you didn't absorb my points about that very thing. I feel like saying, "I KNOW! That's a big part of what I SAID!" But maybe you got that, and were just agreeing.

So assuming we are in sync about that, where we diverge seems to be about whether or not there is a different impact from tragedy on the poor. If what you got out of my thoughts on that was that I think that "people feel pain more intensely simply because they are poor," I didn't explain myself very well.

What I was trying to say is that when something like violence or a tornado or a job loss hits a poor family, it can go from being an acute crisis to a chronic, debilitating nightmare that takes the kind of toll that makes it hard to find it character-building.

From what you've said in the past about your friend that passed away, he was a pretty exceptional guy. I have been privileged to witness that kind of grit in people too. I don't want to minimize it for a minute. I just think that our admiration for people who are able to transcend their circumstance shouldn't let us get complacent about improving those circumstances for everyone else.

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Greg Dant
12/16/2011 12:46:11 pm

I did not mean it to sound like there are not people in America doing without life's necessities. We often find that people are not aware of resources and then their families suffer needlessly. Last year for instance we had an elderly bed ridden person who had no family and no advocate. We brought her hot meals for nearly a year until we could assess her situaiton and help her. She now is in a nursing faciality recieving PT and has actually been able to take a few steps. We have become her family since she has none. The most important thing that we provide to her was not food and material support, it was love and companionship.

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Julie link
12/16/2011 12:48:50 pm

To me your examples are illustrations of my point. What you are describing is not a situation in which the only reason kids would go hungry is if their parents were not aware of the resources available, which is what you said. Bravo for all of your work, but pointing to the existence of emergency home visits form a pantry as a good thing horrifies me. An emergency food visit. Imagine a kid you love experiencing a food emergency. Now imagine him the day before and the day after the pantry visit.

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Greg Dant
12/16/2011 12:52:20 pm

Remeber too what I do for a living. I have seen the bad, bad situations and I have seen positive things come out of them. I have seen people with nothing helping each other cope. That is real strength of character... You would not believe some of the friendships I have made over the years. Much like you said about yourself, I have often been attracted to people very different than myself.

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Julie link
12/16/2011 12:53:30 pm

I think we are just talking about different things. You are talking about individual success stories, I am talking about overall societal problems. You are talking about what good can come from suffering, my point about that is there will still be plenty of invigorating suffering to go around once we get everybody fed and sheltered.

You know MY solution: tax and spend! woo hoo!

Going to bed, good night!

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Greg Dant
12/16/2011 01:00:55 pm

That's why I very much have tried to be involved with young people and helping place the tools in their hands that are necessary to be successful. Sometimes I am amazed at the things that I run into, but I am not giving up on the people that I work with simply because they have big challenges. I use my friend as an example to myself and others nearly evrey single day. I probably am not cut out for some of this work, because I get too personally involved sometimes and that can spread a guy thin, but then I think that I could really make a difference to someone that is now my friend. I told you that I am a bleeding heart conservative.

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Greg Dant
12/16/2011 01:02:36 pm

Of course...lol

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Greg Dant
12/16/2011 01:11:46 pm

I recognize the societal nature of these problems, but I know for a fact that you don't solve these problems in some block fashion. The way to address poverty is family by family and person by person. That is why the government has been such a failure at it. I just read that 1/2 of all Americans now are low income or in poverty, yet social welfare spending is at an all time high.
I just don't get it...Well, actually I do.

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Greg Dant
12/18/2011 05:59:17 am

Speaking of suffering, what is the US Senate thinking with this idiotic plan to extend the payroll tax cut for just 2 months? Are they that soulless that they wish to keep the working poor and others in such a state of flux and uncertainty for the next 2 months? What then... another 2 month plan? Shame, shame, shame on the Dems and Reps in the Senate who came up with this plan and shame on the POTUS too, if he supported it. John Boehner is right on this one...

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Greg Dant
12/22/2011 05:12:37 am

Speaking of suffering, why are so many liberals supporting this social security cut? I assume that you all realize that 60% of the tax cut will go to those with annual incomes of $100,000.00 or more. A person making $100,000.00 will get 10 times ($2000.00) the tax break that someone earning $10,000,00 ($200.00) does. It seems like a tax grab by the rich and I cannot believe that liberals have been fooled into support it.

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