HUNGER and POVERTY. What Should Be Done?
Poverty and Hunger. Facts and Figures
Today’s consumerist world is a world of discrimination, abuse of human rights, and extreme hardships for billions of people. Most of them are located in different parts of the world and lack access to essential life necessities. Today’s society is facing such acute problems as hunger, poverty, economic and humanitarian crises, and a disastrous problem of food shortage. The reality of the achievements in recent decades of human civilization is presented beautifully only in international reports and declarations, but the numbers indicate something different.
The world is facing an acute food shortage. Do you know that every year more than 9 million people die of hunger and related diseases? Despite the real picture of human survival, the public is led to believe that modern organizations supposedly succeed in fighting hunger and poverty. Despite the reports and official international statements that these problems are being addressed, they are not really being resolved. On the contrary, statistics of the last decade show a disappointing progression.
According to the United Nations data, the number of hungry people in the world increased by more than 60 million in the five years from 2014 to 2019. According to the World Health Organisation, the number of hungry people exceeded 820 million (that’s one in every nine people in the world) between 2017 and 2018. The situation worsened dramatically in 2020-2021 when the world faced the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has had extremely negative socio-economic consequences worldwide. Public worldwide is experiencing a global economic crisis, closures of a huge number of businesses, large-scale job losses as well as many other related problems. Poverty and hunger rates have skyrocketed.
As far as the food crisis is concerned, the situation is more dire in the regions of Africa and Asia, especially where hostilities are taking place. Military conflicts have been accompanied by a great deal of destruction. Urban infrastructure, including drinking water and food storage facilities (such as markets and farms), have often been destroyed, worsening the already dismal situation of local people.
A great number of people are becoming refugees, either from war or the effects of global climate change. They have to endure the need for shelter, quality food, and medical care. Many people these days have nothing to eat, and many have nowhere to live for a variety of reasons. Not only are people left to themselves in a consumerist format, but they are also deprived of any conditions and opportunities for a stable and secure life. In this “age of progress,” in our “era of modernity,” the billions of inhabitants of planet Earth have no one and nowhere to expect help from. A society of consumption and self-enrichment is dominated by the laws of the animal world and not the Human one, as should be the case in a civilized society.
But what about humanitarian aid, charitable foundations, international food programs, and the like? Various organizations have prescribed plans to gradually reduce the number of hungry people, but their implementation, for various reasons, has been prolonged over the course of decades. Funds that are officially allocated to solve these problems have no impact and, what’s even worse, most of them do not reach their destinations. In a consumerist format dominated by self-interest, there is widespread corruption, bureaucracy, and embezzlement.
In other words, no one really wants to eradicate hunger and poverty completely. In the international reports, we find only statements about moving in the right direction without any concrete information; statements about the need to find more effective measures, about the importance of a more detailed analysis of the problems, which should certainly help society in the future to move towards solving these problems. However, in the same reports, we find many “reasons” why there is no improvement within a given timeframe and why the situation is deteriorating contrary to officially expected results. In reality, the deteriorating situation is due to one single reason which affects the global human factor of existence — the consumerist format of relationships that has dominated the world for the last 6,000 years.
The consumerist format creates conditions for the presence of hungry, poor, and needy people in society. Until society itself changes its vector of development from an inhumane consumeristic to a creative one, with the prevalence of such values as humanity, mutual respect, kindness, and caring for others, no other attempts will be able to fully eliminate hunger, poverty, and other problems of today’s society. The absence of needy and sick people is impossible in a world of hierarchical exaltation, domination, division into rich and poor because in such a society there is no room for the most important thing — the value of human life, equality and freedom for everyone.
In the consumerist world, it is customary to remain silent about the real survival of citizens in one or another country. In the media, certain information is presented according to the generally dominant policy of action and opinion, selectively promoting only certain information from a certain perspective and presenting a facade of much “more important” issues than just providing for the basic needs of the population. No one voices the real poverty figures. The fact that the cause of disease and death from hunger is not always the lack of food itself, but often the lack of means for people to buy it, is also not made public. External image, reputation, and international opinion are far more valuable than people’s lives. In many countries, citizens are forced to eat the food of very poor quality, which subsequently causes them to suffer from various diseases. The value of human life does not come first, nor is it prevalent and fundamental in today’s society. However humane the laws on human rights and freedoms proclaimed on paper can be, they do not find their practical implementation in a consumerist world dominated by an egoistic mindset.
We trumpet about technological progress, scientific breakthroughs, military progress (the latest weapons, and so on), but we cannot cope with poverty and hunger. Competition under the consumerist format takes place from the vantage of who is cooler, who has newer weapons and faster technology, who has more influence, meaning, power, but not who has fewer hungry and more healthy people. Hunger statistics are perceived by many today as numbers, but behind these numbers are the lives of real people who are involuntarily caught up in an artificially created struggle for existence. Worse yet, in a consumerist format, no one is safe from being among them tomorrow.
Population reduction
In this context, it is worth noting another important factor which has been observed and actively advertised for decades. According to popular opinion, the main cause of hunger and lack of clean drinking water is allegedly the demographic situation. The factor of increasing world population worries many states, governments, and public organizations. The world is allegedly approaching too high a number of people on the planet. More and more often, we hear statements that an even greater demographic crisis awaits humankind in the near future. This is explained by the fact that unrestrained growth of population leads to an excessive burden on nature and depletion of its resources.
Popularization of such hypotheses leads the public to conclusions that if we do not decrease population today, in the near future its unlimited growth will lead to a depletion of the planet’s resources, deterioration of environment and, consequently, world hunger and a total shortage of food. The emphasis for the public is placed on survival, on the fear of death, which prompts many people to agree with such theories without delving into the problem or studying it. In reality, a speculation on this subject goes on in order to justify and cover up the inhumane activity directed against the lives of millions of people, and this is inherent in today’s consumerist anti-human world.
There are cases where the causes of famine are quite natural and independent of human activity (for example, weather events that affect crops or sudden natural disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, floods, and so on). But even then, if people lived in a Creative Society, this problem would be easily solved through the aid of other more prosperous regions because in the Creative Society, the value of any person’s life and unity of society is of paramount importance.
In the consumerist world, the waging of various armed conflicts artificially created most of the precedents for food shortages and exacerbated the food crisis in certain regions, to the point, that most of these regions are still among the leaders in the number of hungry people in the world today. As we can see, population growth is disadvantageous certainly not because of the declared environmental problems, but the reason lies globally in the inhumane consumerist format of relationships. After all, when division in society and ignoble animal qualities are promoted and the tyranny of consumerist ideology is the dictator, this clearly leads to hostility, armed conflicts, and wars, which are actually the causes of many other problems in society.
Roots of corruption
The consumerist format forces the poor to turn to illegal actions as their last resort to survive. Basically, this is how crime and conflict arise in most cases. People below the poverty line are excluded from the social system of the state even in countries that are better off in terms of the economy, and in many respects such people are included only in commodity production. Those are people who have no tomorrow, who have no guarantee of a future, who have no guarantee even of a piece of bread. They have no choice but to go against the law since the law has not taken care of them. The actual crime, however, is allowing hunger in human civilization because it is a gross violation of human rights: a neglect of human life.
Humanity is one family
It’s in the nature of human beings to coexist peacefully. Any divisions and conflicts are not inherent to us. But if society is hungry, if it is in need of something, it will do anything to survive. This is how many armed conflicts, uprisings, and wars arise — in search of a better life. That is, hunger and poverty are a tool for controlling the masses. At a certain moment, a hungry destitute crowd can easily be provoked and steered in a desired direction to implement someone’s plans. And this is done by drawing a relevant image of an external enemy for people beforehand.
As a matter of fact, hunger and poverty are artificially created phenomena, given the abundance of resources that our world actually has. With the resources we have on our planet, we simply cannot have poor and hungry people, and especially with the modern scientific and technological breakthrough. Right now, our humanity already has all capacities to provide every inhabitant of the planet with anything they need! We could have already been living in prosperity and stability. But our society, raised in a consumerist selfish format of relationships, lacks the most important thing: unity in society and the fundamental value of human life.
The understanding of the importance of global unity has been artificially erased among us, and one human family has been divided. Instead of caring for one another, mutual assistance and respect, there is promotion of self-enrichment, hostility, division, hatred, and domination. At the same time, everyone observes the reality around them and realizes that today’s society is in desperate need of radical change. Everyone wants to live in a better world. It is already obvious to everyone that with this course of events and preservation of the consumerist format, the human community is heading for its imminent destruction. Many people are ready to act now, but they do not yet see an alternative in the dead end of the consumerist format. But there is an alternative! There is a way out!
Creative Society is the only way out!
Today, all over the world, a unique, unprecedented unification of people for the purpose of building the Creative Society is taking place. The idea of building a Creative Society was born as a result of an all people’s initiative and their desire to live differently! It is the only way to finally solve all the accumulated problems. It is the only way to protect our children!
Building the Creative Society is a need of all people of the world as an opportunity to get rid of all troubles and burdens of the consumerist format of relationships. This noble universal dream can only be achieved peacefully through unification of humankind around the common goal of building the Creative Society and a subsequent prevailing consent of the majority of the world’s population.
8 foundations of the Creative Society
The 8 foundations of the Creative Society represent a complex of necessary basics that reveal the fundamental principles of the Creative Society. The fundamental framework is the value of human life. The 8 foundations of the Creative Society determine what the future of everyone’s dream will be like and, in particular, how a joint solution of many social issues, such as hunger, poverty, high morbidity and crises, will actually be possible.
The very concept of poverty is such an economic condition under which an individual is unable to satisfy his or her minimal needs indispensable for living, maintaining health or a working ability. Such a phenomenon is alien for a normal healthy well-developed society. In the Creative Society, one of the primary tasks will be to eliminate poverty and hunger as well as to ensure global food security.
Main focus is a Human. Main quality is humaneness
In the Creative Society, conditions will be formed aimed at improving the quality of every person’s life instead of enriching separate individuals. By the right of birth, every person will be guaranteed free provision of all basic vital needs. The main focus of activity in all spheres of society will be a Human Being. The Creative Society is a human-oriented society in practice, with care for each person.
High moral qualities such as humaneness, conscience, mutual assistance, and kindness will be popularized, creating a favourable ground for life. This simple truth is really the most reliable guideline in construction of a happy and safe society. The very ideology of the Creative Society levels inequality, eliminates poverty, and liquidates hardships. In the Creative Society, peaceful and safe life, stability, full-fledged development of every Personality, and confidence in tomorrow will be an unshakeable reality for every person.
Decent remuneration for labour
Development of science, healthcare, technology and other fields will be aimed at development of the entire society, at improvement of safe and comfortable existence for every person. Stable planned economy and equivalent distribution of resources all over the world will eliminate an emergence of crises and inflation and enable society’s stable and rapid economic development. The quality of life will be equally high across the world. Every product in the market will have an equally fixed price throughout the world, affordable to everyone. Price increase will be impermissible; only price decrease will be possible. As for salaries, remuneration at any position and for any occupation will be consistent and equally fixed around the world. Regarding salaries paid to people, the situation will be the opposite when it comes to prices: only salary increase is permissible, while salary decrease is out of the question. Nobody will be in need of anything.
In the consumerist format of relationships in society, world resources belong to a minority. Perhaps, there have remained no things in the world that we don’t pay for in the consumer society. We pay (sometimes unimaginable amounts) for water, heat, even air, and for many other resources that are abundant on our planet and should actually be accessible to people absolutely for free. In the Creative Society, all resources will belong to society, and not to some entity, individual, group, organization, and so on.
Society’s safety
Such notions as war, crime, military conflicts, and violence will be intolerable in the Creative Society. A transgressor will be responsible to the entire society for creating any precedents of encroaching on safety, health or life of another person. But in reality, that very crime will simply be impossible in the Creative Society. And this will be due to elimination of human need and solution of problems having to do with that very hunger.
Many deprived people when committing illegal actions are not fully aware of what they do because hunger and poverty push them to do it. Complete and final resolution of the issues of hunger and poverty in the whole society eliminates a corresponding motive in citizens, which provokes them to violate the law. Today as never before we have a chance to build a society where the notion of crime will fall away because it is unnecessary and brings no benefit. Why would you go and steal, rob or kill if your life is wonderful and you have everything? Moreover, how can you act wrongfully against your friends or your family? The Creative Society is a society of friends. Building the Creative Society for all of us signifies the return of our once lost home and restoration of one united family named humanity.
Self-governance
An important distinction of the Creative Society structure from the form of any other social order is the presence of self-governance in society, the absence of power of a few over the majority, and the presence of responsibility. Every citizen will be able to take an active part in the life of society and in important public decisions equally with everyone else. Hierarchical structures will be abolished. Responsibility for society will lie on every person. This very basis of equality will make it possible to create an honest and transparent society and will eliminate corruption and abuse of official powers. The entire society will control every unit, every sphere and all essential public matters. Accordingly, whoever occupies any responsible positions, his or her activity in this position will be transparent before the whole society.
The impossibility for certain individuals to exalt themselves in the Creative Society will eliminate deception and manipulation over the majority of people and their right of choice. The Creative Society with the presence of civil control is in the interests of every person who wants once and for all to finish with lies, corruption, deception and stealing of public funds, which take place nowadays in the shady hidden processes of the consumerist format.
Informing
Many caring people from around the world are already uniting to build the Creative Society. Every day, this movement of people of goodwill who care, who are ready to act and take an active part in the destiny of humanity, increases manifold. The Creative Society is already being built, and it is the immeasurable merit of everyone who does not stand by idly.
Modern technologies allow us to accelerate and improve the process of people’s interaction around the world, the process of unification and consolidation, to quickly implement the first stage in building the Creative Society — the stage of notification. Notification of society is precisely what is extremely important now. Everyone is thirsty for change, most are ready to act, but not everyone is yet aware of the real possibility of building a different society. It depends on each of us how quickly all of humanity will learn about it!
The idea of the Creative Society is one of a kind. No past attempts in the history of the last 6,000 years to change society and improve people’s lives can compare to the idea of building the Creative Society. Those attempts cannot implement what is the most basic and paramount for building a happy society, namely, to fully satisfy the needs of each individual, to ensure equal conditions, and to prevent the delegation of power to the hands of a few. The Creative Society is our need, it is our salvation! It is indeed the only way out for humanity.
As long as we, each of us, are inactive, hundreds of millions of people each year are at a risk of exhaustion. Unless we build the Creative Society, there will be starvation, poverty, and related diseases, as well as abandoned children and people who nobody cares about, hunger, wars, crises and devastation, and eventually, the world will come to an end. There will be no stability and no prosperity under a consumerist format. The guarantee of our future is the Creative Society!
Our future is now
Do we want a world free of hunger, war, poverty, and diseases so that our children do not die? We certainly do! That is the kind of world everyone dreams of. Do we want full social provision of all our basic needs by right of birth? We do! We are tired of consumerist slave labor, tired of living in fear, of being a perpetual debtor and slave of the consumerist swamp. We want to be free! Do we want to build the Creative Society where we and our children will be safe? Of course, we do! This is the desire of every caring parent and everyone who is not indifferent to their own destiny and the destiny of humanity. So what are we waiting for? What today sounds like a fairy tale, may become our reality tomorrow, if we want it. We are given the information we need! Our power is in unity! Our goal is the Creative Society! Our future is in our hands!
It is now when people wake up and when they realize that it is time to take matters into their own hands, that there is no time left for inaction, it is now that everyone can join in building the Creative Society and support the universal desire to follow the path toward a new world of freedom and love for humanity. This is the time to fulfill our inner need to live, to create, and to unite. This is the only way we can survive! Right now everything depends on!
Alex Friedman
