What the poor do with our statistics

We have been living in the country of the lollipop for more than 20 years.

Telling us about the world in such a way that it seemed that it was heading inevitably towards the end of poverty.

And along the way, although in the caboose, the poor of the planet accompanied us in silence hoping that, due to the inertia of the economic locomotive, they would also end up arriving, with some casualties, this is inevitable, to the white sand coasts of that promised land.

And how did we convince ourselves of this?

Well, very easy, we build statistics.

Let's confess it: there is nothing that puts us more to the intellectuals of the civilized world than an erect graph that points inevitably towards infinity.

So, data in hand, we spread the good news so that the world reinterprets its miseries according to our data: “Extreme poverty has fallen by 36% in the last 20 years”, “A poor person in Europe today lives better than the Sun King in the 17th century”, proclaimed some of us puffed up with pride at the unintended achievements obtained from our databases.

As if the poor of the planet cared how a king of France lived or how many wretches share his fate.

Well, in the world today, according to a new Oxfam report,

I've always wondered what this data is for.

To understand the world no, of course.

If this were the case, the indicator of extreme poverty would have disappeared on day one after the strange invention of Martin Ravallion, who never defended its relevance as a valid indicator to measure it.

So what for?

Nietzsche would tell us that to build a truth.

And he would ask us then: who benefits from that truth?

Not the poor, of course.

And I am not talking about the almost one billion people who cannot buy even a kilo of rice a day (we call this extreme poverty), but about the billions of people who perceive that their lives are simply not worth living. .

For the rich, however, it generates peace of mind and ends up softening the conscience of those who are likely to want to bring about change: it thus contributes

and fix a linear image of development as if it were a succession of events that follow the only possible path.

Keep waiting, poor people on the planet, your time will come!

Understanding this dichotomy between the perception of injustice and reality is key if we want to understand why those from below support the Lepen, the Bolsonaros, the Castillos or the Abascals on duty...

If the privilege of the upper classes manifests itself in anything, it is in the possibility of understanding the world through science.

Comfort is what it has: it allows us to dedicate time to understand what surrounds us and seek explanations for any dissonance that we find around us.

The rest cannot afford it: they must interpret their truth on the basis of their own reality.

“In returning to things themselves”, as Husserl would say, detaching himself from scientific analyzes of reality and focusing on lived experience.

And you do not know how difficult it is to understand a reality of the world that completely contrasts with that life experience.

Or yes, the “where are the poor” of the lucid counselor for social affairs of the Community of Madrid still resonates.

Not even statistics are useful when we live in the Barrio de Salamanca.

And in that return to things themselves, poverty substantially changes its costume.

Because today, despite the fact that the world is much better off than it was a hundred years ago, despite the fact that extreme poverty has fallen steadily for two decades (and is now on the rise), despite the

gods insisting on showing us how the world is heading irremediably towards utopia, the truth is that never in the history of humanity was there a time when the poor felt so poor and the vulnerable felt their grievances so solidly.

For proof, another fact: according to the European survey on quality of life, the greater the perception of inequality, the less satisfaction with your life.

Being poor, again, is a comparative perception.

And this is of crucial importance when it comes to understanding the current panorama of polarization in which we live: while those at the top try to convince the world of a Cartesian and scientific vision of reality (which curiously coincides squarely with their vital experience ), those below explain it through their perceptions and day-to-day experiences.

And poverty, my friends, adheres to the skin until it merges with it.

And the perception of injustice increases with each gesture, with each small discrimination felt, until it degenerates into anger.

, the

, the

or the

on duty.

Reactions against an

that continues to speak for itself, while the rest of the world is almost literally starving.

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