There is a difference between what you have observed and what you have experienced.

In an ideal world, you detach yourself from the experience if you want to get a valid and rational observation. The scientific method insists on this. Why? Because you have to get all sides of the story; you have to get all empirical data that will prove the theory. This is specially true with the social sciences. Historians and sociologists don’t present their experiences; they observe people, they ask questions, they present their observations. You have to be detached so that your observations will be free from the taint of irrationality that an experience may bring.

I hate the detachment. It reduces humanity into quantifiable variables and unrealistic generalizations. It refuses to acknowledge the human dimension of the problem at hand.

Ironically, by detaching oneself from the experience, you are making an incomplete observation. True, there will be no true completeness; comprehensiveness is the best term. I believe that to present a comprehensive observation, you should immerse yourself in the experience.

True, there are times you have to really be detached, because you wouldn’t want to experience such. That’s why I don’t comment on things that I can only observe from a distance – stealing, perhaps, or kidnapping, or murder. I can comment about lying, because I was dishonest in some points of my life.
***
Poverty as a root cause of social problems has been reduced to theoretical discussions, turning the concrete into abstract. Employing tools from sociology to psychology to history, poverty is now just a subject to be discussed, debated, and quizzed. The poor are now lab rats, subject to experiments on how they behave; they are just statistic that no one bothers to understand. In the end, nothing is produced; in the end, it will be all words and rhetoric. Simple: poverty has been observed, and is being observed, with detachment.

If you believe in the totality of things, then you must be ready to accept fault for things that you are a part of; if you are part of a system, and that system has problems, then you must accept the fact that you contribute to the problems (even if you think you don’t). That’s why I am tired of reading treatises on poverty that pins the blame on anybody. Poverty is a problem of the society as a system; I am part of that system, ergo I contribute to that problem. Hence I am at fault. Denying that you are not part of the problem is observing with detachment. And definitely you are not part of the solution, either.
***
We live in a world of denial. People dismiss poverty as a cause of problems because people feel powerless about it. Some of us even deny it exists – how many times have we seen beggars and pretended we did not see them?

It’s not good to give alms. But have you done anything that will contribute to alleviating the effects of the problem? Unfortunately, sitting in ivory towers, blaming, and living in denial are not solutions.