“The poor you will have with you always,” Jesus reportedly said to his disciples in defence of the woman who was anointing him with expensive oils – and because he understood the nature of man.

At another time, He advised anyone who would listen to: “give all that you have to the poor and come, follow me.”

Most practically, He suggested: “If you have two coats, give one of them to the person who has none.” Similarly, He extended this suggestion to include anything one has which is extra – that the extra be given to those with less – or nothing.

This advice should be the cornerstone of global economics, not for its religious ties, not based on what might be perceived as muddled humanitarian impulses, but for its common sense approach to running the world.

On Dec. 26, 2004, a tsunami hit southeast Asia, killing immediately or causing the death soon afterwards of more than 250,000 people. Over the next few months, there was so much money donated to Doctors Without Borders (DWB) to assist with that disaster that they started to funnel the money to their other posts. That was more than five years ago, yet what do we know about how things stand there now, what more is needed, the fall out of the storm?

Three months before the tsunami, Granada, the Caribbean “Spice Island,” was destroyed by hurricanes, all its trees flattened, homes destroyed. Do we know how the people there are now? Have there been funds flowing in there to replant the island’s spice growing industry? Has there been continued support for the other Caribbean islands that were similarly damaged by the same storms?

Now, an earthquake has devastated Haiti, the “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” It is a place with no vestige of defence against such a terror, no means at all to care for the afflicted inhabitants and begin their rescue by local people and equipment.

Along comes an earthquake and, suddenly, humble, unimportant little Haiti, a nation of long-standing suffering from small and large disasters, both man-made and naturally occurring, – suddenly, as I say, Haiti is relatively awash with money and assistance and is the tender subject of a caring world.

As, indeed, it should be. However, Haiti should have been the object of concern and care long before this. The people of Haiti should not have been left unaided by the big spenders who are now so eager to help with this high-profile mess; Haiti should not have been little more than the stage for high school students to come to build schools and houses so that they could go home and know how lucky they are.

In fact, the very matter of Haiti’s having been neglected all this while is resulting in huge difficulties to deliver aid at this time because there are no roads; what roads there were have been ruined because they were mere tracks or barely maintained paved roads. The airport is in a similar mess for the same reasons. Haiti has no infrastructure; it is a land of poverty: where was the day-to-day real aid that would have been of assistance now?

During the terrible aftermath of the tsunami that Boxing Day in 2004, as the world reeled with shock and sadness and hundreds of millions of dollars were poured into the land to help deal with unbelievable devastation, the DWB reminded us at the time that, in Africa, vast numbers of people die on a daily basis from man-made diseases and war. The children die in droves of starvation and malaria. But most of Africa is day-to-day disaster and we have no stomach for it.

Just as we had no stomach or funds or patience for the day-to-day deprivations of the Haitian people.

Or for the people whose lives were destroyed by the tsunami, since that first huge flush of attention; or, for that matter, the people living in the coastal regions of Vietnam who are still suffering from the inflictions of the Agent Orange dumped on them by the U.S. decades ago.

Those of us living so affluently in our wildly affluent countries are pretty quick to forget the wildly disproportionate portion of the world that lives under the yoke of unspeakable poverty and hardship. We are prepared to allow our governments to be complacent about the suffering imposed on those people as a direct result of our own greed or the greed and ambition of other wealthy countries.

We are so wrapped up in our petty, inour faces problems, that we do not insist – because we do not raise our heads – that our governments take day to day action in the benevolent guardianship of those countries with little – or nothing or worst: that whatever they ever have at all, even tiny freedoms, is also taken from them.

More than this, we consent to the violence all around us and when I say we, mean all of us, from east to west around the world. And, while violence begats violence, we never, ever, attack the true basis of the violence which is poverty and the day to day agony of having little – or nothing – or worst. We call this world the Global Village what a sour joke that is. And why do we call it that? Because we can peep into each others’ windows from anywhere in the world via Google?

Ridiculous.

A village raises its children. A village takes care of its own. A village acknowledges the day-to-day troubles of its families and those with more than they need give to the others.