Can we build a world without poverty?

Zsolt Hermann
2 min readJan 30, 2023

Question from the Internet:

“How would the world be different if there was no poverty?”

I think that we need to change the cause-and-effect relationship in your question asking: How does the world need to change so there would be no poverty?

In order to create a world without poverty, we would need to rebuild human relationships and the fabric of human society according to nature’s finely balanced and mutually integrated template.

Although we can usually not see or understand this, in nature’s fully integrated, life-creating, and life-nurturing system, each and every comprising particle fulfills a certain, crucially necessary role, and for it, they receive everything they need and deserve.

In nature, there is no surplus, there are no accidents, and each element and each action serves the overall balance and homeostasis that is the basis of life. And while it is difficult to see and understand it by looking at nature in general, when we examine our own biological body, and the systems and processes that sustain health and life, we can see how a living, integral system works and functions.

A living and integral system does not mean that all elements become the same; they all do the same things and receive the same reimbursement for it. In a living, integral system, each element has its own unique, irreplaceable function, and it receives for it justly and proportionately everything it needs to continue performing its crucially important, mutually complementing role and function in the most optimal way.

When we recognize that by default, we all exist and act like cancer, constantly doing and performing harmful and destructive actions as a result of our inherently egocentric, subjective, and individualistic nature, and we also build a desire and absolute need to change and further develop ourselves, then we will be able to build a “nature-like” human society with its “relative equality.”

And there will be no poverty, destructive conflicts, and devastating wars since we will all act only for the benefit of the whole system — above and against our inherent and instinctive nature and tendencies.

Our human advantage is reaching this state consciously, purposefully, and proactively working against our instinctive nature, developing a unique duality and contrast between our original and acquired nature and existence.

And it is specifically this duality and contrast that will make us “Human beings,” nature’s only conscious, integrated, and at the same time, independent observers and equal partners.

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Zsolt Hermann

I am a Hungarian-born Orthopedic surgeon presently living in New Zealand, with a profound interest in how mutually integrated living systems work.