For all the ugly makeshift lives, the blatant lack of comfort and the repugnant odors of reality which poverty entails, nothing is more lethal among its effects than the deterioration of the stricken man's desire to uplift himself in the most important way: morally. A world of rampant corruption, crime and an ever-growing void in spirit. This is the society which we live in. The world of yesterday, today and most likely, tomorrow. It is a hierarchy of earthliness supported by the atrophy of the human being's desire for what is right and what is morally good. Everything around us is motivated by financial and material needs; for the sake of securing a little bit of comfort the most disturbing of natural phenomena--human sin--is born. Following in the footsteps of each and every event in society can be a cruel, despicable task, yet experiencing it in full is a far more horrible dose of reality. There is the father who struggles desperately to support the family he has sired. He wanders into the city to carve out a living not of the harsh sun of the fields, in the hope that the new life he wanders into would be a kind redemption to a fate originally tied to the soil. This promise is quickly drowned out by the backlash of hunting for the mirage of success in a true city of life and death. He goes into hibernation in squalid apartments, where the stink of garbage rotting in fetid, polluted creeks invades the senses in each and every passing moment. Unable to find any sort of decent job due to a lack of ability to even spell out his name or read it, he resorts to crime as a last ditch effort, for survival, only to be caught in the firing line of human justice and be handed over to the oblivion that is the city jail. Then there is the mother who, with her ragged clothes and destitute face, is shoved out of her family for marrying the man she fell in love with. Her husband turns out to be a drunk and a bum, who beats her everyday for bringing home too little for him to spend on his addictions. She gives birth to a brood of hungry mouths, and having to rely on her own means to feed them, is forced to sell her body to both rich old men and amorous, philandering spouses. She wanders from bed to bed, club to club, room to room, dancing, singing, entertaining in the worst possible manner, so that her own malnourished avatar can stay alive and give a little milk from her dried-out breasts to the babies she had given unto the a God-forsaken world. And then there is the progeny, the little imp of parental mistake. The so-called gifts from heaven is forced to grow up too soon, to live in the shadow of perpetual rakishness, not knowing what is good and what is not in what they say, do and think. He is abused and underfed, and is forced to sell sampaguitas and handywipes in order to bring in a few pesos to give to the man who abducted him from his family. He ekes out a living by imitating the sordid examples set by his unfortunate predecessors, and then meets his inevitable ends in the most pitiful and lackadaisical of circumstances. He stretches out his hand to beg for a few coins from every car that passes by, only to be shunned away by a few contemptuous knocks on the glass window, and not knowing any better, sallies into the streets, to live to beg, to die in shame. Harrowing as these pictures are, they are but the common ones. Truly these are but examples of the tiny wheels that make up the devilish monster that is our society today. And so the vicious cycle of life and death in the world of the poor continues, not knowing any sort of means to the end of it but to continue on until there is none left to claim. Yet is this even possible? Indeed, the poverty of society--man's material poverty, his lack of comfort and the disability to forage for some human-applicable food--is but the lesser parent of another more malevolent entity. It is but a secondary punishment for his indolence compared to his lack of defenses against the downfall of the very thing that makes him a human being; the one thing that separates him from the lower organisms which he has to slay to gather nourishment. Morality is his only weapon against the terms 'savage'. 'barbarian' and 'animalistic', yet what is to stop him from losing this in itself? When the natural sound of the clamoring belly and the aching sense of greed kicks in, there is only human dignity to stop him from throwing away the values which keeps him human. There is only his shame, there is only his pride. Yet there exists the universal argument that even this cannot feed an empty stomach, so they are trampled and scattered to the wind, their former owners charging at the nearest valuable material which could be sold for food or worse, simply stolen for the sake of acquiring a token of earthly luxury that could pass out the miserable feeling of having nothing to possess, nothing to cherish. Nothing to ease a morose, bleak, uncertain life with. They are looked upon with disgust and hatred by those who consider themselves above them, and in turn they make true of the vile suspicions mounted against them. They rob, cheat, steal and harm those who wish them harm, for with nothing to lose but the battle of human arrogance and discrimination, they are given a go-signal to cast away everything else to gain acceptance; to survive. The paramount loss of these so-called lowly urchins is as follows: they most probably never cared enough to nurture their strengths--in every sense of the word--during the times when all was not too late, and nobody cares enough to help them see the road to perdition they are setting the future in before it was too late for their offspring in turn. There is only one way to forge a stronger commitment to principle and self-discipline, and this is through a proper and sufficient education. Not only in the intellectual sense which is the supreme requirement for a well-off career in life, but also in the educational process of growing a rigid conscience and a staunch belief in the sanctity of personal honor and virtue, which are the greatest supplications of man before his Creator and his society. Those who possess such arms are almost immovable to the rest of the world, for their legacies of right and lawful actions allow them to retain some light to shed against the inescapable sea of troubles that will always come with life. A little compassion from those who know better than their more unfortunate brothers and sisters in the lonely streets will always go a long way. Education doesn't simply mean educating by direct teaching; one can set an example even when away from direct sight. One does not have to necessarily experience material poverty to sink into moral poverty after all, so it only makes sense that one does not have to be morally poor to have a change of heart. Arming them with the right set of moral standards will make a tremendous difference in the way society revolves. With education, the balance of things will be set to motion, and the long-terrorizing nightmare that is our present will give way to better straits of calm. Education can alleviate poverty, and this will only come to be with sacrifice and compassion. |