5 By Katherine Marshall Climbing Up to the Light In this media world of instantaneous images, we cannot hide from a disturbing contemporary reality: vast gulfs separate the enormous, avoidable poverty of billions of people from achievable living stan- dards, decent healthcare, and basic nutrition that could ease their suffering. We face an unmistakable gap between what is and what should be. Because we live in an unavoidably interconnect- ed world, everyone who is blessed with a decent life must today ask three questions: Why should I care about global poverty? What is our responsibility to act? And what can we do? It is easily forgotten that the vast majority of people, through most of human history, lived short and difficult lives. Until rather recently, a quarter of all children died before they were five, hunger was a constant, slavery was commonplace, and educa- tion was the privilege of a tiny minority. This situa- tion was, for the most part, viewed as humankind’s accepted fate: the poor would always be with us. Charity was a duty; it could ease suffering, but would not solve the underlying fact of inevitable poverty. The past fifty years have given birth to a very different reality, one whose full dimensions have yet to insinuate themselves completely into the way we look at the world. Revolutions of health- care, global communications, manufacturing, and transport have produced a demographic transfor- mation, stretching normal lifespans so that now we contemplate a time when our children may well live routinely to 100. In such a globalized world, the life of work and families themselves take different shapes. Business, travel, and identities move across hemispheres and cultures. In the global village, ev- eryone is our neighbor. By far the most exciting piece of this new real- ity is that a decent life is truly within the reach of almost every child born on this earth. This is a first in human history: we have the resources and the knowledge to end poverty. But we confront a world that is deeply divided between rich and poor, mak- ing true fairness a dream that is still far from reality. Ascending the Ladder So why should we care? There are many reasons, but I propose a “priority ladder” to help order the responses of our minds, our hearts, our souls, and our hands to this new and demanding challenge. The principles behind each rung can be found in the teachings of the great religions, epitomized espe- cially in the Golden Rule – to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. They are captured in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other wise calls to action and justice. Yet it’s still a fresh, even intimidating idea to regard poverty as something that can and must be eliminated from our midst. We should first care about poverty because work- ing to eradicate it is fair and just. Human dignity, the divine spark in human life, underlies a global ethic that mandates giving each person a fair chance. That ideal of human dignity and equality, however distorted throughout history by unequal relation- We are living today through an unprecedented world transformation that shatters expectations of what citizenship means. Our new world has seen distances shrink, human potential expand, and national borders fade in significance. It’s still an intimidating idea to regard poverty as something that can and must be eliminated from our midst.