The Rich and the Poor
1. All people have needs, and they are quite consistent across different people. We need about 2000 calories of food, some clothes, shelter and water. We have a spectrum of medical needs.
2. I knew a person who would immensely despise anyone that would have an unfulfilled need and ask for help. She would also despise people who would have, or seem to have, little money. She would have and extensive mental list of jobs which, according to her, made a person unworthy of respect. Examples of it were being a cleaning lady, elementary school teacher, or being a representative for a company or political group. She found certain jobs – cleaning, for example, so despicable, that not only would she never take such a job, but would actually prefer to live in a filthy place and eat off dirty dishes when she couldn’t make other people do it for her. It seems she felt like doing something like that would damage her somehow.
3. When you think of it, if you acquire anything you want or need in a way that is in accordance with your own morals, everything else really shouldn’t matter.
4. The person i wrote about came to value only money. She found it worthwhile to hang out with those who had enough, and avoided anyone who she didn’t consider ‘rich’ enough.
5. Greed for money seems to be based on the belief that – if you acquire something indirectly, you are therefore a more valuable person.
6. Money has become a culturally accepted way to clean your hands of blood. Compare the following scenarios:
a) A person walks down the road, shoots a stranger, takes his money, and walks off.
b) A person, knowing the consequences of smoking, works in a cigarette factory.
Another person buys the cigarettes they make. He and his daughter die of smoke-related illness.
Except for some numbers being calculated, the scenario is the same.
7. People who are greedy for money believe that when they will acquire enough money, it will make them faultless and divine – after all, they will not have those desperate, human, carnal needs anymore.
But humans are of the same human nature from life to death.
War and Peace and Health and Disease
Us people, we like to have enemies. Don’t believe me? Check any news. Look at any movie. Play nearly any game. While many of them are not of the “slash around with a sword type”, surely you can find an enemy to your liking.
Well, it may be that you are at peace with the world – but still, shouldn’t we at least get rid of that corrupted politician? He is just destructive to society.
As society, we function way more cohesive when we have common enemies, and politicians love to offer people of other nations, colors, hairstyles, whatever, as enemies.
Enemies help define us, and make us stop flowing in that kind of uncertainty that we would find ourselves in in circumstances of perfect peace.
Most nations have a defense and a healthcare budget. They are usually paying for different things though.
A sensible defense minister would probably arrange the funds to target the enemy that is the biggest threat to the life of its citizens. For us living in developed world, this enemy has a name, and it is called vascular disease.
Wait, what?
War and disease are considered totally unrelated in our culture. Both take lives and in both we need to understand the enemy. We should take untreatable disease with the same serious consideration as a threat of a strong nation. We research and make weapons. Then charge and kill.
If the rationale that enemies that require applications of guns require their own budget, we could as well have huge, separate budgets for enemies requiring statins, the enemy requiring chemotherapy etc.
For the one who kills the most – disease, not war, we need to step together, not just leave it to the individual. If another nations army killed your neighbor but not you, wouldn’t you still be outraged? When disease kills someone, why do we prefer so much to ignore it?
It would be outrageous to just let someone kill another person. Whole communities have risen up through history for such unfair cases. In the case of a rare disease, the world is silent. The people and their families silently weep, while nothing some rare random people are making slow strides to some resolution.
The ‘How To’
The painful yearning of being in love is usually just a sign that one needs to take one step forward in trusting the other person.
Often, that one must do what is forbidden or impossible – and thus prove it otherwise.
The Enchantment of the Fountain Pen
The elegance of the fountain pen lies chiefly in its apparent simplicity. Its point, a simple gap in metal, everything else tidily put away in its body.
It is like a drop of ink, transferred to paper by creative thought.
Ink.
It is not in a fountain pen where the writing lies, i realize, nor in the water of the ink.
It is the pigment that shows the word; and in knowing that, the means of transferring it to the page becomes irrelevant.
It does not matter if a diamond is transferred from place to place by bus or plane – its value remains the same.
Be it from fountain pen, pencil or chalk, diluted, old – it is in its nature to color the creativity of man, making it visible to the world.
Times of Slavery
Once upon a time, if a person was born a slave, he would prepare dinners, clean the rooms, take the kids to school. It would make for a better environment for him and his master. Slaves grew food and helped repair things. Their life was that of a slave, but somebody got something out of it. Occasionally, even though they were slaves, their work was appreciated, and some of them were freed.
Todays wage slaves don’t have it this awesome. They work in factories, where they produce chemicals and knickacks. For a bowl of food a day, they work their lives off for fake plastic fish and fake shitting pigs.
Who cares for that? Will they ever be made free men because someone will appreciate their work enough as may have happened to some slaves in the past?
Don’t waste your money on enslaving people, and making their lives so purpuseless. Be mindful of the things you buy. With money comes power to buy objects that further human knowledge (like buying a new computer), creativity, or just waste human time and life. With money, you are likely making people do what they really don’t feel like doing. Be kind, make their (and possibly your future) work worthwhile and appreciated.
Courage
If you have a good idea which you tell the world – and there is a crowd of a million people to ridicule you for it, maybe there will be one among them that will not only understand, but be be able to make the million others understand and appreciate the idea too.
So do not be afraid to stand for what you know is true.
zacione 