Agency and Wealth

[Meadowchik]

23 hours ago, smac97 said:

I'm suggesting that "poverty" and "wealth" and other descriptors are fairly relative.  Most Americans living in "poverty" today have a higher standard of living than Rockefeller and Carnegie did a hundred years ago.  By almost every metric.

Sure, and imagine the conditions of the impoverished of their time.

So while I do agree that we are incredibly fortunate in many ways even compared to kings of old, and this does have impact on morality and the choices we are able to make, take a snapshot of any time period: the relatively impoverished of the given time tend to have less opportunities and the relatively wealthy of that given time tend to have more opportunities.

[Meadowchik]

19 hours ago, Storm Rider said:

Is poverty severely limiting spiritually or are you talking about something else? It appears you are making the spiritual accomplishments to be secondary to other things. 

I think all types of things can be a spiritual accomplishment. Essentially, our physical, material, and mental well being is interelated.

[Meadowchik]

18 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

I don't think I totally agree with that concept. Of course you are "forcing" me to indulge in a bit of philosophy, which I do very poorly since my brain is wired more for the concrete than the abstract. It is true that wealth opens up more opportunities to do good (or evil) on a greater scale than those in impoverished conditions. However, I believe that the comments that Jesus made about the widow and her mite may find an application in this case. Say a man with a four wheel drive vehicle goes around pulling people out of floods, etc. after a hurricane on a Saturday when he does not have to work. Then compare that to a farmer in a third world country who takes a day off his farm to help a neighbor that had been flooded out. Is this an apt comparison?

Glenn (By the way, I have had a few people note that the concrete of which I speak in my brain may be found throughout my head and not in the abstract.)

 

Hey, funny guy !  I actually know a Glenn who has done just that: gone out with his Hummer after a natural disaster to help others. He and the farmer both have resources to help others. The widow and her mite, as significant as they are to her and in God's eyes, are not going to pull people out of floods. But mostly, for example, one who eats only one meal a day and cannot read or recieve medical attention will tend to have less choices and opportunities. 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Meadowchik

[CV75]

On 10/1/2019 at 3:07 AM, Meadowchik said:

I wrote this a few years ago and still agree with it:

This morning I came across a notion that the poor have a better chance at learning wisdom and love because of their economic and social position.

I would like to respond to that idea and welcome your thoughts:

As much as the idea of the noble, happy poor is appealing to me and as much as I hope for the happiness of the vast majority of the world's population living in relative poverty, I think the idea that having no social or material capital helps us misses the fundamentals.

On the contrary, it is agency that opportunes us to choose wisdom and love, and in many cases poverty has a strong inverse relationship with agency.

Think about the majority of impoverished globally, who wash their own clothes by hand: what happens to the mother who can use a machine? She has more time, her family has more time. Maybe she can read and then change her world with what she reads.

Before she has a machine she has less choice and after she has a washing machine she has more choices. She now has to trade off less of material advantages and necessities if she chooses to spend time reading, to herself or anyone else.

Thus material advantages allow a person the chance to make more decisions, to exercise power in more ways, for good or bad. And the fruitful exercise of agency produced more opportunities for fruit-bearing agency.

In other words, without agency, the righteous exercise of power--or in other words, virtue--is impossible.

I believe that Christ would expect us to love "the least" because, in part, He would want all of us to experience opportunities of power and thus develop virtuous personal qualities grown from righteous exercise of power, virtues by virtue of virtue.

We can choose to be humble, or we can be compelled (in this case by poverty). And sometimes we still fail at humility as we face either!

I think the physical/temporal and the spiritual/eternal are intrinsically connected. It is only because we came into a physical/temporal world from a spiritual/eternal world through a veil of forgetfulness that we tend to separate them. But the light of Christ is always with us, no matter how little or much we have in the way of eco-physical survival, sufficiency, well-being, surplus and excess. So at a minimum thankfully we can draw upon that for exercising even a "quantum" of agency in any circumstance.

I think it was Brigham Young who said that hungry people have less wherewithal to attend to the Gospel, Zion and their requirements (ordinances, discipleship, work, service and giving) which would otherwise free them, an so we need to help them overcome their obstacles. So for me, the parable of the widow's mite is so poignant (but possible).

Edited October 2, 2019 by CV75

[Meadowchik]

7 minutes ago, CV75 said:

We can choose to be humble, or we can be compelled (in this case by poverty). And sometimes we still fail at humility as we face either!

I think the physical/temporal and the spiritual/eternal are intrinsically connected. It is only because we came into a physical/temporal world from a spiritual/eternal world through a veil of forgetfulness that we tend to separate them. But the light of Christ is always with us, no matter how little or much we have in the way of eco-physical survival, sufficiency, well-being, surplus and excess. So at a minimum thankfully we can draw upon that for exercising even a "quantum" of agency in any circumstance.

I think it was Brigham Young who said that hungry people have less wherewithal to attend to the Gospel, Zion and their requirements (ordinances, discipleship, work, service and giving) which would otherwise free them, an so we need to help them overcome their obstacles. So for me, the parable of the widow's mite is so poignant (but possible).

Yes, even a quantum of agency is better than none! What I am saying is that more quantums of agency are better than one!

[Glenn101]

28 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Hey, funny guy !  I actually know a Glenn who has done just that: gone out with his Hummer after a natural disaster to help others. He and the farmer both have resources to help others. The widow and her mite, as significant as they are to her and in God's eyes, are not going to pull people out of floods. But mostly, for example, one who eats only one meal a day and cannot read or recieve medical attention will tend to have less choices and opportunities. 

I agree with what you are saying, again, to a point, but it seems that you are equating opportunity and resources to do good with moral agency or at least with affecting moral agency. There is no doubt that a person with more wealth and resources will be able to do some good things that a person with extremely limited resources will be able to do, but not necessarily more good things. I have known a lot of impoverished people that yet spent the parts of their lives that I was acquainted with doing things for other people.  My understanding of moral agency is that it is something that comes from the heart and it is what is in your heart that is the beginning basis. That is why people like Alvin Smith will be in the Celestial Kingdom. Or, am I missing your point?

[Storm Rider]

5 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

I think all types of things can be a spiritual accomplishment. Essentially, our physical, material, and mental well being is interelated.

And it all depends on which is most important; what or which has priority. My grandmother lived in a sun-bleached wood house that you could see through the cracks between the exterior wall and the floor. She was the very definition of a woman raised in poverty all her life. No one would ever accuse her of being unhappy. She could read and write; raised nine children to adulthood and lost one in their teenage years. She read her bible and the newspaper, but I cannot say I ever saw her read a book of any kind. She outlived all three husbands and died at 96. 

All of here children and grandchildren adored her. I cannot think of another woman I respect more or think can even touch the hem of her dress except with deep humility. I have known far more educated women, but not a single one that was a better Christian than her. I don't know if she ever set foot in an LDS chapel or meeting, but her faith in God was rock solid and she taught that faith to her children and grandchildren. 

She was a culinary wizard in the kitchen. Her cupboards could be bare and yet she could cook up a dinner to feed a crowd and not a single one leave hungry. She knew more about canning fruits and vegetables than most will ever know. 

Her poverty was a fact of mortal life, but did not affect her faith in God. I suspect that most feminists would condemn her for not being such a great mother and having her accomplishments found in running a household, raising children, and in her faith in God. The world is a poorer place without her and those like her.

Wealth and the benefits of wealth could have just as easily destroyed her given the condemnation of wealth found in scripture. We will never know; what we know is that she ran a good race and she finished it well. 

Edited October 3, 2019 by Storm Rider