Content Warning: Discussions of poverty, classism and colonialism; references to racism, addiction, homelessness and theft.

When you have everything but believe you have nothing.

Haunted by the spectre of scarcity.

Taking free things even when they are useless.

Hoarding, hoarding, hoarding.

Despite being very privileged, I do occasionally feel poverty gripping at my shoulders. It's a fairly unrealistic possibility: my father's work as a surgeon, barring any mishaps sent from above, is not as volatile as some other professions. All the same I worry about the possibility of it sneaking up on me, that debilitating and dehumanising condition the rich tend to valorise as a circumstance which builds character. I've seen it manifest in people from all walks of life, though primarily those who come from ex-colonies such as my native Singapore. It's a bizarre thing to have one's behaviour dictated by a logic so pervasive and sinister as that of poverty. Not even the state of precarity, but its possibility. Collectively we are frightened of having nothing, being worthless and dying out on the streets. Poverty is treated as disgusting as disease, justified as the result of a lack of individual effort or sheer grit on the part of the homeless, addicted, workaholics and immigrants.

A term I find fascinating is that of “social calculus”, where any decision made by the individual on an everyday basis consists of a million different operations, variables, emotions, all weighed against each other. A decision is made once the analysis of effort, personal satisfaction, and impact is assessed, done in a fraction of a second. In a world where numbers are essential to measuring human value, where financial stability can be obtained by blind faith in an ethic of individual hard work, social calculus must become second nature.

What does poverty mentality look like? It’s going to a buffet and stuffing your face with the meat, because it’s the most expensive item. Taking as many cans of free soft drinks because someone else might snatch them and then you’ll miss out, regardless of whether or not you’ll actually drink those drinks. It’s thinking about whether you have money to spend on a bit of food despite the fact you’re hungry. There’s a decent chunk in your bank account, but there’s no way you’re paying $25 for a carbonara—it just isn’t worth that much. 

From Marx to David Graeber to Caitlin Zaloom, there is a fascination amongst anthropologists and social theorists regarding the ways people make decisions to survive. A person is measured in terms of value and capital: We speak of human capital, social capital. What values does this relationship bring me, we ask. What's the tradeoff between one school or another, this job or another? What are the risks? Can I afford to spend this much money? Where can this activity take me? What sort of value do my friends provide? And on and on and on.

Poverty mentality becomes important because it is a means to material accumulation. Marx says original accumulation is grounded in violence and exploitation to obtain profit. This was achieved by the expropriation and dispossession of the masses. Furthering the mode of accumulation requires finding more people to oppress and exploit: typically those who are poorer, “inferior”, “uncivilised”, “barbaric”. Under neoliberal capitalism, the self becomes a project, shouldering the sole burden for its status in life, historical baggage be damned. Survival is a struggle to produce goods so the rich can thrive. Poverty is inevitably tied with racial struggles: a dependence on the poor’s desperation to see the sun rise another day. This desperation seeps into the soil of culture, giving rise to fruit bitter with anxiety, worry, and uncertainty. Even the privileged are affected: They believe only through consistent growth can scarcity be alleviated. Ecological and social struggles are unimportant: only insofar as profit increases can the lives and well-being of those in the Global South be justified.

Poverty mentality occurs in a world teeming with the death-force of institutional violence. It is action rooted in fear. We are motivated by a world of affluence, and understand that without struggle we lose not only material comforts but our right to survive. Constant work and hustle are the collective individual expression, a declaration to everyone that your life has as much meaning as the next guy’s. Access to clean air, food, water, and an environment free from violence should not be reserved for the rich. Everyone deserves it. In a world where there is so much, it’s incredibly silly to let people starve.

What’s my solution? I don’t have one.

Although Coles and Woolies have been quite chummy with Palantir lately–unrelated, but it would be interesting to see a bunch of people cleaning out and distributing staples, vegetables and water to impoverished neighbourhoods. Perhaps they could enter en masse, grabbing everything and peacefully making their way out. Or maybe someone could use one of those heavy-duty tapes or superglue to plaster over the cameras used to collect consumer data.

An incredibly compelling hypothetical experiment.

The bottom line is fear of obsolescence on the part of those afflicted with poverty mentality. We can be free from fear if we change the way we think about who’s really harmed in the world we live in today.

Art by Sabine Pentecost