Meow

Last night I saw a cat limping down the street, one paw held limp at its side. All I wanted to do was help it, take it home, heal it, feed it, make it better. My emotional response was so strong that I could physically feel my mood deteriorate as I watched the cat disappear into the darkness. But I wasn’t compelled enough to do anything other than stand passively and watch. I thought to myself, “There are millions of cats like this on the streets, why should I take care of this one? I can’t respond to all of the suffering I see. I’ll run out of time and money!”

3.5 billion years ago, when life first emerged out of the primordial ooze, Earth provided all the necessities to foster growth. A competition for resources began and continued existence was the grand prize. Each stage of the continuous competition required adaptation and increasing sophistication in order to capture limited resources better than all other organisms. Soon, organisms began to consume each other in order to procure the steady supply of energy necessary to sustain their living processes. A beautiful yet harsh process of adaptation, competition, and death created the incredible variety of plants, animals, insects and more that populate the earth today. Humans survived through intellect. The ability to plan, communicate, use tools, and act as a community all contributed to the endurance of our species. But as we grew in size, we began to compete amongst ourselves.

Today we distribute resources through an economy, and money serves as a certificate for the right to a percentage of resources. We are living in an age of excess. More than a third of Americans are obese¹. At the same time, 870 million people were severely undernourished in between 2010 and 2012². Some humans are clearly winning the resource battle, and others are not. But what benefit is it to gorge yourself in response to excess availability? Drastically disproportionate levels of accumulation within humanity don’t appear to be contributing to the continuation of our species. Yet our drive to gather more wins out over the opportunity to lend a hand to fellow man. This drive has a distinct evolutionary origin, but it is not impossible to rationalize away.

The same night I saw the injured cat, I saw a homeless man rifling through a trash bin in search of cans and bottles. I see this everyday actually. The first time I saw it I reacted in a fashion similar to my poignant response to the suffering cat. But overtime I have become to numb to the spectacle. How demeaning is that? I barely even notice a fellow human who has been reduced to rummaging around in waste, collecting bottles worth less than a dime. My perception of the inevitable stratification of society effectively absolves me of all responsibility to assist a man who is visibly suffering right in front of me. Still, my indifference robs him of his humanity. Am I responsible? Are we responsible? My answer is yes. I am complicit to the system which actively contributes to the degradation of portions of society. Yes, society is complex, but so are rocket ships. I believe that the human faculties of compassion and ingenuity can combine to rework society in a way which doesn’t not condemn billions to poverty and suffering. We can help each other out. Unfortunately, it is against our nature.

¹ CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) 2010

² United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization 2012

Hello, World!

A friend might describe me as an average student from an average family living an average life in sunny Southern California. Yet, from another perspective I am one the happiest, most privileged, wealthy and well-educated individuals in the world. The many barriers between me and the rest of the world have created an illusion of normalcy which conceals the relative opulence I live in. Coming to terms with my own ignorance to the disparity in living conditions in my own backyard has inspired me to dig deeper into the concept of inequality and its greater implications.  

After entering college dead-set on becoming a doctor, a class I took in my first semester opened my eyes to the potential for impact the field of global health offers. Since then I have invested my energies into understanding the field of global health and acquiring the tools I believe to be necessary for impact. I am studying Global Health and Mathematics/Economics. Professionally, I am interested in Health Metrics and Evaluation, particularly in developing settings. I am optimistic about the future, but plagued by the lingering fear that human suffering is intrinsic to human existence. Incredible economic growth over the past century has drastically improved standards of living though out the world. Innovations in health and technology have completely shifted the outlook for the future of mankind. Nevertheless, people die of starvation every year. Can humanity eradicate the most basic causes of human suffering while maintaining acceptable standards of living for the rich world? If this is possible, would the necessary ethical shift slow down human progress at the frontier of innovation? Is human satisfaction a zero-sum game in which one man's happiness necessitates another man's suffering? These are questions which frame my future professional pursuits, and therefore an analytical look at existing critical thought on this topic is of great interest to me.  

While I am by no means an expert in economics, wealth distribution, or life satisfaction, my education has provided me with a basic literacy to understand and synthesize useful information. I hope to focus my passion about the topic into productive critical thought. I am an optimist and so my posts will often take a positive viewpoint when possible. Despite this caveat, I am not afraid of conceding to harsh conclusions given proper justification. The value of this blog will not be derived from my personal expertise, but rather from my open-minded approach to a topic of genuine interest to me.  

I have developed a cursory framework for my future posts and will present it now in order to preview for my readers what they are in for if they choose to continue reading. First, I would like to look at inequality and resource distribution from an evolutionary perspective. The history of life on earth has been a constant competition for limited resources and a refinement processing rewarding the best with the ultimate prize of continued existence. By addressing the origins of resource competition, I hope to partially justify our inherent desire to accumulate, sometimes beyond logic.  

Then I will discuss some of the measures of inequality and how different countries stack up and now and in the past. Next, I will highlight some of the political systems which attempt to address the issue of wealth distribution, both current and historical. I want to continue on by looking at how different theologies address inequality and the ethical backing they give to particular responses to privilege. I would then like to see how levels on inequality affecting health and life satisfaction in different countries. By down this I hope to key into whether or not minimizing inequality is important for raising overall life satisfaction.  

Finally I would like to write about different social movements like the occupy movement or the Basic Income Guarantee concept to radically redistributing wealth. I believe understanding these ideas helps to understand what possible steps forward may be, and whether the world is prepared to make what may be necessary changes for the goodness of all.  

By the end of it all, I hope that both myself and my readers have a more informed opinion on whether life is a zero-sum game or whether rising waters raise all ships. I'm hoping for the latter!