Capacity

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001295/129556e.pdf (I've only read 2 pages)

http://www.water.org/crisis/ (Found the above document through a footnote on this site. Haven't checked out this site yet)

Why do so many people lack easy access to safe water? In my last post, I focused a little on the role that business people play. What of the people themselves, those that live where the water is bad? Perhaps another way to ask the same question is, why are the poor poor? Again, this post is not based on research, at least not yet. I'm writing what I think.

A capacitor is a device that stores energy...

potentiometer (or 'pot' for short) describes an electronic component which has a user-adjustable resistance

Capacity and potential within the human machine.

Capacity:
The power to learn or retain knowledge; mental ability.
Innate potential for growth, development, or accomplishment; faculty.

Potential:
existing in possibility : capable of development into actuality

Think of capacity as a stored amount of reality trait, and potential as the amount that is being manifested in a given moment. Some examples of reality traits: intelligence, conscience, compassion, selfishness, intuition, ambition. The individual personality of a single human machine at any given moment is produced by the settings of the potentiometers controlling the flow of the capacitors containing the reality traits. If you've ever mixed sound, this analogy might make more sense. If you have a 16 channel mixing board, with 16 signals coming in, guitars, bass, drums vocals, keyboards, DJ scratch, flute, sax, whatever. Each channel has numerous potentiometers, or pots, or knobs for controlling the amount and shape of the signal of that channel. The knobs are manipulated, setting the amount of resistance from infinite to none, blending the instruments together to create the mix.

The individual person is made up of a mix of various levels of reality traits, the instruments of the individual, in various states of resistance. Are the people drinking the disease ridden waters less intelligent than those who live near safe water? Do they have less ambition? Or do they have the capacity, but their circumstances keep the resistance high, and they can't advance themselves to reach their full potential?

Superstition is a shackle of the mind. Religion in the form of faith, belief, ritual, tradition, community, these strengthen people. Superstitious religious belief, like believing that suffering is caused by original sin so it's our lot to suffer, is insidious. It allows people to be manipulated. I suspect that many of the people without access to safe water are there due to war and politics. This is certainly the case for refugees. But not all drinkers of bad water are refugees.

Soerens also confirmed that parasites and bacteria in the water had caused
illness and death. Sadly, most villagers did not understand the connection
between use of bacteria-laden water and illness or death. http://researchfrontiers.uark.edu/8430.htm

Superstition can prevent the individual from exploring cause and effect possibilities. Beliefs and practices that served to bind a people together can perpetuate poverty and disease when those people are confronted with the ever expanding border of the machine. The indigenous people of the Amazon are losing their hunting grounds, and their ability to pack up and move to cleaner water. The industry of the machine is consuming the forest, contaminating the water, and imposing the hierarchical ownership of property that destroys tribal life. Or maybe they're just a bunch of dumb bunnies lacking ambition to fix their water problems.