Back

The Lost Dimension (Part 2)
Mulling over the new millennium
By Dr. Paul A. Palayam Roche, PhD.*

‘…And I am only 14!” were the anguished last words of a girl heard through the burning inferno recently in Canada’s highways. High-speed car crashes, pile-ups, and burning debris on highways are normal occurrence in developed countries.

Show and pretence

The colossal show that thrives in this Western world, which is sadly being aped in the rest of the world most avidly, is fuelled by our desire to be new, different and perhaps unique. We have allowed ourselves to be fooled into buying items at hundred-fold their true value because they carry a couple of English letters or symbols. It is a compelling proof of the success of modern consumerist propaganda, and of the millions who uncritically fall for it.

What is ethically unacceptable is that the system foists untold wealth upon some individuals—some of whom ascend to an opaque bubble of their own making, where every mirror magnifies the ego of the lonely occupant. Even when the bubble busts, (because bubbles have a habit of busting, since they are merely bubbles), we do not know it because of the insulation mechanisms that effectively seal off the public. We are not really sympathetic to those who have lost their crowns, like Ozymandias in the desert.

How much worth?

Nobody is worth a billion dollars. When one compares the amount of work that has to be done by millions of people in the so-called Third World to earn that much money, it is an absolute vulgarity that just a few individuals should be allowed to accumulate such mind-corrupting wealth, with so little effort in comparison. What is most appalling is the incredulous bad taste with which such easily collected loot is squandered away.

At a certain stage, the process of gaining wealth takes an imperceptible quantum leap, and becomes-- pure and unbridled greed. When a bank declares a profit and then slashes five hundred jobs to maximize profits, you cannot call it by any other name.

Twenty Indian rupees would buy two square meals in the rural areas of India. At this rate, 3,835 starving people could be fed for a whole year (or double that number in Sub-Saharan Africa) with the one million dollars which socialites spend on one dress for an evening. If someone in the family went out and spent all the money on clothes when there was not enough food for everyone in the household, wouldn’t the parents scold the erring prodigal? On a world stage, there is none to stand up and scold, because such garish display of wealth is applauded by the fashion industry and their ilk, and we are all part of the cowardly and acquiescing audience. The hundred richest people on earth could wipe out all the debts of the Third World.

The Western world has measured poverty and states that approximately 40% of the world’s population lives below the poverty line. “It’s their own fault! It’s their problem. What a nuisance!” These are some of the attitudes of those sitting in their ivory towers of privilege. The poor are not miserable, because they know how to share.

A security guard in my former office in a Third World country had asked me for money for food for the weekend. He had none left. Only a couple of rungs above him on pay scale, I did not earn much, but he had trusted me to be more sympathetic. The first time I had obliged. The second time I had refused, since he was known to be habitually getting drunk. On Monday morning I learnt that the poor widow who championed his cause had collected some money for him.

It brought me home the profound realization that people who go through the same hardships understood each other better. I had never faced the prospect of hunger over a weekend. And why was it that the poorest of the poor employees, like that widow, had shared their meagre resources to help that man, while I hadn’t ?

Third World poverty, despite the painful reality of its existence, if given the resources to classify the West, would describe the latter as living extremely below the poverty line—the poverty of the spirit.