"The mother of revolution and crime is poverty"(Aristotle) Do you agree?

A revolution is a significant change that usually occurs in a relatively short period of time. Variously defined revolutions have been happening throughout human history. They vary in terms of numbers of their participants, means employed by them, duration, motivating ideology and many other aspects. They may result in a socio-political change in the socio-political institutes, or a major change in a culture or economy. Crime is defined as deviant behaviour that violates prevailing norms, specifically, cultural standards prescribing how humans ought to behave. Poverty in this sense may be understood as a condition in which a person or community is deprived of, and or lacks the essentials for a minimum standard of well-being and life. These essentials may be material resources such as food, safe drinking water, and shelter.

Poverty does lead to crime and revolution to a certain extent. when people face extreme poverty and lack the essentials for minimum standard of well-being and life, and in the process lose their moral righteousness, they will turn to crimes for the easy way out. Robbing, stealing or even capital crimes such as kidnapping are examples of the crimes they might be tempted to commit. This being said, only those who have lost or have no moral righteousness will commit such crimes. However, many poor people do not have the ability to have decent education resulting in them not being educated of what is right or wrong. Together with the negative influence from the parents and surroundings, the young might also be tempted to commit crimes and the vicious cycle continues.

When poverty occurs on a large scale, people will be easily influenced by revolutionaries who claim that they can give the poor a better life and provide for their daily necessities. The only possible solution is to overthrown the incompetent government. An example is the 1911 revolution in China. The democrats convinced the poor people (the majority of the population) of change and a better life. Together they overthrew the old monarchy system, but, as we all know, the change did not arrive as they had expected.

However, poverty is not the only cause of crime and revolution. Mass Media is also a major cause of crimes. Media portrays villians as cool and hip characters, thus causing many youngsters to idolize them and to a certain extent, mimic them. Examples of such media include movies like the Oceans series which features professional thieves. Those movies also gives youngsters a false impression of the ease of carrying out the crimes. Besides mass media, there are many other causes of crimes such as materialism and family upbringing.

As for revolution, the most important cause should be the incompetence of the government. With an able government, people still believe that changes will be implemented to aid them. When the government is unable to do so, people will lose faith in the government and the missing ingredient to a revolution is a brilliant public speaker who can stir up emotions of the population and claims to bring the nation out of the poverty trap.

In conclusion, poverty is only a factor of crime and revolution. It is not the sole cause.