Poverty

September 18, 2013

Our Socrates Café has had very interesting questions so far, but today there was a really interesting question that came up and the first comment to it got everybody talking about their opinions on the subject. The question was “What would you change in Guatemala and how?”. The first answer to this question was poverty, and this is when everyone got fired up and we had a very interesting dialogue about the poverty in Guatemala. Not only did we state various questions on the topic, but we also tried to give our solution to the problem.

We all know about the poverty of Guatemala, but what is interesting about this subject is that there are many obstacles that are keeping the situation here from improving.  We were all perplexed at why the poor don't just start acting to get themselves out of poverty and improve their life. So as a group we decided to make a list of those obstacles, and these are the ones we came up with:

• ·      The known quality of the Guatemalans of being lazy.
• ·      Most of the people who are poor and who live secluded from the rest don't know anything else.
• ·      There is a lack of education.
• ·      A mercantilist market, full of monopoly. This prevents small companies from getting a chance at creating a business.
• ·      The values of the people.
• ·      Thinking that taking away from the rich and giving to the poor will help their condition.
• ·      Talking in a holistic way.
• ·      A lack of purpose and want to work.

Personally, I think it is because of the lack of education that most people have in this country. But I have thought this over many times and I am not able to find the source of this problem. Most people think it is the governments fault, and it might as well be; I’m not sparing them the blame because they are a great reason why people aren’t educated. We all know that the government doesn't provide sufficient and good education to the people. But I also think that part of the problem is the people, who don't want an education. I known of many examples when communities have been provided with education (not governmental) and people still don't want education, because they would rather work or do something else. So at the end, I don't know whose fault it is, but I do think that education is a big reason why the country wont more forward.

Well, at the end of our dialogue we al decided that the best way to start solving this is by starting with ourselves and then giving the tools to other people. We should all start by applying the values of respect and responsibility in our life and also trying to be less mediocre. If we start, maybe the rest will follow.

This is a very controversial subject which we are all aware of, given the country that we live in. I liked talking about it here with my classmates because we all respected each others opinion, even though most of us had our own idea of the causes of poverty and its solutions.