I’m Brazilian. My mother comes from one of the poorest regions of the country and grew up in a family with other 12 siblings under a dollar a day. My father is the son of a wealthy farmer and quit school when he was 14. I was born when my parents were teens. My dad worked in my grandfather’s farm as a peon and my mother was a housewife. We lived in the poorest hovel I ever entered in my life. It stood beside a ravine, and if you climbed up from there, a breathtaking field would stretch out before you, rolling on until meeting the shadows of a dark forest I’ve never dared to enter. On the top of this ravine, stood a lonely tree, where I’d sometimes see my lonely dad leaning against, watching the sunset over the empty fields, the air clear and cold. I wasn’t welcome to approach him when he was there, but it’s one of the most beautifully melancholic and old memories I have.

The only therapist I ever had, many years later said, excited about her own insight, how my early life story sounded like a Dostoevsky novel - she was either very sadistic or never read Crime and Punishment. Poverty is one of the most devastating conditions that someone can be subjugated with. I’m not denying that vice and violence are terrible but this post is about poverty.

We were poor and we continued to be poor for a long time. If it wasn’t for all the help my parents received from my wealthy grandparents and Brazilian’s social wealthfare systems I wouldn’t be writing this today. I could be dead because I was a sickly child and needed private health care, or because my parents didn’t have enough money to afford rent and buy food, or because I would have had to live in dangerous neighborhood in my town where I’d risk getting shot every day, or, or, or…

For the past couple of months, I had the privilege to travel. I was accepted in a fellowship that brought me to Bangalore, India. Being a fan of psytrance festivals I was excited to check Goa before heading to my final destination. I was aprehensive about the poverty I would find in India, but nothing prepared me for how widespread it was. Goa is the richest state of the country because all the rich tourists want to go there for the beautiful beaches and the psytrance scene. I couldn’t enjoy nature nor connect with people.

I was reminded all the time about the effects of poverty in so many of those people’s lives and how devastating and unfair it is.

Bangalore was no different. The stark contrast between an airport that reminisce Babylon’s Hanging Gardens and the tarps spread out on the ground at the edge of the highway selling wild caught fish from the nearby polluted river where untreated sewage falls. The gated communities with lawns covered in grass in a semi-arid climate and the hundreds of people lying on the street on the ground. The events in high luxury condominiums and the dirt roads right in front of them.

I know poverty, but I think I know a different kind of poverty.

I can’t speak the language of the poorest people, I could only talk to people in the tourism sector. I suffered violence, I thought a man was going to hit me, I suffered verbal abuse when alone in restaurants, stores and in the street. People lied to me and took advantage of my ignorance and goodwill. I have never had a worse time while traveling before.

I know poverty, but I think I know a different kind of poverty.

In Brazil, I know all cultures. Because I came from a humble background but also had access to wealth and education I can be perfectly charming. I understand everything. I have family there, I have friends. I know what to say to the old lady living in the countryside and to the rich strolling in the local cultural center. I know where it’s safe to go and what are the areas I should avoid. I know how to trust.

I’ve never experienced a divide so wide between Western and Eastern cultures. Emotionally, I feel disconnected and tired. There’s so much suffering, far beyond being threatened or cat-called. It’s so overwhelming. I think I’m a bad person.

But it’s alright, because rationally, I know what to think.

India: if the Uttar Pradesh region was a country, it would have the highest rates of death in infancy in the world.

India: has the second highest rate of economy inequality in the world.

India: 45% of its population live under 3.65$ a day and 22% are under the poverty line.

I think poverty has to be dealt with rationally. I don’t mean rationally as Le Corbusier’s or Lenin’s rational modernist state-building machines, nor as Effective Altruism’s long-termist ideas of nurturing billionaires and the future human-galactic empire. I mean that emotions are of no help when dealing with the strange, the unspeakable, the untouchable, the ones you don’t even think of. It’s too overwhelming, too sad, too scary, too complicated.

Let me be exact: I thought I knew poverty, but I know Brazilian poverty. In India, I’m deaf, I’m mute and I have no memory. Still one can be rational about it. India needs help. Institutions like Give Directly will donate 90% of your money to people they’ve identified need the most. Give well does a lot of research on how to spend your money the most effective way to save the most amount of lives possible. R.I.C.E institutes a program in Uttar Pradesh that saves newborn infants lives.