Poverty

"The mother of revolution and crime is poverty" [Aristotle] Do you agree?



Aristotle once said, "The mother of revolution and crime is poverty."

This is true to some extend. As it is not wrong to agree that poverty can cause people to commit crimes and revolution. Poverty is the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor; indigence. This state can be fuel for crime and revolution, however it is also wrong to attribute all crimes and revolutions to poverty.

Revolution as a cause of poverty can happen when poverty causes anger and frustration. Often, people get caught in a poverty cycle, as they have little money to invest in education or business that would help them out of the cycle. Thus they see the rich getting richer, while they are getting poorer. Soon they would feel discontent and unjustly treated. This feeling could cause them to rise up to a leader with a common goal. Take the 1911 Revolution in China for example, 90% of the population were poor peasants, being treated as worthless by the middle classes and their landlords. The government did little to help, and there were regions where many peasants literally starved to death. This cause them to become increasingly discontented about their situation in life and thus they gave their support to extremist groups instead of the government, paving way for a revolution. It is the lack of food, shelter, medicine, and other necessities that causes discontent. And as the saying goes, a hungry man is an angry man. Soon it would be easy that a simply rallying such people, provoking them, and it can turn into a riot, and with leadership, revolution.

Poverty can also cause crime. As poverty deprive one of their basic necessities and so a survival instinct kicks in. the person even left with a last option to rob or steal to get his basic necessities, would probably use it to keep his survival. A person can also commit a crime to support his love ones and his family. To them it is an attractive option as; crime can pay well and fast. A poor man with a dying daughter, who needs an operation, is highly probable of committing a crime to get the money for the operation.
Another reason why poverty can cause crimes can also be the lack of education for the children. In poor families, there is no money for a child to be sent to school. As such could spend his time roaming the street and mixing around with bad company. It is worst when both parents are working to support the family and there is no one to watch the child. A child grown up in an unhealthy environment with a lack of education has wrong values that can drive him to committing crimes.

However, not all revolution is caused by poverty. Revolution can be cause a number of other factors. Such include a hunger for power, a want to spread new ideology, discriminations, discontent with the government. Usually in a revolution, there are many factors that cause it to start and cause it to be successful. Looking back at the same example, the 1911 Revolution in China. Another reason for the revolution was the discontent of the middle class, they were deeply unhappy with the way the country was run and felt it was backward and inefficient. Also corruptions persist making it hard for someone to succeed on merit. Thus the middle class waited for a chance to rid China of its inefficient ruling family. As such, poverty may not be the sole reason for all revolution.

Similarly, not all crime is caused by poverty. Just by looking at the cases of the police, it can be known that not just poor people commit crimes. Celebrity criminals include, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Ryan O'Neal and many many more, these people are far from poor, and still they commit crimes. There can be many other reasons for crimes. Crimes can be cause by rage, and in folly. Crime can be committed by people addicted for its trill. A rich man who probably can afford more then 50 of the item he stole probably stole it for the trill or the fun of it, just for the feeling. That same feeling is addictive enough to make him do it again and again, till he gets caught. Others commit crimes out of love; crimes of passion. Also, crimes such as consuming drugs, drink driving, rape, child abuse, sexual assaults, are crimes hard to be associated with poverty. Drugs and alcohol are probably one of the last few things a poor man would spend his money on unless he is already addicted to them. As such, crime cannot be totally attributed to poverty.

"The mother of revolution and crime is poverty." true to a certain extend. With knowing what poverty can cause, the issue now should be how to help those in poverty and what can society do to solve it.