Oct 14, 2009

The Envy of the Hypocrit Paupers

There's a commonplace running around nowadays in the lips of the paupers, and those who once belonging to the middle class have seen their efforts to climb up, to bourgeoise-up themselves trunked, sliding down into the lurky mudd of the lower, the lesser class, the class they have fought so hard to leave behing, to detach themselves from it while constantly, with affected poses claim to keep present their "humble roots". Such a presumptous commonplace is as follows: "There's people so poor all they have is money".

I'd love to see the hypocritical expressions on their faces if you were to dump a truckload of money on them, or touch their shoulders to offer them a seat in the Parlament. So much for their determination and their self proclaimed disdain toward the "vile metal". There's a speach common to them about how "love" and "friendship" and "values" are so much important, and how rich people with them is. However, are they?

People with money are not necessarily "emotionally pauper" or evil. Seeking vehemently the way to see them as "pauper"is nothing but an attempt to pull them into the swamp they are into, a desperate attempt to destroy in them the one thing their detractors envy. But why don't we look at some facts. For instance, if we are battling with commonplaces, I would like to pull out a popular saying that goes: "When hunger comes through the door, love jumps out of the window". I'm so sorry to tell you this, but "love" won't feed you, and values can't be spread on bread. Money IS necesary to survive on today's world unless someone can find the way back to selfsupporting. Love and friendship won't appease the hunger of a baby, or send a kid to school or get medical attention to the sick. And if you are thingking that among friends you can help each other, share the food, get the books to the kids, Honey, how do you think those things happen? With money, only not yours because in this example you have none, but on the money of your friends. Oh, and so sorry, but the romantic idea of having a teacher friend, a doctor friend and enough land in the backyard for all of you to farm is even more unrealistic than all of you taking a Two Year vacation in one of Jules Verne's books.

Our current society has grown on money, works with money and needs money, and that applies also to unrealistic looneys to involved in their own drama and eaten up by their own envy.

Secondly, there's the matter of the absense of all those prized features: love, friendship, moral, values, dignity, respect... Words elevated by the slipping selfloathing into big words. First of all there are many, many of these "features", which people can or cannot have. Claiming that someone has "only money" is misleading. Interestingly, things such as love, friendship, moral, values and all those are not in a negative correlation with money. You can have money and have all of them or have no money and neither one of them. Amazingly, you could lack of some of them and don't actually need it. For instance, how bad can life be if you have no values, or none of the socially claimed values? Yeah, sure, not the best kind of life, but there's some life to live in there. People can also live without love and friendship. People can live and be happy in loneliness, in isolation.

The matter with these is not whether you have money or not or any of the socially desirable values or not, but rather whether you "have yourself" or not. Do you know yourself, do you love yourself, do you accept yourself, are you capable of gasping happiness, are you capable of giving yourself happiness, are you capable of making your own happiness, or do you need it from others?

I'm not rich, and I'm not pauper either, granted, I may not have as many friends as other people, I may not see my friends as often as other people, and my lovelife might be different from that of other people, and it goes without saying that my values are certainly not those of other people (particularly when Pride is at the top of my list of Virtues and Humility at the top oy my list of Sins), but does that make me a "pauper"? No. I am a pauper if I feel that way, if I think of myself hat way, if my thoughts are contaminated with envy, with the craving for what I don't have, the indifference or disdain for what I do have and the hate for those who have what I don't. Am I rich? I don't think of myself that way. I believe myself, and I know myself blessed, happy and I do feel like I'm one of God's favorites, though God doesn't really have favorites because he do love us all equally and uniquely --- and yet still, as I look at my life, past, present and future and all the wonderful things I've been granted, I simply know, and not only deep inside my heart, but with absolute, rational, clear and present certainty that God loves me like crazy. ^_^

So, am I a "pauper" because I wear Benetton and Swatch, and I happen to have friends that can help me out with things other people could never access by their own means? Am I a "pauper" because I go to Europe once a year (at least) and spend a few days in Wien, a night in Paris and then throw something else in the mix instead of staying home, worrying about having kids and feeding them, instead of settling, getting married or not but either way have more kids that I can support only because "kids are a blessing"?And to make it even worse, am I a "pauper" and a "monster" because I believe that babies are ugly and disgusting and I can't stand them near them and their stench makes me sick?

Pauper is the envious, the one that lives out of the opinions and attention of others. Those happy with themselves are whatever they think and they want to be.

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