Poverty and the Power of Myths: Delusion at a High School

-by Francisco Unger

In their ongoing effort to enlighten students here at Phillips Exeter Academy, school administrators arranged a symposium, open to the public, entitled Democracy for Whom? One of the guest speakers was Gordon Mccord, a charismatic young man who serves as special assistant to Jeffrey Sachs in promoting the Millennium Development Goals.

Mccord riveted the campus with a broad speech outlining the roots of mass poverty, primarily that of Africa. He then sought to make clear the ease with which we, as an established Western power, could effect change. The campus received Mccord's sermon with great warmth. He seemed passionately altruistic, and propelled with great intentions. However, much of Mccord's persuasion was awash in a sea of self righteousness and a diversion of fault that rendered his speech meaningless, and made the warm reception ever more predictable.

The bulk of Mccord's speech was built on the assertion that mass poverty is rooted not in political, social, or economic limitations, but, rather, in limitations of geography. He suggested that extreme climates and uncontrollable epidemics are more debilitating to a nation's economy than less natural factors (trade restriction, under priced labor, poor foreign exchange, and so on).

Mccord cited Africa as his prime example, arguing that the land lacks sufficient fertility to develop stable agricultural output, and that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is effectively ravaging Africa's workforce. These two factors, Mccord proposed, underlie Africa's poverty, and thus should be the targets of our effort. He spoke of developing fertilizers and irrigation that would enrich Africa's land, and combating outbreaks of disease with basic healthcare.

Mccord's theory is correct in its assertion that disease and climate offer no aid to an already enfeebled economy. However, it failed to explain why African countries have been saddled with poverty for centuries, while AIDS has developed only in recent decades. Nor did Mccord's theory explain the riddle of Latin America, where resources are in great abundance, and the workforce is sizable and healthy, but the populace remains in great poverty.

What Mccord sought so eagerly to deny is that the root of mass poverty is more human: of man's doing. Ever since Western colonial powers swindled colonies, abruptly leaving behind corrupted systems and tattered economies, to the current day, when the more developed world has cunningly crafted a global economy of dependence and centralism, the third world has been at the West's mercy. Fighting AIDS and low fertility are indeed vital, but to defeat poverty, we must strive to establish a global system of fairness and justice: a system in which the necessities of a coffee farmer in Brazil are held to the same merit as the necessities of a CEO in the United States. Only through the dismantling and reshaping of the modern global structure will the eradication of mass poverty transform from an idealistic hope into a realistic goal towards which we might strive.

More disturbing, and telling, than the narrow theory that Mccord provided was the reaction it evoked on the Exeter campus. The campus seemed genuinely inspired by Mccord. For several days at the cafeteria, student signatures were collected and sent to state politicians, urged to promote the Millennium Development Goals. In that week's issue of the school newspaper, one student wrote an editorial describing the great revelation that the root of poverty was not political, but geographical. While on the surface, the temporary transformation of the privileged student body into a group of compassionate and driven activists was a wonderful change, it was out of rashness and a willingness to accept Mccord's theory that they were so moved.

Mccord had told these students precisely what they wanted to hear: that poverty was no fault of ours, the privileged sons and daughters of the West: that it was rooted in more natural factors, beyond our control. Perhaps unintentionally, Mccord had encouraged us to disregard the fallacies of the political and economic structure that we have spearheaded with all our might, and imposed upon the greater world. As it turned out, Mccord prophesized, we could blame it on the rain. Mass poverty was simply a byproduct of bad fortune: bad weather and unforeseen disease. And the student body was apt to play along. Suddenly, all those questions concerning globalization, greed, and capitalism dissolved. This was a reaction that the students, like most Americans, were eager to make; and Mccord proved the ideal catalyst.

The enthusiastic attachment of students to Mccord's lacking theory demonstrates a growing trend in America: the voracious diversion of fault. Both American politicians and voters are unable to recognize the shortcomings of a global and economic structure to which we feel so emotionally attached. We want to believe that our empire is built on foundations of equality and liberty, and, as the choice is ours, such is what we choose to believe. The result is an atmosphere of hasty judgment and distorted rationalization. Under this condition, the truth will be forever twisted and molded to our liking. The churning of blood and sweat on which our nation flourishes will remain blanketed, overridden with self-propagated myths of eternal goodness and democracy.

As John F Kennedy once said, "the enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth-persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic." Only when we break through the myths, the myths of poverty, the myths of inequality, the myths of empire, will we reveal the pure and unobstructed truth. And only with this truth revealed will reality, in our eyes, be reality: clear, unhindered, and free.

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Francisco Unger, 15, is a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, and can be reached at funger@mail.exeter.edu.