Poverty: An Existential-Humanist Perspective

Poverty & Public Policy www.psocommons.org/ppp

Vol. 2: Iss. 4 Article 6 (2010)

Poverty: An Existential-Humanist Perspective

John Dixon, Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics, and Strategic Research

Abstract

Being in a state of material poverty can be a persistent or an episodic experience that can be life-threatening, life-restricting, or life-disempowering. When combined with being socially excluded, marginalized, or disadvantaged, it qualifies those in this dual state for membership of the underclass. They are seen, variously, as de-motivated free-riders, social deviants, disempowered victims, or human beings enduring the challenge of human existence in a life devoid of meaning. The contribution of existential humanism to the poverty discourse is, essentially, the proposition that everyone needs the existential freedom to search for self-identity, thus making it possible to achieve psychological potential. From this perspective, it is incumbent upon those who design and deliver public social welfare provision to concentrate on enhancing the existential human condition of long-term able-bodied welfare recipients. This can be achieved by building their capacity and motivation to begin, or further, the search for their authentic selves, and by encouraging and championing those who are willing and able to take responsibility for the direction their lives are taking.

Keywords: poverty, underclass, social welfare, humanism, existentialism

Author Notes: John Dixon, as well as being Poverty and Public Policy's Editor-At-Large, is the Dean and Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Administration, College of Social Sciences, Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research, Almaty, Kazahkstan.

Recommended Citation: Dixon, John (2010) “Poverty: An Existential-Humanist Perspective,” Poverty & Public Policy: Vol. 2: Iss. 4, Article 6. DOI: 10.2202/1944-2858.1048 http://www.psocommons.org/ppp/vol2/iss4/art6

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© 2010 Policy Studies Organization

Fundamentally, what is offensive about poverty, and why it

matters so much, is that poor people are unable to maintain a

degree of control over their own lives by the exercise of choice.1

Being in a state of material poverty—being without adequate income2—can be a persistent or an episodic experience.3 It can be an experience that is life-threatening—the lack of the means needed for physical survival (absolute poverty); life-restricting—the lack of the means needed to permit social participation (relative poverty); or life-disempowering—the poverty-induced state of mind that manifests as a lack of will to take control of life (existential poverty). This life-disempowering state of mind occurs when there is a coincidence of being in or near persistent material poverty with being socially disempowered as a result of being socially excluded, socially marginalized, or socially disadvantaged. Those in this dual state, as long-term, able-bodied welfare recipients, qualify for membership of the societal manifestation of existential poverty—the underclass.4

The objectives of this paper are four-fold. The first is to explicate the social philosophical underpinnings of existential humanism as a social science paradigm, so as to facilitate, secondly, the exploration of the existential-humanist perspective on the human condition that informs, thirdly, its perspective on existential poverty manifesting as the underclass. The final objective is to identify the challenges that existential humanism offers those engaged in the design and delivery of public social welfare programs.

1 Stewart MacPherson and Richard Silburn, “The Meaning and Measurement of Poverty,” in Poverty: A Persistent Global Reality, eds. John Dixon and David Macarov (London: Routledge, 1998), 3. 2 MacPherson and Silburn, “The Meaning and Measurement of Poverty,” 1-19. 3 John Dixon and David Macarov, eds., Poverty: A Persistent Global Reality (London: Routledge, 1998). 4 Ken Auletta, The Underclass (New York: Random House, 1982).

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Poverty & Public Policy, Vol. 2 [2010], Iss. 4, Art. 6

http://www.psocommons.org/ppp/vol2/iss4/art6DOI: 10.2202/1944-2858.1048

The Conceptualization of the Underclass

The idea of “the underclass” as a residuum or marginalized social groupings living in or on the fringe of poverty evokes a multiplicity of attitudes and beliefs about it5:

The features of the underclass vary enormously … the disparate observers who claim to be able to witness an underclass are incapable of agreeing on what it is they have witnessed.6

This occurs because observers disagree on its meaning, even its existence, not to mention its causes and solutions. This is because they hold incompatible ontological and epistemological assumptions, which means that they describe, explain, and understand the social world—Marcel’s7

“world of persons”—differently.8 This reflects two long-standing debates in the social sciences. The first is the epistemological debate about whether the social world can best or most appropriately be known objectively (naturalism) or only as subjectively experienced and interpreted (hermeneutics).9 The second is the ontological debate about whether social actions can best or most appropriately be ascribed to internal, agential factors (agency and free will)) or to external, structural factors (structuralism

5 See John Cottingham, Race, Poverty and the Urban Underclass (Lexington, DC: Heath, 1982); Hartley Dean and Peter Taylor-Goodby, Dependency Culture: The Explosion of Myth (Hemel Hempsted, Herts, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992); Mark Hyde and Elaine Armstrong, “Underclass or Underdogs?: Britain’s Poor in the 1990’s,” Public Policy Review 3 (4) (1995): 44-46. See also Ruth Lister, The Exclusive Society: Citizenship and the Poor (London: Child Poverty, 1990); Robert Macdonald, Youth, the Underclass and Social Exclusion (London: Routledge, 1997); John Macnicol, “The Underclass Debate—Views from History,” Journal of Social Policy 23 (1994): 162-190. Finally, see Charles Murray, The Emerging British Underclass (London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit, 1996). 6 Keith Mann, “Watching the Defectives: Observers of the Underclass in the USA, Britain and Australia,” Critical Social Policy 4 (1994): 79-80. 7 Gabriel Marcel, Men Against Humanity (London: Harvill, 1952), 164. 8 John Dixon, Rhys Dogan, and Alan Sanderson, Situational Logic of Social Actions (New York: Nova Science, 2009a). See also John Dixon, Rhys Dogan, and Alan Sanderson, Reading a Relational Situation: The Contending Lens (New York: Nova Science, 2009b). 9 Laurence BonJour, Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses (Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).

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Dixon: Poverty: An Existential-Humanist Perspective


and determinism).10 This gives rise to a contending set of four social philosophical perspectives on the underclass.11

This paper focuses on the existential-humanist perspective on the underclass held by those who adhere to the hermeneutic-agency social-reality disposition.12 Those of this disposition hold the epistemological position that the social world can only be subjectively experienced, the meaningfulness and significance of which can only be individually constructed on the basis of self-knowledge (cognitive reflexivity). They, thereby, reject the proposition that the social world is objectively knowable. They also reject the idea that the meaningfulness and significance of this subjective experience can be constructed by a process of reflexive discourse (social constructionism). The ontological position they hold is that people are responsible for what they make of themselves, for they can, if they so wish, draw upon their will-power to change the way they think and act in whatever ways they are inclined and able to do (classical (determinism–free-will) compatibilism). They, thereby, reject the proposition that the way people think and act is not the product either of a myriad of external social, cultural, economic, and linguistic factors over which they have had little or no control, or of the array of discursive formations with which they have engaged. They also reject the idea that people are self-determining agents with personal autonomy and self-determined intentional mental states (libertarian free will).

The existential-humanist perspective on the underclass is that it can only be understood with reference to the lived first-person experiences of those who identify with its defining attribute—having a state of mind that reveals a lack of will to take control of life as a result of simultaneously being in or near poverty concurrently and being socially excluded, socially marginalized, or social disadvantaged. Thus, membership of the underclass can only be subjectively and self-referentially known. This perspective rejects the contending propositions that the underclass comprises de-motivated free-riders (the perspective held by adherents to the naturalist-agency social-reality disposition); social deviants (the perspective held by adherents to the naturalist-structuralist social-reality disposition), or

10 Margaret S. Archer, Being Human: The Problem of Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 11 John Dixon, Rhys Dogan, and Kerry Carrier, “On Investigating the ‘Underclass’: Contending Philosophical Perspectives,” Social Policy & Society 4 (1) (2005): 21-30. 12 Dixon et al., Situational Logic of Social Actions, Reading a Relational Situation, “On Investigating the ‘Underclass.’”

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disempowered victims (the perspective held by adherents to the hermeneutic-structuralist social-reality disposition).13

The social policy dilemma is that in a world characterized by profound diversity of opinions on human nature, the basis for choosing one over another can only be either ideologically informed beliefs (articles of faith asserted as self-evident truths) or anecdotally informed intuitions (opinions asserted as fact). Pinker strikes a salient existential-humanist chord with the four anxieties he identifies as influencing people’s perception of human nature:

• that it may not be possible to hold people solely responsible for their actions;

• that oppression and discrimination may be justified; • that life may not have a higher meaning and purpose; and • that the improvement of the human condition may not be

possible.14

Because the poverty literature has been neglectful of existential poverty, attention will be turned to the further development and exploration of the existential-humanist perspective on the human condition that informs its perspective on existential poverty manifesting as the underclass, but first its underpinnings as a social science paradigm need to be a little further developed.

Existential Humanism as a Social Science Paradigm

Existential humanism is grounded in a distinctive set of epistemological and ontological assumptions that dictate how the underclass is most appropriately described, explained, and understood, and to what the social actions of its members can most appropriately be attributed.

Hermeneutic Epistemology

Hermeneutics contends that knowledge is generated by acts of ideation, the product of transcendental acts in the perceiving mind engaged in reflection

13 Dixon et al., “On Investigating the ‘Underclass.’” 14 Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (London: Book Club Associates, 2002), 139ff.

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and rumination,15,conditioned by the perceiver’s mental properties or states that give rise to personal temperaments, interests, tastes, feelings, interpretations, and prejudices, shaped by the meaning the perceiver takes from the prevalent socio-cultural, economic, and linguistic milieu. Existential humanism sits within the hermeneutic epistemological tradition. It advances the proposition that the social world lacks fixity and certainty because social knowledge is grounded in a person’s conscious perceptions.16 It privileges the self-knowledge of human beings that gives meaning to individual subjectivity. The evidence for determining the truth value of social knowledge claims exists only in the human mind.17 Thus, of course, such truths—genuine knowledge—may not correspond to material reality.18 If the social world can only be understood subjectively then, by implication, one person’s truth is just as valid as another’s (epistemic relativity), and so each person can create reality in a metaphysical domain that is incapable of being addressed by the naturalist methods of enquiry. This imposes restrictions on “the scope of human reason”.19 What, then, is knowable is relative—both across time and across individuals—which means that people can have very different approaches to reasoning, to belief confirmation, and to belief systems (social relativism) .20 15 See Wilhelm Dilthey, “The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences,” in Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works, Volume III, eds. Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [1910] 2002), 101-212. See also Edmund Husserl, Husserl: Shorter Work (South Bend, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, [1929] 1981); Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and Human Services: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Frederick D.E. Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, [1805-1810] 1977). 16 Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Point of View (London: Routledge, [1874] 1995). 17 Simon Blackburn, Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). See also William James, The Meaning of Truth (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, [1909] 1979). 18 Franz Brentano, The Foundation and Construction of Ethics: Compiled from his Lectures on Practical Philosophy by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand (New York: Humanities Press, [1874] 1973). 19 Alex Callinicos, Social Theory: A Historical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 31. 20 Hollis, Martin and Steven Lukes (eds) "Rationality and Relativism," Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982. See also Stich, Stephen. "The Fragmentation of Reason; Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of Cognitive Evaluation," Boston: The MIT Press, 1990.

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Agency Ontology

Agency ontology is firmly grounded in the proposition that human actions are best ascribed to the internal agential dimensions of action-takers: their mental properties or states that identify the courses of action that they judge to be personally acceptable and required. Existential humanism sits within the agency ontological tradition. It affirms the absolute value of human beings and resisting all forms of depersonalization (personalism).21 It also advances the proposition that people are potentially free to determine and control their own thought and actions, because, if they so wish, they can draw upon their will-power to change, in whatever ways they are inclined and able to do, their acquired set of self-defining thoughts and actions.

This now permits an exposition of the human condition from an existential-humanist perspective.

The Existential-Humanist Perspective on the Human Condition

Humanism centers the person and privileges the person over the social22; existentialism centers self-identity and privileges the search for authenticity over conformity with social convention and social morality.23

Humanism

This holds that people’s thoughts and actions are connected to their inner feelings and self-image.24 In the personalism tradition, humanism defends both the concept and the reality of persons, thereby affirming the absolute value of human beings and the significance, uniqueness, and inviolability of those characteristics they possess that uniquely shape their thoughts and actions—their personalities. As Protagoras remarked: “Of all things the

21 Jan O. Bengtsson, The Worldview of Personalism: Origins and Early Development(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). See also Rufus, Jr. von Burrow, Personalism: A Critical Introduction (Atlanta, GA: Chalice Press, 1999). 22 Bengtsson, The Worldview of Personalism. 23 Jean Wahl, A Short History of Existentialism (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1949). See also Mary Warnock, Existentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970). 24 Abraham H. Maslow, Towards a Psychology of Being (New York: Nostrand, [1962] 1968). See also Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1961).

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measure is man, of the things that are, that [or ‘how’] they are, and of things that are not, that [or ‘how’] they are not.”25 Thus, people in a holistic sense should be placed at the center of social theory and praxis. Existentialism This holds that individuals are shaped by two realities. The first is inevitability of needing to endure the challenge of making the best of a life lived in existential isolation devoid of meaning.26 The second is that, in the absence of absolute universal standards, individuals can, if they so will, overcome “a certain inner condition, namely, the feeling of inferiority … by developing the striving for superiority.”27 This would allow them to make choices about who they are and who they want to become, in full awareness that they can create their own character.28 Only when the will-to-life’s meaning is realized can individuals avoid life’s meaninglessness and emptiness29—the existential vacuum—that leads to boredom (the “loss of interest in the world”) and apathy (the “lack of initiative to do something in the world”).30 Every individual, thus, needs to live in the way they find most valid and fulfilling. This requires them to have freedom—what Camus called “the freedom to be”31 —the freedom to search for their own self-identity, thereby achieving what Maslow called self-actualization—the fulfillment of 25 Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), DK80b1. 26 Frederick Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1886] 1998). 27 Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning (New York: Perseus Book Group, [1948/1976] 2000), 138. 28 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, [1927] 1967). See also Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrick Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, [1887] 2003, http://www.mala.bc.ca~joh-nstoi/Nietzche/genealogytofc.htm; Frederick D.E. Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1799] 1988); Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay of Phenomenological Ontology (London: Methuen, [1943] 1957) and Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason (London: New Left Books, [1960] 1976), and finally Arthur Schopenhauer, The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Chicago, IL: Open Court, [1813] 1974), Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (2 vols.) (New York: Dover [1818 and 1844] 1969), and Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms (London: Penguin, [1851] 1970). 29 Frankl, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning, 85. 30 Ibid., 139 and see also Viktor E. Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (London: Random House, [1955] 1986). 31 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (Harmondworth, Gt. London, UK: Penguin, [1942] 2005), 55.

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a person’s distinct psychological potential, or full humanness.32 There is an implicit recognition in existential psychology that individuals are self-deciding, if not entirely self-determining, agents, who are the product of their creative, spontaneous, and active subjective first-person experiences.33

The key existential proposition is that some people see existential freedom to be beyond their reach. They cannot throw off what Maslow called their “sickness of the soul.”34 They cannot challenge social convention, so that their social self (what they reveal to others) cannot become more than just a reflection of their social image (what others perceive about them). This, Rogers argues, is a prerequisite for the taking of ownership of self and for seeking self-actualization, thereby discovering and realizing life’s true purpose.35 For them, life’s vicissitudes are not challenges to be confronted through acts of will, so enabling the finite-I to continually strive for the absolute-I.36 Their will-power will not prevail at those character-defining moments of commotion, truth, or need, akin to what Maslow called human peak experiences.37

These sufferers of soul sickness assert (in fear of the consequences of non-conformity and as an antidote to worry) or even believe (as a skeptic) that bad luck, fate, or the powers that be have led them to where they are now: alienated and marginalized from social life. They lack an “appetite for life.”38 They fear freedom and the success that may follow it—Maslow’s Jonah complex.39 This exposes them to absolute vulnerability and solitude, although that “solitude in an absurd world could turn into a significant

32 Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper Row, 1970. See also Abraham H. Maslow, The Further Reaches of Human Nature (New York: The Viking Press, 1971). 33 Maslow, Towards a Psychology of Being; Rollo May, Man’s Search for Himself (New York: W. W. Norton, 1953); Rollo May, “The Origins and Significance of the Existential Movement in Psychology,” in Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology, eds. Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger (New York: Basic Books, 1958), 1–23; Rollo May, Psychology and the Human Dilemma (New York: Van Norstrand, 1967); Rollo May, The Discovery of Being: Writings on Existentialist Psychology (New York: Norton, 1983). See also Rogers, On Becoming a Person. 34 Maslow, The Further Reaches of Human Nature, 44. 35 Rogers, On Becoming a Person. 36 Johann G. Fichte, “Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge,” in Science of Knowledge, eds. Peter Heath and John Lachs, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century- Croft, [1794-95] 1970), 1-43. 37 Abraham H. Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences, [1964] 1970,

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/maslow.htm. 38 Colin Wilson, The Outsider (London: Phoenix, [1956/1967] 2001), 118. 39 Maslow, Towards a Psychology of Being, 59.

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solitude.”40 They are in a state of despair. They want freedom, but they have turned away from it in fear. They want to assert themselves, but they believe they cannot do so. They find conformity to group norms unsatisfactory, but they cannot change their feelings about non-conformity. They, thus, see themselves as victims of bad luck or fate. They do not accept responsibility for what they make of themselves, as they consider themselves to be unable to decide their own futures. They justify their blaming of fate and bad luck on the grounds that no one can be a free agent, for fatalist determinism (logical fatalism) holds sway over free will. They look for scapegoats: someone to blame, someone to look down upon, someone over whom they have power. They take comfort from their servility. To them, life is inevitably inauthentic and unfulfilling. Their actions are, inevitably, a product of luck and fate, with alienation close at hand.

The alienated perceive their behavior to be regulated by others. Their social relationships, they consider, are governed by a set of sanctioned social norms that constitute the ingrained rules by which they consider they must conduct themselves and their affairs. This, they feel, leaves them little scope for personal choice, “providing instead a set of railway lines with remote control points for interactions.”41 Thus, they see themselves as being subject to the rules made by those intent on putting some purpose and coherence into their lives. They have the “sense that our own abilities, as human beings, are taken over by other beings,”42 perhaps giving rise to what Nietzsche43 called ressentiment, the hatred and desire for revenge felt by those who are frustrated by their powerlessness in the face of oppression. Their sense of marginalization, separation, and externalization, as individuals estranged from each other, from specific situations and processes, and from their beliefs and values, undermines their attachment to, and identification with, others.44 Hegel talked of an alienated soul—“the consciousness of self as a divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory being.”45

40 Olivier Todd, “Introduction,” in The Rebel, ed. Albert Camus (London: Penguin, 2000), x. 41 Mary Douglas, Cultural Bias (Occasional Paper 35) (London: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1978), 16. 42 Anthony Giddens, Sociology, 4th ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 683. 43 Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals. 44 Everett V. Stonequist, The Marginal Man: A Study in Personality and Culture Conflict (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937). 45 George W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (tr. A.V. Miller) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1807] 1977), 201.

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The Existential-Humanist Perspective on the Underclass

Existential humanism posits that to live in a state of existential poverty is to have a state of mind that reveals a lack of will to take control of life because of being in a state of or near poverty concurrently with being socially excluded, socially marginalized, or socially disadvantaged. Thus, even though a person may be living in material poverty, he or she cannot be categorized objectively or by others as being members of the underclass, for the requisite state of mind can only be subjectively and self-referentially known. This state of mind, of course, reflects, first, a person’s negative self-interpretation (self-knowledge) made after a lifetime of reproachful first-person experiences with his or her feelings of, and about, self (his or her self-image and self-esteem). This means that positive statements about self not only may be resisted but also may reinforce negative self-interpretations.46

Second, it reflects his or her self-interpretation of the perceived negative discernment of others (his or her social image). These self-interpretations have resulted in that person being plagued with skepticism and self-doubt, and beleaguered by a sense of metaphysical pathos about the human condition. A person’s state of mind impacts on the way he or she thinks about self (his or her self-sentiment and self-objectification); on the way he or she presents to others, whether individually and collectively (his or her presenting self); on the way he or she behaves, whether consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or instinctively; and on the way he or she socially interacts, whether in exchange relationships with acquaintances and strangers or in communal relationships with romantic partners, family, and friends.47 This also permits self-identification with a set of mental traits or discernment attributable to underclass membership status, the nature of which the tenets of existential humanism give insights.

• The belief that life is a perpetual struggle to absorb other people’s freedom, in terms of self-expectations, which requires constant thought on the falsification of self by others (Am I like people think I am?).

• The belief that social conventions distort the conscience in a way that renders self less resolute on the acceptance of responsibility by placing an assumed guilt on deviance (Why should I take

46 Joane V. Wood, Elaine W.Q. Perunovic, and John W. Lee, “Positive Self Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others,” Psychological Science 20 (7) (2009): 860-866. 47 Dixon et al., Situational Logic of Social Actions, 12-15.

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responsibility for anything I do when all they do is make me feel guilty for everything I do?).

• The belief that people can only experience the reality of the familiar in one way (Every time I do this I don’t like it, but how can I change the way I feel about doing it?).

• The belief that life is a stressful struggle just to survive (What more can anyone expect of me, surviving is hard and stressful enough?).

• The belief that people are victims of bad luck, fate, or the powers that be (It is not my fault, can I help it if I am a victim of circumstances?).

• The belief that individual autonomy is minimal, with little scope for interpersonal transactions, because people’s behavior is regulated by others (What control do I have over my life, everyone tells me what to do, and I can do nothing about it?).

• The belief that people are frustrated by their powerlessness in the face of oppression (What can I do when I get rude and oppressive behavior from people who live in another world to mine?)

• The belief that group engagement, which sometimes cannot be avoided despite it being one of life’s absurdities, is on the basis that no one expects to belong but everyone understands their place (Why should I, unless I really have to, put up with people who I know have expectations of me, but about whom I have no understanding?).

• The belief that success is to be feared, because it threatens people’s sense of safety, security, and belongingness, thereby exposing them to absolute vulnerability and solitude (Why should I try and be successful, all it would mean is that I would become someone different, and then with whom would I be?).

• The belief that life is without reason or purpose, dominated by self’s awareness of individuality, temporality, and nothingness, which makes living absurd (Why should I be taking initiatives, for who knows what will happen tomorrow, I may well be dead?).

• The belief that the world is full of people who want all their purposeless and irrational yearnings, desires, and cravings satisfied (What is the point of striving for something today if I don’t know for sure if I will still want it tomorrow?).

• The belief that the feeling of inferiority makes life meaningless and empty, which makes people apathetic (What is the point of I taking initiatives, I am not smart enough, so they never work out for me?).

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• The belief that the opportunities offered by coincidence and accident are best ignored (I know coincidence and chances have given me opportunities, but they have also taken them away; who knows?).

• The belief that people take comfort from their servility (Why should I worry about working to earn money when I can adequately get by on benefits?).

The message from existential humanism is that a person’s worth is self-referential and, thus, is not for others to judge. Life’s meaning, therefore, depends on one’s self: who a person becomes is, then, contingent upon who that person wishes to become.

The Existential-Humanist Perspective on the Solution to the Underclass Problem

The existential-humanist proposition to the underclass problem is that long-term, able-bodied welfare recipients lack the will to take control of life because they do not have an authentic and fulfilling way of life. This can only be addressed once their anguish, despair, guilt, shame, and other profound emotional experiences are acknowledged, confronted, and relieved. The door to meaningful existence can only be opened when they stop being frightened about contemplating and comprehending their potential, and recognize that they are not yet who they want to be. Only then can that fear and anguish enter their consciousness, so enabling them to be addressed.48

Only then can they achieve the holistic integration of their contending self-concepts.49 This needs to be achieved before they can take control of their own existence, free from the fetters of social convention and social morality. Only then will they have a unified self that places their self-concept in harmony with their experiential feeling, giving rise to their true self. This, then, gives them an awareness of their problem-solving and goal-achieving capacities.50 Indeed, this re-rekindling of self has been described by Sartre as

48 Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [1849] 1980), 49-50. See also Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [1844] 1980). 49 Morris Rosenberg, Conceiving the Self (New York: Basic Books, 1979). 50 Dixon et al., Situational Logic of Social Actions, 14.

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a magical transformation, based on a transubstantiation of emotive values associated with self and others.51

The challenge that existential humanism posits for public welfare policy and administration is how to create a physical and metaphysical environment in which long-term, able-bodied welfare recipients can be encouraged and supported in their efforts to transform their perceptions of self and others, so as to begin their search for an authentic and fulfilling way of life, one outcome of which would be reduced welfare dependency. Public social welfare provision must seek to enrich the human condition of such welfare recipients, dominated, as it inevitably is, by feelings of aloneness, absurdity, pointlessness, anxiety, guilt, alienation, and even resentment. Thus, it needs to be focused on three issues. The first is to build their capacity to begin and sustain their search for their authentic selves. This can be achieved by the design and administration of public social welfare provision that can accommodate residential, work, and personal relationship changes without complete or substantial loss of program coverage, eligibility, or benefits. It can avoid the creation of poverty and dependency traps. It can build the self-respect of long-term welfare recipients. It can provide them with support for self-development, vocational-skill development, and social-skill development activities. The acquisition of these skills can change not only their self-image, but also their social image, their social expectations, and their perception of the expectations that others have of them. Such self-perception changes would diminish the fears they associate with personal change. These fears are grounded, an existential humanist would argue, in their sense of anxiety, guilt, shame, anguish, and despair that comes with their perception of themselves as deviants from the strictures of social conventions, and in their sense of being a victim of other people decisions and actions. These self-perception changes would also diminish any desire they may have for revenge, because of their frustrations over their powerlessness in the face of oppression. Only when these psychological barriers are removed can they set themselves self-actualizing life-goals.

The second issue to be focused on is building the motivation of long-term, able-bodied welfare recipients to begin and sustain their search for their authentic selves. Frankl has argued that each person has a unique set of potential meanings of life to fulfill52 and that “… there are three avenues that lead to meaning fulfillment: First, doing a deed or creating a work; second, 51 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Emotions: Sketch of a Theory (New York: Philosophical Library, [1938] 1948). 52 Viktor E. Frankl, The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy (New York: New American Library, [1969] 1988).

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experiencing something or encountering someone; … [and third] facing a fate we cannot change.”53 The design and administration of public social welfare provision can build the self-respect of such welfare recipients, by not stereotyping, stigmatizing, and penalizing them simply because of their deviant language, appearances, or behaviors, and by not discriminating against them by privileging particular types of language, appearances, or behaviors because of their conformity with conventional social standards. It can enable them to undertake meaningful work, whether paid or unpaid. It can facilitate them building meaningful communal relationships and effective exchange relationships. It can support them when they confront character-defining moments of commotion, truth, or need.

The third issue to be focused on is encouraging and championinglong-term and able-bodied welfare recipients who are seeking to self-actualize in order to become more functional individuals willing and able to take responsibility for the direction their lives are taking. This can be achieved by the design and administration of public social welfare provision that creates opportunities for, and permits, them to make meaningful life-changing decision choice. This would empower them to accept personal responsibility for their decisions and actions and to develop their own personal moral code by which they can live in peace, tolerance, and harmony with others.

Conclusion

The contribution of existential humanism to the poverty discourse is, essentially, the proposition that poverty can be life-disempowering, because it induces a lack of will to take control of lives in those who are also socially excluded, marginalized, or disadvantaged. It argues that everyone needs to live in the way they find most valid and fulfilling. This requires them to have the existential freedom to be what they will themselves to be, the freedom to search for their own true self-identity, thereby fulfilling their distinctive psychological potential.

Those who consider that the existential freedom required to achieve their psychological potential is beyond their reach live in a state of existential poverty. For them—as self-categorized members of the underclass—the cumulative consequence of their interpretation of a lifetime of both reproachful first-person experiences with their feelings of, and about, self, and their self-interpretation of the perceived negative discernment of 53 Frankl, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning, 141-142.

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Poverty: An Existential-Humanist Perspective