Most of us see the poor as lazy.  “They don’t work,” comes the quick response from most of us.  “They lie around all day and smoke and think of women,” said one missionary.  We don’t see other causes for their plight.  We don’t see the repression of the poor built into every society.  The very structure of most societies eliminates most people from advancing within them.  Much is required that isn’t easy to acquire in order to advance.  And so throughout the world we see a mass of humanity that resembles the slow movement of a glacier, or perhaps the vision of swimmer struggling to move in molasses.  And everywhere they die like common flies.

We all read about their plight.  Many of us want to help.  So we make a contribution to some charity that we believe is “doing some good.”  And our conscience is cleared.  Or is it?

The ‘molasses’ that prevents the majority from advancing is the social structure created by those in governance.  The laws and institutions - including the courts and police - of society govern it so tightly that only those taught how to penetrate its thick skin can advance.  The knowledge required is made difficult to acquire as well.  Most of us who’ve tried to gain the knowledge to advance, who come from middle and lower class families, have run up some serious debt - trying to get through college - and still find the going tough after we’ve got our degree.  What’s going on here?

It’s as if there is an invisible field that excludes most people from advancing.  Something even beyond knowledge seems to be required to advance.  What becomes clear as we dig beneath the surface is that we need connections - ideally preexisting connections - to those who govern - to those in power - to those who influence those who govern - if we’re to advance in society.  The old hack, “It’s not what you know, but who you know” is becoming more evident by the month.  

The Poor Are Being Punished By God

In his book The Culture of Make Believe, Derrick Jensen writes, “The famous minister Henry Ward Beecher, who accepted money from the Northern Pacific Railroad Company to preach the good railroad’s virtues, once said, ‘God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little’ (reminiscent of Leona Helmsley’s famous saying ‘Only the little people pay taxes’).  Low wages were not a problem to the workingman, said Beecher, because ‘the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live.’  The immensely popular Baptist minister, Russell H. Conwell, was even more vociferous, traveling the country (America) giving a lecture, entitled, ‘Success was an outward sign of inward grace.’  He told his flock, ‘I say that you ought to be rich, and it is your duty to get rich...[T]o make money honestly is to preach the gospel...The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community.’  When asked whether he sympathized with the poor, he replied, ‘To sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins, thus to help him when God would still continue a just punishment, is to do wrong, no doubt about it, and we do that more than we help those who are deserving...Let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings...It’s all wrong to be poor, anyhow.’”

And so the molasses thickens each day for the poor - because they’re being punished by God for their sins.  Sadly, most of us, deep down, accept these notions.  Most of us do nothing.  We don’t even want to think about it.  

So far, I’ve had zero interest in financing my idea to bring sanitation to a small group - say 5,000-7,000 people - using our Packit Toilet kit along with enough toilet supplies to last 90-120 days - as a field test in a real situation.  I want to gather data - in many forms, including video - that will prove beyond any doubt that a modest investment of this sort will cut down the overall costs of sustaining people in emergency conditions - dramatically.  Sanitation is THE key.  Sanitation is the foundation of civilization.  Not institutions, not food supply, not education, not science, not any of the things you’ve read about, but sanitation is the core element of civilization.  

As the Third World increases in population, the problem of sanitation grows as well.  But it doesn’t grow 2, 4, 6, 8, 10.  It grows exponentially - 2, 4, 8, 32, 256, etc.  As more and more people get sick, the WHOLE WORLD gets sicker - including the rich.  The rich hide behind high fences, but that doesn’t prevent bacteria and viruses from infecting them.  Sickness spreads insidiously.  Unseen.  Ask any doctor: are there places on earth to hide out?  He or she will tell you those places are shrinking on the same exponential track as the sicknesses of the poor escalate.  Soon, we could have a massive pandemic outbreak of something that could take out a large percentage of the world’s population.  We have conveniently forgotten the typhoid and cholera epidemics that killed so many immigrants after they arrived in America.  

Surely our idea makes sense to someone out there.  We again appeal for some group, some organization, some individual, to step forward and be willing to finance this sanitation test.  Jack Sim, of the World Toilet Organization, said his organization would like to be involved in the selection of the site at which the test would be conducted.  Perhaps they would also be able to provide the necessary people on the ground to gather the scientific data we seek.  Again, we want to prove that our Packit Toilet kit - which can be delivered in case-lots quickly to any emergency site - is THE quick-fix sanitation solution for any of such emergencies.  And that once the sanitation crisis is solved, people are very resilient regarding water, food, medicines, etc.   Those interested in this program should contact Mark at 360-597-4522 (PST 9am to 6pm) for full details.