A Lesson from The Dark Knight Rises

Ever since my first experience of volunteering as a teacher in an indigenous community in Guatemala in 2007, I have thought about the attitudes of those who face poverty in the developing world as compared to the attitudes of those who face poverty here.  Domestically, I was put off by people’s attitudes of entitlement and a general indifference towards wanting to change their circumstances.  In the developing world, I was moved by the children’s bright, beautiful smiles, their willingness to express love, and the happy demeanor that they carried themselves with despite their hard life.  When landslides wiped out many of the local families’ crops, I was moved by the community’s resilience to put one foot in front of another in order to carry on, as they looked to the future instead of the past.  Their eyes were not hollow with hopelessness, nor did they have an apathetic attitude toward their circumstances.

Domestically, I could not understand or accept the apathetic attitude that so many choose to have towards their situation.  Compared to the developing world, I felt that there were many more programs available to lift themselves out of poverty, yet many were choosing not to utilize those opportunities.  The developing world is still faced with trying to address extreme poverty (living on less than $1 a day), a lack of access to primary education, gender inequality (boys are more likely to be sent to school than girls), maternal and child mortality, and the widespread threat of diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria.  To a large degree, those issues have been addressed stateside.  As a result, the more I saw opportunity as being available stateside, the less empathy I had.  Unfortunately, with these views came a limited tolerance for attitudes of entitlement and apathy.  In short, my compassion was limited.

Fortunately, a particular scene in The Dark Knight Rises served as a catalyst for challenging my perspective and expanding my compassion.  In the movie, there is an underground prison with a well leading to the outside world that taunts the prisoners with the promise of escape.  Prisoners are even given a chance to scale the large cavity of the well in an attempt to escape, but legend has it only one person has ever made it out.  Every failed attempt serves to chip away at the prisoner’s hope of escape, eventually leading to its desired effect — a sense of hopelessness.  Once all hope of escape is exhausted despair consumes the prisoner’s soul.

This particular scene raised an important question for me.  Why had I witnessed resilience in the developing world, but attitudes of entitlement and apathy domestically?  In reflecting on this, I can see that the major difference in the two poverty pictures lies in the ability to meet basic needs.  Domestically, the basic needs are, fortunately, met through social programs but this is not the case in the developing world.  A lack of resilience in the developing world will lead to further suffering such as possible starvation, whereas a lack of resilience here will lead to an acceptable minimum.  So how does the acceptable minimum become well, acceptable?  What happens to the desire to move beyond the acceptable minimum?  In thinking about the underground prison in The Dark Knight Rises, I began to see how repeated failed attempts to move beyond the “acceptable minimum” could lead to apathy and hopelessness.  The additional opportunities that are available stateside work similarly to the goal of meeting the outside world in the underground prison.  They only serve as hope for so long, after which the repeated chipping away at hope will eventually lead to apathy.

Escaping domestic poverty or the “acceptable minimum” is a lot like trying to scale the well in the underground prison.  Much is stacked against the challenger.  That wall is comprised of unequal education, cultural attitudes of apathy and entitlement, gangs, drugs, teen pregnancy, less technical skills that only lead to low paying jobs with little to no advancement, debt, and cash checking services that charge exorbitant rates, to name a few.  It’s not that these factors do not exist in the developing world, it’s that our society has moved beyond the ability to provide jobs for those who have not advanced along with society’s development.  In the developing world there are still jobs that match the skills of the people who live there.

Dealing with poverty in a country with an economic engine as compared to a society without one presents a new set of hurdles.  Simply engaging in the economic engine is not enough.  To reap the benefits of the economic engine, you must be able to competitively participate in it.  Even though access to a basic education is available to all here, the quality of that education becomes the difference between being able to effectively participate in the economic engine or not.

In a country without an economic engine, implementing one makes a huge difference.  The mere participation creates change.  Microcredit (making small loans available to poor families) has successfully provided many small business opportunities in the developing world that have resulted in significant socioeconomic changes in the families that have benefited from these loans.  As an example, in the developing world, a family can purchase a cow with a microcredit loan of $150 and earn a significant living by selling the cow’s milk.  Domestically, this would never work, since highly efficient dairy farms already exist in the market.  Small business opportunities can still be used to break the cycle of poverty domestically, but it requires a much larger investment and the small business must be able to compete in the existing market.

Even though domestically we have closed the gaps in the disparities that are still being addressed in the developing world, a poverty cycle still exists.  It not only looks different from the one in the developing world, it also has another set of complexities…variables and implications that I had not previously considered.  The feeling of being overwhelmed by the immensity of the wall that must be scaled to escape domestic poverty is what I had overlooked.  I thought because an acceptable minimum was being provided that apathy shouldn’t be an acceptable reaction to the other opportunities that were available to better their circumstances.

Even though opportunities exist to scale the well, it in no way means that that path is easy.  It still requires discipline, perseverance, and most importantly, a belief in possibility.  I never considered what it must feel like to stand at the bottom of the well looking at the wall that must be scaled in order to reach the sunshine that shined down from above.  Instead, from my perspective, it was as if I was looking down into the well saying, “Hey, come on already.  I’m tired of waiting.  There’s a rope to help you along.  What’s the hold up?  Let’s go!”

I lived in the sunshine never having experienced the depths of the well and what it must do to one’s belief in possibility.  I unknowingly expected those who were experiencing life from the bottom of the well to make decisions as if they were already standing in the sunshine.  I expected them to make decisions from a place of hope, but hadn’t considered whether or not they were experiencing hope.  And when their decisions and attitudes were outside of the one’s I felt they should have, I lacked the necessary compassion to see how that could be.

Without trying to understand how their attitudes could have developed, I only saw them as their attitudes.  I couldn’t see the person behind the attitude.  Attitudes, beliefs, and opinions are illusions that separate us from seeing the person behind the attitude, belief, or opinion.

When we perceive the world through the illusion of separateness (as I had in this instance), we lose our ability to see the humanity in any situation.  This is a side effect of most beliefs, since they typically create an “us against them” mentality.  When we only see people as the beliefs, opinions, or attitudes that they hold or the circumstances that they are in, we fail to see the oneness that we share.  We are caught in the illusions of separateness that beliefs, opinion, attitudes, and circumstances create.  Compassion is only available to us when we see beyond those illusions.

When I blocked myself from trying to understand their attitude, I inadvertently created a barrier between myself and them.  I was caught in the illusion of separateness, which is always a culprit of ego.  Instead of being centered in spirit, where I could extend compassion, I was aligned with my ego.  Without compassion, I reflexively blamed them for not choosing to change their circumstances.  Without compassion, I justified my position by reasoning that they had plenty of opportunities available to change their circumstances.  In mentally creating a bubble of separateness, my compassion fell away.  All of this is reversible when we choose to see beyond separateness and connect to the oneness that we share.

As always, the journey continues….

Much love to all,

Shanna