Why is there poverty and suffering in the world?

Poverty and Suffering in the World

Poverty and suffering is pointed out by the atheists to prove that God does not exist. 

Before we try and find the reason for the above problem, we should understand how the world works, how the Universe works.

Whether God exists or not, the Universe operates upon certain rules.

Once we understand how the Universe works, it becomes easy for us to know the answer.

So, How does the Universe work?

The Universe works on the cause and effect principle. When we do a certain thing, we get something back in return. It is true for even the simplest of thought, speech and action by us.

So, how do we prove that Karma or Cause and Effect works?

To find out if a certain thing works or not, the use of probability is used. To know if a certain thing will work, a miniature of the same action is tested to find out if it will work. Generally, that is how it is done. 

For example, we all know that when we make a deposit in the bank, we get interest in return. We all know that when we say good things to people, we make them happy and get their good will in return.

We also know that when we take a loan from the bank, we have to repay it, with interest. We know that when we speak harsh words to people, we kindle their anger with the possibility of getting hurt by them.

We know that when we sow a mango seed and water it till it grows, we are presented with a fruit bearing tree for a life time. While we would have sown the mango seed, the fruits of the tree would probably be enjoyed by our children and grand children.

We all know that when we build a company that makes its customers happy, their reference brings us more customers and so on.

So, we see that in everyday life, there is enough proof for us to understand that our actions define the results that we get in the future.

Now, the question arises. Why is somebody who is a good human being put to so much suffering? He has not even had a harmful thought on other people.

The Cycle of Birth and Death

This brings us to the topic of continuous experiences. When you run a company and run into losses. You close the company down and open another company. You still are liable to make good the previous company's payments, isn't it?

It is the same concept here. We are all in the continuous process of birth and rebirth.

We have no clue about who we were, what we were doing in an earlier experience, wherever in this world we were.

So, the only thing to do is to ensure that we put a full stop to this suffering right here. Since, we know that our actions define our future experiences, we have to ensure that our present actions do not harm anybody through thought, speech or action.

Essentially, our present sufferings are the interest we are paying on our past loans. Once the interest and principal is paid in full, we can again start with a clean slate.

Based on how Nature works, poverty and suffering in the world is a result of the past actions of those in suffering.

To understand this, we should know that every person is not in poverty and suffering, literally. Some of us, will have enough money and wealth, but will not be able to even eat and enjoy material life properly, due to medical and other compulsions.

In the minds of those people, a poor but healthy person is more blessed than them. It is relative.

So, What do we do to alleviate poverty and suffering in this world?

For our part, we can try and alleviate the poverty and suffering of those we encounter in our day to day lives, by helping them out, as a repayment of our interests and create a deposit for the future.

And also by not indulging in anything that is physically or emotionally harmful to others, either by thought, speech and action.

How can we reduce the running costs on AWS Server?

Cost Reduction or Saving money on AWS EC2 Instance

In AWS EC2 pricing, there are three main elements such as an Instance, a Snapshot and a Volume.

So, ec2 instance pricing includes the cost of each of these resources consumed, such as hard disk space, bandwidth and is costing us money on a daily basis.

The idea is to take a backup of our unused data and source and move them into cloud storage and then delete the dormant instances, snapshots and volumes.

This will result in an immediate reduction in our running costs of AWS EC2 instances. I will briefly explain how we do it, here.

Logon to our Amazon Web Services console and choose EC2.

What are the EC2 elements that cost money?

In the EC2 dashboard main screen, among other things, we will see Running Instances, Snapshots and Volumes. As indicated, these things cost us money, by the hour. Of course, Elastic IPs also cost, but only if we aren't using them.

Of these, the instances will cost us according to the server we have chosen, micro, small, medium, etc. The storage that we use for the server (OS and data) is also on cost. Further, the bandwidth used, for uploading and downloading source and data is also at a cost.

Technically speaking, these servers we hire, cost us only if we use them. But, there is a catch. Since, we are using storage, these storage spaces are payable, whether we use them or not. Even though the costs are not too high for storage, if we are not careful, we may end up paying dollars unnecessarily.

Removing dormant instances and volumes

As a first step, we will have to identify the volumes that are used by our running instances.

In the above, you may see that there are 2 instances, but three snapshots and 5 volumes. This may indicate an excess of 1 snapshot and 2 volumes. These may be noted, evaluated and if found not required, deleted.

Once identified, we will carefully note them down. We do not want to delete any running instances or storage spaces, unintentionally.

For this purpose, we will make a note of the instances and link them to the volumes connected, using the instance id.

Once they are identified, the next step is to make a note of our stopped instances. Every instance may be linked to a volume or storage area in the network.

If we find that the above 3 stopped instances are no longer required, we may terminate them, along with the volumes that  they are linked to, to reduce our aws bill.

Once we have identified the instances and volumes that we do not require, we can delete our instances, along with the volumes with data and sources.

If, during the creation of the instances, we had chosen the volumes to be not deleted automatically upon termination of the instance, the volumes will not be deleted on deletion (termination) of the instance.

Under such circumstances, the orphan volumes may need to be removed independently, later.

Alternately, we may detach (right click on the volume to be detached and you will see a context sensitive menu) the volumes individually and then delete them.

AWS EC2 instance review

We will have to do this preventive maintenance, every time a new instance and/or volume is created and the old instances and volume are stopped and lying unused.


These cost us money and thus the savings on AWS EC2 instances through maintenance, may be substantial over a period of time.