Does Poverty Make People Cruel?

Plans for a widely productive Sunday afternoon have devolved into a five-hour nap.  So, in the interests of encouraging procrastination everywhere, some of the most interesting links from the past week:

- My global health co-blogger Alanna Shaikh has a fascinating post on her blog Blood and Milk, looking at the question of whether poverty makes people cruel.  Alanna, as always, takes the argument in expected directions:

"It seems impossible to argue that poverty leads to cruel things. Not really an interesting or disputed point. The real question, I suppose, is whether wealth also leads to cruelty."

- A thought-provoking post on Wronging Rights about whether it's ever appropriate for foreign citizens, governments or international institutions to intervene overseas.  According to Amanda:

"[W]e start from the assumption that we have the ability to intervene, and that therefore we must lack the willingness to do so...

I'm inclined to think that the explanantion is simpler: that we prefer to believe that the United States (or NATO, or the U.N. Security Council, or the E.U.) is callous than to believe that it is weak. The callousness theory is comforting, in a way, because we get to preserve our own personal sense of superiority. (Sure, those hard-hearts up in DC won't intervene, but if it was up to me, then I sure as hell would.) Even more importantly, it means that we can preserve the comforting narrative of our own omnipotence, and therefore our own safety. Weakness is altogether scarier."

I couldn't agree more.  (Cue any number of debates about, say, peace and justice in Darfur.)  That said, please also see the response by my genocide co-blogger Michelle, who writes:

"Ultimately, we do not know the limits of possible interventions until we push against them, nor do will know the unintended consequences until they slap us in the face."

- Harry Rud has a rather disturbing piece about US soldiers proselytizing in Afghanistan.

- Can you guess which country had the largest number of new internally-displaced persons in 2008?  Hint - it wasn't Congo, or Pakistan, or Sri Lanka, or Sudan.

- Finally, the Red Cross just launched the Our World, Your Move campaign - according to the Red Cross:

"The 'Our world. Your move.' campaign is a call to action. Our world faces unprecedented challenges, ranging from conflict and mass displacement to climate change, migration and a global financial crisis. We have a collective responsibility to make our world a better place. It's up to each of us, as individuals, to make a move and do something to help others. Young or old, we can all make a difference."

Everyone who wants to do something should certainly check it out.

[Street children punished in Cambodia for attempting to steal fruit - Photo from www.danwhite.org]