There is no thinking of the poor but only the adaptation of thinking and behavior to the environment of poverty.

I remember seeing a news article at the beginning of the year “The child lost a five-yuan subway ticket, and the mother beat the child.” I watched the video, and the mother almost cried while beating the child. It can be seen that she cares about the five dollars. For most people, five yuan is insignificant, and many will not feel heartache after spending hundreds of yuan on a meal.

But why is the mother acting hysterical for five dollars that we hardly care about?

Because she lacks adequate coping resources, at the end of the video, it is also said that her monthly salary is only 900 yuan, her domestic service work is extremely unstable, and she has no husband. She has to bear the children’s daily expenses alone and needs to borrow money to survive. That five bucks may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for someone who lacks the resources to cope.

This is really what coping resources do to our emotions and reactions. Suppose people lack sufficient coping resources for one thing. In that case, they have a heavy ideological burden, making them choose the safest and most profitable among various choices.

1. Short-sightedness is the thinking of the poor?

No!

The three people in our dormitory (not full) are college students from rural areas. The three of us can live together because the school reserves some poorer houses for poor students, and they can apply independently, and the cost will be lower.

One of them studied very hard, let’s call him A, and won three scholarships in four years (you can’t get it after you graduate from senior year). In his junior year, he won another national first prize and participated in entrepreneurial projects. Based on his condition, he could have been admitted directly to graduate school, but he didn’t or didn’t dare.

A’s parents are old, and he is very afraid that the kind of “child wants to support, but the relative is not there” will happen to him and he also hopes that his parents can enjoy the blessings sooner. So I decided to come out and work. However, the development space is limited if our major does not go to graduate school. He knew, but he had no choice.

There is no thinking of the poor, only the corresponding strategies produced because of poverty.

Didn’t he know that settling down and continuing studying would be more helpful for his future? No, it’s just that he doesn’t have enough resources to support him.

2. Is conservatism the thinking of the poor?

No!

The same is true for another roommate B from the countryside. B is relatively weak in soft and hard skills, has not won any major awards, and his studies are average, and he may be a little worse than the average in all aspects. So in finding a job, I have been repeatedly frustrated. Ultimately, the disease went to the doctor indiscriminately, and I chose a job with a salary of only 4.5K+ performance. Under the company’s urging, the sale contract was signed after the interview.

Later, I helped B find a job with a 7K+ performance. I asked him to go for an interview. I will borrow him first for the breach of the contract fee and then return it to me after work. But he doesn’t want to. He felt that the three thousand breaches of contract damages must be paid, and he did not want to.

I was speechless and angry because the company paid less than the average salary for the same job, but he thought it was okay. Moreover, I just asked him to go for an interview, but he didn’t even want to try. He was instilled with too many ideas by his family, telling him how to save money and how difficult it is to make money. These concepts make him more afraid of loss than ordinary people, and he believes more firmly that “a thousand birds in the bush are worse than a bird in the hand.” However, I have the same background, son understands him too.

3. A small layout is the thinking of the poor.

No!

Who doesn’t want to live gracefully and be calm and indifferent in the face of various problems? But a person who lacks resources to cope with it must rely on hard work and competition to get everything that is hard-won.

I often squeeze into the bus to go to and from school. Two buses can reach the teaching area where I live, but there are so many students that there are very few shifts. If we couldn’t get on the first bus, we would wait patiently for another bus. When the second bus came, the students were not as polite and humble as before. They squeezed with all their strength. When they couldn’t get on, they often heard scolding voices.

If we say that the allocation of resources meets the needs of students, I don’t think we will look so impolite. If the next bus arrives in five minutes instead of half an hour, we won’t be so fussy and angry about being unable to get on the bus. But we lack enough resources to deal with being late. We can only compete very rudely. And will feel angry and dissatisfied because of their failures.

4. Low self-esteem is the thinking of the poor?

No!

Suppose a person has been living in an environment that lacks coping resources. In that case, he will slowly develop a more calculating personality and develop low self-esteem—more prone to anger or fear. They are more likely to believe that they have been treated unfairly and are more afraid of losing.

Because of this, their relationships aren’t particularly great either. Because friends become intimate through exchange and communication, they lack sufficient resources to sustain this exchange. And because of low self-esteem, I dare not communicate.

Many college students in rural areas are always very helpless in the face of various organizational activities. Some activities even cost nearly a thousand yuan, and they will choose to give up in the end. In this way, they lack the scene of being warm with others, and it also makes people feel that they are out of the group and unwilling to talk to each other, falling into a vicious circle.

Short-sightedness, conservatism, small structure, and low self-esteem are due to a lack of resources, not a subjective willingness to do so. Because of their poverty, apart from learning, they are not like rich people who can develop various skills or use their status to gain respect, and in the end, there seems to be a significant difference.

There is no thinking of the poor. Some are just survival strategies that have to be made because of poverty. If it is necessary to say that there is a poor man’s thinking, the only way to change the poor man’s thinking is to make himself rich, nothing more.