Tagalog Version (Click Here)
One thing I hate are people who say and think that poor people are stupid, lazy, or useless. They don’t say it out loud, but you’ll usually find them when somebody shares inspiring rags to riches stories. They are the commenters who say that “rich people got rich only because they’re lucky” and “it’s impossible for a poor person to get rich because they don’t have the education, the opportunities, the skills, etc. to do it.” They’re also the ones who say that “hard work is useless” or “there are many who work hard but still end up poor” and never offer any encouraging solution.
Many of those people completely misinterpret the intent of inspiring posts to mean that “poor people are poor because it’s their own fault” or that “hard work works for some but it never works for everyone else.” They are the example of how our thoughts and perspectives affect our worldview: while many of us see those posts as sources of inspiration (“If they can do it, we can do it too!”), those people see them as insults (“Successful people just got lucky and everybody else will fail so they must NEVER even TRY!”).
While they mean well by trying to point out the problems that poor people face, by degrading and demeaning the message from inspirational posts they do far more harm than good. The end result is that they’re discouraging the poor by implying that they can NEVER rise above poverty, and that they are so weak and helpless that they can never earn prosperity unless somebody gives them charity.
