Mostly the various elements of Kakosynaisthima have to do with materiel which are invented by the self. I have heard it said that anger for instance, is not really an emotion but a reaction to a set of circumstances. I am not sure that I agree with this as as emotions are invented by the self, they are also very much the product of choice and will. I think that it is more likely that an emotion might very well be the product to circumstances' multiplier and the will's quotient.
However Poverty is not necessarily a product of the materiel which are invented by the self. Someone who is currently living in a state of poverty could very well have been once in possession of a large estate and then degraded and dwindled it down, but equally another person may just have been unfortunate in the lottery of life. We can no more blame someone for being born a girl, or a slave, or for being born in a colonised or occupied nation, or being born into any other particular time and space in history, any more than we can praise the son of a merchant banker who in control of the affairs of millions of dollarpounds for having being born into such circumstance. Yet those who have won the lottery of life often act as though they are entirely self-made.
One of the unfortunate consequences of living in a society which has been awash with very tory ideas based in nothing more than raw mercantilism but masquerading in the language of efficiency for about two and a half centuries, is that many people actually absorb and then believe the messages that they are told, despite the evidence of their own eyes and the circumstances which they find themselves. There is a pervasive belief for instance that people are poor because of something that they have done. Even scratch this notion beyond the surface even just a little bit, and you soon discover that people exchange the truth for a lie all too easily if it happens to fit their own selfish narrative for their own ends; which incidentally is one of the cornerstones that economic though happens to sit upon.
Are people really always poor because of something that they have done? Can you really blame a child for being born into one family or another? Is there any example ever in history of an unborn person having a choice of being born as a child pauper or a billionaire? What of the systems which people are born into? Does classism, sexism, racism, nationalism, really mean nothing? Why is it that the rich choose to send their children to private schools, and then wrong the neck of the state to subsidise that private exclusionary choice, if not to perpetuate advantage and maintain a kind of economic apartheid between classes?
As for the notion of work itself, is that really true? How come someone working their guts out cleaning toilets might earn $70,000 per year, while a three million dollar chunk of money on deposit at 3% earns $90,000 per year? Is there really a moral argument to be made that a person renting and paying money for the privilege of living in a house works less than the person who owns that same house and collects that rent as well as accrues the benefit of that same house appreciating in capital value?
Perhaps one of the reasons why people who control money and power need to keep society awash with the idea of meritocracy is that if the great masses of people awoke from their dream and realised what was and is happening to them, then things would change pretty quickly. This is also why people who control money and power hate the idea of democracy. Democracy, that is rule by the demos, runs counter to the whole kosmos of retaining and controlling money and power. In their eyes if the right people no not have power, then the wrong people do.
Let us abandon the notion at this point that poverty is purely caused by the person in question, because while it is certainly true that people are sometimes profligate, or self-destructive, or unwise, or wastrels, or spendthrifts, the awful unspoken truth is that for the vast majority of human history except for a brief period which the French call les trente gloriuses, the rewards due to capital thanks to compound interest, the general principle of wealth condensation, and active measures to protect wealth and money like taxation measures, poverty is mostly the result of mass collateral damage by the rich and powerful.
Even if we admit all of the above as just causes for poverty, including the sometimes unwise and destructive nature of the people in question, then surely the mere existence of poverty demands a response, no? If there is to be found any telos in poverty at all, then there are two immediate perspectives that need to be considered: namely from the standpoint of the person in that state, and the standpoint of someone who is an observer.
Firstly, from the standpoint of the person experiencing poverty, it is awful. Depending on how impoverished someone is, the list of things forgone and not bought, is run through the matrix of necessity and affordability. Very big items such as house ownership, new car ownership, the quality of holidays, et cetera, all disappear. Depending on the level of poverty, increasingly smaller luxury items are struck off. Even things such as new clothing and nice food are struck off. Maybe things such as car ownership will be struck off.
Further down the line, the list of which bills need to be paid immediately become a priority. It is reasonable to think that things like rent, electric, water, gas, telephony are going to be progressively cut back through domestic economies, but there still is a tipping point when even those things are struck off too.
One of the ironies about being in a period of poverty is that it is actually more expensive than it would be otherwise. Quite apart from the fact that poorer people in an effort to gain some kind of immediate happiness in spite our their reduced state tends to create a sense of hyperbolic discounting, the very fact that one does not have access to a large amount of money means that buying things in larger amounts which is more efficient, is unavailable. In a broad sense, this also very much helps to explain why people who are renting somewhere to live get trapped in renting from other people. With arguably the biggest ticket item in someone's life being perpetually struck off, it only leaves a place for the economic vampires of the world. No wonder it is fun for people who derive their income by being tory vampires, to blame poorer people for making bad choices; especially in the light that the choice was never available to be made.
Of course as more and more things are struck off, then this infringes upon one's ability to be connected with a group of friends and peers. It is more likely that a poorer person is more likely to either have fewer friends and/or become increasingly isolated. Perhaps the biggest blow to someone's happiness and well-being is not the loss of stuff, but the loss of friends.
While there is some degree of sympathy from others, a poorer person is more likely to cut themselves off from others. We can merely observe someone else's pain and suffering but to live through it, also imposes a degree of almost responsibility to not share it. There is sort of an implied or imagines perception that whatever malaise someone is suffering from, is at least part way contagious. Probably a great deal of the reason why people who control money and power want to make sure that their children do not associate with poorer children, and deliberately design systems such that private advantage is maintained by to sending their children to private schools, is that the real or imagined fear is that their children might accidentally catch poverty as though it were contagious. While that imagined state of catching poverty is almost certainly not real, the idea that if you can dream it you can be it, is still very very powerful.
In the immediate kosmos, someone who either through deliberate choice or because of active shunning is cut off from other people, has a very real need for validation and community also cut off. Poverty has a nasty way of firstly depriving one of the things that make life nice, then tolerable, then necessary, and as it first steals away one's standing, it then takes away one's pride, one's self worth, and perhaps drains away someone's soul. To go through that and experience that, is awful.
However, there are those people who through reasons of self-discipline, of spiritualism, of asceticism et cetera, who take on poverty as a thing to be cultivated. This is a way in part an attempt to tame and train the beast which shouts "I" at the heart of the kosmos, by deliberately depriving it of the "yummy, yummy, yummy". If there is a telos to this, it is to teach that one can be content despite the circumstance, though beyond that I am not entirely sure what kind of special revelation is necessarily transferrable to anyone else. Certainly various monks and nuns and other kinds of positions in various religious orders have all arrived at similar conclusions as to what poverty can teach and what its telos means. Perhaps it is really only when the "yummy, yummy, yummy" has been removed that people are forced to face and decide what actually is important.
Secondly, from the standpoint of someone who is an observer of the person experiencing poverty, it is possibly sad. 'Possibly' is the opposite word because watching someone else suffer, might not actually illicit any kind of response at all from the observer. There may be sadness and sympathy and/or empathy which forces to the observer to act, or there may be apathy which forces to the observer to do nothing and maybe invisibalise the the person experiencing poverty, or there may be antipathy which forces to the observer to act with contempt and revulsion.
There is an asymmetry between pleasure and pain; likewise the reaction prompted by observing someone else going through pleasure and pain is also asymmetrical. The beast which shouts "I" at the heart of the kosmos, which wants to bring closer the "yummy, yummy, yummy" and push away that which is "not yummy", when encountering the person experiencing poverty, has either met with a circumstance demanding an exercise of humanity or met with a circumstance which internally demands a defensive position against the circumstance.
It is really easy to sympathise with someone who is pleasant and going through something pleasurable because we hope that the "yummy, yummy, yummy" brushes off on us. It is harder to sympathise with someone who is not pleasant and going through something painful because we do not want that which is defective and broken infecting us. Observing someone else experiencing poverty, quite apart from the circumstances which caused that state, including those circumstances which are in no way under the control of the person in question, is in face cause for people inventing defensive strategies and coping mechanisms to keep poverty away; which itself are causes for further kakosynaisthima in that person.
A response of sympathy from someone who observes someone else going through poverty, first assumes that that observer takes at very least, the assumption that the person suffering is in fact a person. A reaction of apathy mostly implies that the other person has lesser or zero value. A reaction of antipathy, which occasions contempt and revulsion, is evidence that the observer considers that the other person has value of less than zero. Those assumptions that another person has value of less than zero, are often caused by conditioning and continuation of classism, sexism, racism, nationalism, et cetera. The practice of antipathy actively solidifies that assumption and then puts action behind it.
As for the question of the observer who watches someone else going through poverty, you would hope that they at least make some kind of effort to alleviate or improve the situation. The actual solution to poverty is a systemic one; via larger persons corporate in community and commonwealth. Of course the biggest person corporate is that of the state; which is why the best person to actually change the systems which create poverty in the first place is the state. While there is a case to be made for charitable organisations, the truth remains that even the biggest of charitable organisations is still only really a private corporate person who is working against other private corporate persons who also act according to the same rules as individuals, but magnified. Corporations very much either act with apathy towards poverty, or active antipathy if there is profit to be made in creating a sense of contempt and revulsion in the general public. One only needs to see the terms used like "dole bludgers", or how the word "welfare" is demonised, by profit-driven corporate persons; when the word "welfare" in every given sense is to do with the well-being and care of people.
If there is anything to be gained by questioning whether or not there is any telos at all to poverty, then as the person going through it a sense of gratitude for what one does have, and perhaps even a sense of jealousy if it results in self-improvement might very well be in order. As someone who observes someone else going through poverty, then I would hope that their sense of empathy at least compels them to either change the system as best as they can to try and make it fairer, or to be generous with what they have.
