advancement, or social accomplishment. If you were not able to finish
primary school, you have little chance of becoming rich without the
intervention of some divine being or through the auspices of “luck” (probably
via a lottery ticket, purchased with money better spent on food, education or
saved against a future illness). If your child is sick and you can’t afford
medical treatment, the only course open to you is that of some non-existent
supernatural agency, some local miracle cure, holy water, or bogus faith
healer. People will try anything when nothing else seems to work or is
available to them.
If I see some Mercedes pull up to a Thai temple, and the driver (or more
likely the person riding in the back) gets out and pays for some special
service or honor with the expectation that it will deliver to them some future
material benefit, I don’t feel like getting involved. They are advantaged
enough that they can probably afford such flights of fancy. No one at their
home is likely to go hungry because of this donation in hope of further
riches.
But it’s different when I see some poor farmer who probably doesn’t have a
book in his house, going to donate his hard-earned money. Now, I make a
distinction here between true charity and an attempt to buy some reward.
The most generous people I have ever met have been poor or less
advantaged themselves. Bill Gates may get lots of media credit, but for me
he is nothing compared to the poor family that takes in a neighbor’s children
when their parents die or are unable to provide for all their children.
Protecting the Poor
The poor are disproportionately victimized by religion, which all too often is
willing to ask for their last penny in exchange for the hope of future returns
in their afterlife. But it’s not just religion, it’s false healers, fortune tellers,
phony “cures” and holy water/relics/talismans. The list goes on and on. It’s
not limited to countryside quackery either, as you can see this sort of blatant
exploitation going on by just turning on an American television to some
Christian evangelical station. The poor, the ignorant, the deluded, the illinformed are being raped by these schemes consistently, continually, and
systematically. Often this occurs with the connivance of the State.
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