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Being poor
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    If you’re poor, what might have been a minor annoyance, or even a major inconvenience, becomes something of a disaster. Your hard drive crashes? Who’s going to pay for the recovery of its data, not to mention the new computer? I’m not playing solitaire on this machine; the hard drive holds my work, virtually my life. It is not a luxury for me but a necessity. I need dental work. Anybody got $10,000? Dentists are not a luxury. Dental disease can make you seriously ill. Lose your cellphone? What may be a luxury to some is a necessity to me. Without that telephone and that computer, my life as I have known it would cease to exist. Not long after, so would I. I am not eager for that to happen. Need to go to a funeral hundreds of miles away? Who pays for the plane ticket? In the case of the funeral, my nephew paid for the plane ticket. My daughter and son-in-law paid for the dental work. Sometimes, I find it deeply humiliating that I am dependent on such kindnesses when I would prefer that the kindnesses flow the other way.

    http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2014_Fall_McPherson.php

    Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

    Being poor is seeing how few options you have.

    http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

  • 8 Replies sorted by
  • ninettoninetto

    Being poor is...

    knowing how to entertain and enlighten yrself and friends with what you have at hand! No, no they can't take that away from me...

  • karlkarl

    How does it sound to someone who's actually poor - on a global scale - when somebody laments about the risk of not being able to replace a failing cell phone or computer?

    It's not too long ago that nobody could fly by plane, and almost nobody received dental healthcare. When teeth were defect, they were extracted by the next one with mechanical talent, and the elderly were sure to not have much teeth anymore.

    To those millions who struggle every day to get enough to eat or who fled from wars with nothing but their lives, this article sounds like the complaint of a spoiled 16 year old who says she feels so embarassed her parents only bought her a Toyoto as her birthday gift while all the others in her peer Beverly Hills neighbourhood got Porsches or Ferraris.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm all for less income inequality, but I don't like the abuse of the word "poor" for people who are, on a global scale, still pretty well off.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    To those millions who struggle every day to get enough to eat or who fled from wars with nothing but their lives, this article sounds like the complaint of a spoiled 16 year old who says she feels so embarassed her parents only bought her a Toyoto as her birthday gift while all the others in her peer Beverly Hills neighbourhood got Porsches or Ferraris

    @karl, you completely missed the point of article. As it is not about poor people in general. Look at the author:

    William McPherson, a novelist, critic, and journalist, was the editor of the Washington Post Book World and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

    It is about specific problems, of this guy in specific point of space and time. And it the value of it.

    Idea to care for every poor people is very attractive. Yet nature usually does not work with way, we do not know if equality can be more dangerous to mankind than big number of extremely poor. May be. Many smart people though about finding alternatives to biggest stimulus of progress and evolution - fear of being hungry, poor, and not to have family and offsprings.

  • DouglasHornDouglasHorn

    @karl - Those are fair points, of course, especially when you only read the excerpts, but McPherson makes them and more. The essay is not seeking to evoke sympathy, but rather, it shares an experience that is very worth reading. The guy is a talented writer.

    Thanks for sharing this @Vitaliy_Kiselev. In a world up Upworthy bullshit, it's a rare pleasure to read something of substance.

  • brianlbrianl

    Sheesh, and the dude has a Pulitzer. Dayem.

  • jleojleo

    Around 150 Academy Awards have been sold by their recipients, ( to buy groceries? ) After 1950, the statues are basically on loan and cannot be resold except to the Academy, for the sum of $1.00. Even the Hollywood Holy Grail is worthless!

  • goannagoanna

    Rings true to me..

  • ninettoninetto

    MEANwhile.... somebody is sure busy stuffing their pockets with somebody else's dough:

    http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/ukraine-the-1-6-billion-dollar-gold-heist-and-coup/#comments

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