I feel that one of the greatest problems in the world is poverty. As a matter of fact I\’m living in poverty right now with no money and no hope. Poverty occurs when poor people don\’t have a job, and they can\’t get a job because all of those with power abuse their authority. Those in power remain in power and hold high positions because they hold others back from achieving their goals. I guess these authority figures are just greedy and want to stay rich until they die by the gun. Why must they oppress me and my friends and family? Why wont they just get off my back? Why must the law harass me and follow me around my neighborhood? Why must the officer have all the power? I guess the officer is a cruel and greedy person who would enjoy abusing his authority until his last breath.
Anyway the reason poverty exists is because the wealth in the world is not distributed equally. In fact America has most of the money while Africa has almost no money. It is sad that people die every day because others want to remain wealthy. I realize that money is important, but greed is a sin and many people are greedy, arrogant, untrustworthy, rotten individuals. I have a friend who is extremely poor and he has to sell drugs for a living. If he doesn\’t hustle then he doesn\’t eat. Sometimes I wish I had money to give to my impoverished friend, but I don\’t have enough money to survive myself. Not only do I feel that there is no hope for my friend, but there is a possibility that he could get arrested and serve time in jail. Jail is a very unhappy place there aren\’t enough beds to sleep on, so people fight, and in some cases shank one another for a comfortable place to sleep. In jail most of the criminals are victims of poverty and they hate their hopeless, wretched situations. Now I will present some facts about poverty, and I will attempt to solve the problem with my mind. There are over 33 million impoverished people in America, there are billions of impoverished people in the world. The American state with the highest poverty rate is Mississippi. In Mississippi there are no alley ways so you wont find bums living on the streets. Nor will you find hobos living in the woods. However you will find millions of trailer parks and shotgun houses all over Mississippi. The shotgun houses are inhabited by individuals who are extremely poor and can\’t afford to live comfortably. Some people from the slums become agitated, frustrated, and anxious because of their horrible predicament. This is why most criminals arise from impoverished neighborhoods. Feeling hopeless can cause people to take drastic measures such as robbing banks, selling dope, or even killing others. It turns out that most people in poverty are fatherless families headed by a woman. This is probably due to the fact that most men abandon their families after he has already promised to care for both his wife and his children. Also there is a psychological aspect behind this fact that could cause and endless cycle of poverty for children of a fatherless home. Men have a responsibility to provide both wisdom and competence to their children so that they can become more effective individuals in altering their surroundings for the better. However without the man a child’s level of competency, knowledge, and wisdom is not up to par; hence, the child may become frustrated and anxious. Not capable of being completely satisfied with themselves or their position in society these children may grow up to be angry, miserable, and unstable individuals. It seems that it is harder for them to cope with their situation, and they struggle to find their identities. So as anyone could see it would be easier for these individuals especially young men to resort to violence or other criminal activities. Although they understand why they feel anxious they can\’t seem to better their condition. Now this isn\’t as true for young women raised in fatherless homes as for young men, and I\’m sure anyone can understand why, but for those of you who don\’t let me explain. For a girl it is easier to find her identity from exposure to her mother. A young woman can surely model herself after her mother and find reissuement and a family headed by a woman. On the other hand a woman can\’t reassure a boy like a man could; a boy can\’t model himself after his mother nor can he find a masculine identity. Therefore the young man can choose to be as his mother is, or he can find his identity from other locations whether it be from his male friends, or as most of the time is the case, he can model himself after other young men in the streets. Fighting, selling drugs, shooting at people, drinking, getting smoked out, etc. Which as I\’ve already stated is usually the case, so most young men without fathers to raise them usually end up in jail, in poverty, or in the cemetery. Now don\’t get me wrong a strong woman can turn a boy into a successful man, but for that man to truly find himself it could take decades. It is also a psychological fact that a girl raised by her father, under normal circumstances, develops into an extraordinarily bright, resilient, and strong individual relative to women who were raised by and modeled themselves after their mothers. Anyway this is one of many reasons why poverty continues in our society.
Another one of the world\’s major problems is violence which is an attempt to harm someone either physically by force or emotionally by word of mouth. Some experts believe that violence is a basic human instinct; these experts feel that human beings are innately mean and somewhat savage. However I believe that humans only become violent when they feel a strong sense of frustration. Frustration of anxiety in any hopeless situation may cause someone to feel as if they will only feel better by hurting another person. Of course this person is usually somehow associated with the build up of frustration such as an impoverished mother who beats her child. Although it is not the child who is to blame for the mothers situation; the mother may feel as if the child is a factor causing her to remain in her impoverished state. Or the man who rapes women out of anger and sexual frustration; although, it is not the woman’s fault that the man is lacking sexual pleasure, the man still sees the woman as a cause for his frustration. A rapist may attempt to justify his crime by saying that the woman dressed to exotically for him not to want her, or her tone of speech implied sexuality. Now I am not implying that frustration justifies acts of violence, but that humans are not innately violent. I may be using a fallacy in making the this statement, but I don\’t believe that there is any solution to the problem of violence. This is mostly due to the fact that frustration is caused by stressors such as school, work, and marriage which are institutions that have been around since the beginning of time and I doubt that those institutions will be rejected anytime soon. Thus violence is imbedded in our society and it will be here for as long as humans exist. Although there is no sure way to rid the world of violence it can be reduced. One way to reduce violence would be to reduce the amount of stress caused by certain institutions such as school; some tasks which professors ask students to complete are extremely stressful. In Mr. Homans class for instance there are two thousand word blogs that must be typed on a weekly basis. Tasks such as these along with other pressures from both work and family place too much pressure on the students which causes a high rate of both violence and death amongst college students. I\’m just saying that maybe professors, supervisors, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends should attempt to reduce the pressures which they place on the people they work with and love. Moreover, frustrating situations are the number one causes of suicides in the world. Anyway all of these things cause violence and maybe the violence could be reduced with the help of authority figures. For instance I know a teacher who was assaulted by a group of students because he made them write two-hundred word journals every day of the week. Now I\’m not saying that I agree with what the students did, but I am saying that this violent act wouldn\’t have occurred if the teacher had just settled for maybe tw0 hundred words per week.
Another problem facing the world is that families are not functioning properly in order to produce stable effective individuals. In most families especially in America; the most important members of the family, the mother and father, are absent. Either the mother has to work sixty hours a week to support a fatherless family or she is a dead beat who doesn\’t care to communicate with her family at all. Also the family may be dysfunctional because the father assisted in starting the family but chose to abandon the family immediately after it was started. Another reason that families are without a mother or a father is because of divorce. Approximately fifty percent of all marriages in America end in divorce which leaves the family without one of its most important members. This may cause a distant relationship between the children and the absent parent. The child may be angry because he or she feels abandonment and frustration. Homes without parents produce individuals who feel as if they were never loved, or they feel as if they never truly had a home with a family. Even people with money who come from dysfunctional families feel as if they needed a family; they feel as if they would have been better off with a properly functioning family. Most criminals come from dysfunctional families and there reason or excuse, whatever you want to call it, for committing their crimes is because they felt lost. They felt as if there was never any guidance or anyone to direct them in the right direction. Although they know the difference between right and wrong they still can\’t act on this knowledge and do the right thing. I guess it\’s just easier for them to do the wrong thing because it\’s more fun and more interesting than always trying to be kind and courteous. It\’s just easier to be vicious or ruthless than kind and sincere. Maybe this is due to the fact that these individuals arising from dysfunctional families are angry or frustrated because they never had anyone to teach them to cope with the world. Also I believe that the world is a difficult place to live in if you never had anyone to show you how; not someone to simply tell you what to do but to show you how to do it. What I\’ve notice about dysfunctional families is that the children in them usually develop antisocial disorders such attention deficit hypertension disorder which makes it hard for them to efficiently communicate with people. About fifty percent of American citizens have antisocial disorders perhaps this is due to the fact that about fifty percent of American families are dysfunctional which in turn may be due to the fact that about fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. Fifty percent is a very large number and I wish there was something to be done to reduce it. However the factors that cause marriages to end may be linked to the large number of dysfunctional individuals who arise from dysfunctional families, but also the high divorce rate may be caused by the high number of dysfunctional families and their ability to cause antisocial behavior which will literally ruin a relationship.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2004 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Project Progress, Week 02: 3 Big Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.