Brad Pitt is One Fine Hunk

But he has a bit to learn about the way the world operates.

In an hour long interview with Diane Sawyer last year (7 June 2005), Pitt nobly tried to draw attention, as others have before him, to the plight of the impoverished people of Africa. He made the statement that, if we tried, we could wipe out poverty in our lifetime.

I agree with him--all poverty, not just Africa’s. What I think he doesn’t understand is that not everybody thinks that’s a good idea.
World history shows that the powerful marauders and explorers and conquistadors who braved and tamed and conquered Earth did so looking for land and wealth. The people they found inhabiting the places they “discovered,” or claimed, often became slaves--laborers and servants--of the triumphant. The people’s property was duly appropriated.

Even the Nazis confiscated the valuables of the Jews, and others, they exterminated--to the point of removing teeth containing gold. Healthy Jews were of course put to work.

For these practices to be carried out requires the perception that there is a type, or types, of people who are unworthy to participate in the pursuit of happiness, if you will. People unworthy of proper food, proper shelter, a fair living. Disposable people. People worthy only of doing the dirty work of the people who are “worthy.”

The key word is “perception.” The “worthy” people are, more often than not, just like the “unworthy,” with a bit more luck, or strength (as in brute strength) or inherited wealth. People, over time, have banded together, joined forces, created treaties in order to attack and overthrow and oppress the “others.”

If they didn’t do this, they would have no one to do the undesirable work of living: the trash collecting, the ditch digging, the emptying of the chamber pot. To avoid doing this work themselves, they need an “underclass.” To avoid feeling guilty about using others to do their dirty work, they must deem them unworthy.

To do away with poverty would put everyone on a more equal footing. To actually pay members of the underclass what they’re worth would be to acknowledge that they are worthy. If the poor could actually make fair and decent livings, who would do the dirty work? Who would fight the wars?

Thomas Jefferson, and other founders of America’s governmental system, tried to build equal “worthiness” into its constitution. They envisioned an educated self-sufficient population, with members who did their own dirty work, or at least respected the people who did it for them. As these men were also slaveowners, I realize they had some bugs in their “vision!” In fact, that makes my argument somewhat stronger--these men had the best of intentions, and couldn’t pull it off.

And the America they created becomes increasingly stratified: the wealthy get wealthier, the poor get poorer.

So, I applaud Pitt’s efforts, and understand how meeting the children he met, and learning their stories, in his words, “broke his heart.” It breaks my heart. I can’t imagine watching my children bloat with starvation, flies feasting on the pus in their eyes. I just think the issues are bigger than he realizes, and the answers more complicated.

Until he convinces the upper class to do its own dirty work (I wonder who swishes his toilets . . . .), or to pay a truly living wage to have it done, there will continue to be oppression and poverty.

Christ Himself said the poor would always be with us. Christ understood that the issues were too big for even Him. He also understood that the poor and oppressed were not unworthy. He told them to be glad they were poor--that they would inherit the Earth.

I think what he meant was: it is morally and ethically better to be oppressed than to be an oppressor. Though this is little comfort, I’m sure, to those watching flies feed in the corners of their baby’s eyes.