(ML) Why Are Some People Better Off Than Others?

I didn't know that people referred to poverty as a sign of otherness. Is that really so in a country where majority of the population falls under the poverty line?

Though, frankly, from the list given in David Gordon's indicators of poverty and hunger, I don't think I could go without some of these things. It's really amazing how other people persist. If I think that I'd be living half a life without all these leisure things like music and movies, what more food, the source and nearness of safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health care, adequate shelter, privileged education, information through both media and communication, and access to services?


Another thing I had never heard of before was Giorgio Agamben's concept of zoe and bios. Zoe, apparently, is bare life where moral and political standings are disregarded for mere survival. Those who live the "bare life" or zoe are simply bodies and are excluded from the higher aims of the state except to have their lives transformed to Bios. The Bios though or those living a "qualified life" are considered as citizens (political beings).

The concept was a little bit confusing for me, because I never knew there to be such classifications for people. If you fall below the poverty line, you're not involved in the political arena? It doesn't quite make sense to me yet.


About the activity during class where we were asked to choose, if we could, in which country we would like to be born, I chose Japan or Britain. It's not that I don't like that I was born in the Philippines, but because being born into a country seems so arbitrary to me in today's world. It seems like living in a country only has to do with learning and growing up with the culture and language. Because aside from simply the experience and the accent, everything else can practically be picked up from the internet.