For spiritual advancement, one should be materially satisfied, for if one is not materially satisfied, his greed for material development will result in the frustration of his spiritual advancement.
Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 7: The Science of God, Chapter 15: Instructions for Civilized Human Beings
httpv://youtu.be/KNIEb3injpc
video: BBC World Debate Why Poverty?
Study finds poverty reduces brain power | Reuters.com
By Kate Kelland | Reuters.com
LONDON | Thu Aug 29, 2013 2:01pm EDT
(Reuters) – Poverty and the all-consuming fretting that comes with it require so much mental energy that the poor have little brain power left to devote to other areas of life, according to the findings of an international study published on Thursday.
The mental strain could be costing poor people up to 13 IQ (intelligence quotient) points and means they are more likely to make mistakes and bad decisions that amplify and perpetuate their financial woes, researchers found.
“Our results suggest that when you are poor, money is not the only thing in short supply. Cognitive capacity is also stretched thin,” said Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan, part of an international team that conducted the study.
In a series of experiments, researchers from Harvard, Princeton and other universities in North America and from Britain’s University of Warwick found that pressing financial worries had an immediate impact on poor people’s ability to perform well in cognitive and logic tests.
Far from signaling that poor people are stupid, the results suggest those living on a tight budget have their effective brain power, or what the researchers called “mental bandwidth”, dramatically limited by the stress of making ends meet.
On average, someone weighed down by money woes showed a drop in cognitive function in one part of the study that was comparable to a 13 point dip in IQ, and similar to the performance deficit expected from someone who has missed a whole night’s sleep.
“Previous views of poverty have blamed (it) on personal failings, on an environment that is not conducive to success,” said Jiaying Zhao, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
“We are arguing that the lack of financial resources itself can lead to impaired cognitive function,” she said.
Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton who worked on the research team, said it was not stress in general, but financial worries in particular, that led to a reduced ability to make sound decisions.
“The poor are often highly effective at focusing on and dealing with pressing problems,” he said. “But they don’t have leftover bandwidth to devote to other tasks.
“So, if you live in poverty, you’re more error prone and errors cost you more dearly — it’s hard to find a way out.”
The researchers studied two very different groups – shoppers at a mall in New Jersey in the United States, and sugar cane farmers in rural India.
In the mall study, they gathered dozens of low and middle-income shoppers and subjected them to a battery of tests to measure IQ and impulse control.
Half of the participants were first asked to think about what they would do if their car broke down and the repair cost $1,500 – designed to kick off worries about money. It was among these people that performance dipped significantly.
In India, the researchers found that farmers had diminished cognitive performance before getting paid for their harvest compared to afterwards, when their coffers have been replenished.
“One month after the harvest, they’re pretty rich, but the month before – when the money has run out – they’re pretty poor,” Mullainathan said in a report of the research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.
“What we see is that IQ goes up, (when they are rich)… errors go way down, and response times go way down.”
He said the effect in India was about two-thirds the size of the effect in the mall study – equal to around nine or 10 IQ points difference from one month to the next.
(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
source: Reuters.com
What about the newly rich? My theory is that their “fretting” over maintaining/protecting their newly acquired expensive houses/cars/boats/etc. “require so much mental energy that [they] have little brain power left to devote to other areas of life”, and therefore have a lower IQ than they did previously, when they were relatively poor!
In other words, their good karma from a previous life has a tendency to run out if they use it up too quickly!
Here we go again! Prabhupadanugas letting mass murders like Tony Blair get the forum. Why don’t you ask me? (I’m in Quebec Canada right now) So what is being discussed is useless and has no affect. Prabhupadanugas should get together an international Prabhupadanugas forum, on line to discuss such situations. We have all the answers in Srila Prabhupadas books. So again..ASK US!! Don’t be so foolish as to spread the stool of international criminals. HELLO!!
Thanks Hasti Gopala pr – 2010 Tony Blair was presented with the Liberty Medal by your former president Bill Clinton (http://constitutioncenter.org/libertymedal/photos.html). Should according your logic Prabhupada never have entered US terrain (Vietnam massacre)? De facto you should immediately leave US for good! Ok you’re right now in Canada, PLZ see “Canada and the Iraq War” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Iraq_War), you better leave Canada as well!
So it is difficult, “this material world is no place for a gentleman.”
As Prabhupada instructed concerning material constitution we abide by the law of state what says: Tony Blair is a national hero (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270398/Tony-Blair-national-hero-Polish–Former-PM-given-award-country-helping-thousands-come-live-Britain.html)
Please drop a note when you find a place where there is 100% no aboriginal burial place below your temple room.
ys bh.rose
It’s the ISKCON GBC that have created the mess that urgently needs fixing. Who cares what Tony Blair has done or is doing?
How can we Ritviks have any potency to bring about positive change if we don’t even follow Srila Prabhupada’s most basic instructions? Instead of simply finding fault with others in order to try to puff ourselves up, we should get our own house in order. “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”
How are we doing, when it comes to following Srila Prabhupada’s orders/example, in comparison to the ISKCONites?:
(<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/istagosthi/ANN5ea0KFrU>)
How are we doing, when it comes to following Srila Prabhupada’s orders/example, in comparison to the ISKCONites? Unfortunately, not very well!
@PratyatosaDasa: 1. “Diacritics henceforward”: The Ritviks sometimes do not follow; the ISKCONites usually follow.
A blog like this one sends everyday keywords to google. Additionally new comments and articles are checked by googlebots.
Problem is that googlebots are not yet programmed to process Sanskrit diacritics (Segoe UI font) to our requirement.
If you write on your blog a new article with e.g. “Śaṅkarācārya sampradāya” and this keyword is send to google they are not able to understand that when a school class in South India makes a search for “Sankaracarya sampradaya” without using diacritics that your “Śaṅkarācārya sampradāya” is the exact same word as their “Sankaracarya sampradaya”. They won’t be directed to your article.
Googlebots are not yet programmed to that standard when we write in an article lets say, “Mahābhārata” – to provide this as search result when somebody else searches in google for Mahabharata without using diacritics.
Of course, when we speak of reference work, encyclopedia like causelessmercy.com, Sanskrit diacritics is inalienable. A static website without daily news is ranked by google and there are no major changes. Here it is strongly recommended, obligation to have everything with Sanskrit diacritics.
Newsblogs are different since they correspond with search engines on a daily basis. As soon a new article is posted it appears in google search.
To simply say these blogger folks are in maya they don’t use Prabhupada’s Sanskrit order on the internet is rather contrariwise. If google isnt ready to properly process diacritics it is their fault.
There are thousands of visitors who stay a few seconds and immediately leave. They come via google because a term of their search directed them here. Immediately they read KRISHNA and get some benefit. We did our homework to contact google on this issue. So far there is no response.
AcchedyaDas says: To simply say these blogger folks are in maya [because] they don’t use Prabhupada’s Sanskrit order on the Internet is rather contrariwise. If Google isn’t ready to properly process diacritics it is their fault.
You are correct, Prabhu. There may also be some email servers that still cannot handle the Sanskrit diacritics properly.
But I never intended to criticize Internet bloggers, commenters, emailers, article writers, devotee news webmasters, or forum contributors for not using the Sanskrit diacritics. Please read my paraphrased version of Srila Prabhupada’s “diacritics henceforward” order more closely:
By the way, both http://causelessmercy.com/ and http://prabhupadabooks.com/ solve the problem that you mentioned by automatically filtering out the Sanskrit diacritics when spidered by search engines such as Google.
One handy feature of http://causelessmercy.com/ is that you can toggle the diacritics on and off by repeatedly pressing the “D” key on your computer’s keyboard. Therefore, when copy/pasting a quote, you can optionally do it without including the diacritics.
Doesn’t take long for you prabhus to get off topic!! Prabhupadanugas should hold an online live forum to discuss specific regional and world problems and conclude with solutions. NoÉ Well then why is there a Prabhupadanugas web site or any other for that matterÉ
pamho agtACBSP, ANNADA EKADASI KI KAI, thank you for posting this interesting article on stupidity and poverty, actually within this universe we are not just us, all the fourteen planetary systems of the material world are caught by the illusory energy of SRI KRSNA called maha maya.
25 per cent get trapped in stupidity which is the index of all foolishness Prabhupada explained the 75 per cent remain in their original position.
(Prabhupada, Paris, August 10, 1973)
Therefore we are all kind of chained up by material energy like a dog by the master. But the dog thinks that he’s very happy. He does not think that, “I am completely dependent and I am chained up. I have no independence, I cannot freely move.” One who is liberated, his first symptom is that you’ll never find him morose. He is happy. Prasannatma.
When I think that, “I am this Mr. Materialist, I am a part of this material world, I haven’t got this material possession,” then I think, “oh boy, I am realy poor” or “rich.” But one who is liberated from the material conception of life, then he has nothing to do, what he’s possessing, what he’s not possessing. He has nothing to do. That is liberation. If one is free from the material conception of life, then factually, either he possesses or not possesses, he has nothing to do with them.
SRILA PRABHUPADA, New York, November 22, 1966: Therefore he’s prasannatma, he’s joyful, “Oh, I have nothing to lose, nothing to gain. I am completely separate from here.” This is liberation.
agtSP ys
haribol
pamho agtACBSP,
in this material world, both the very poor man and the very rich man are under material influences, for both wealth and poverty are creations of the modes of material nature. Real wealth is that conducive to the faithful execution of the duty of the soul, not that which exists simply for selfish sense gratification.
Life without Krishna consciousness is actually poverty, but the poverty-stricken materialist, whose intelligence is limited, cannot perceive that real wealth is the expansion of consciousness up to the highest level of Krishna consciousness, love of Godhead.
Of course, in this world nothing is forever, not even land and cows. That’s why the devotee’s real wealth is in the heart, where Lord Krishna lives. Whether a devotee serves Krishna on a farm or in the city, he aims all his activities at reawakening his awareness of Krishna and his love for Him. Because both the Lord and the soul are eternal, this Krishna consciousness is also eternal and is the devotee’s actual wealth.
All of us can become the rich children of God again,
agtSP
ys haribol