RICHNESS AND POVERTY OF TOTALITY

Written by

Brij Sachdeva

Richness and poverty

Richness or poverty of the totality of a person, from a social perspective, is the aggregate of the abundance or scarcity of everything having social value. Your financial status, social standing, nationality, physical attributes, and relationships collectively form your totality. However, in society, richness in terms of wealth is valued the most. Those who are affluent, move ahead in their life, throwing money at their problems.

Totality is a relative phenomenon

It is important to recognise that a person’s totality of richness or poverty is a relative phenomenon. A beggar can be rich in comparison to his fellow beggars and an emperor can be poor in comparison to his fellow emperors. It's not about absolute poverty or richness. It's about relative poverty or richness. 

In a restaurant, a 10-year-old boy serving orders came to me to take my order. I asked him why he was not going to school. I told him that if he studied, he would become successful in life. He said, “Previously, I was begging outside a temple. My sister told me that if I did a job in a restaurant, I would become successful in my life.”

It is a Perspective

An Indian in South Africa is considered as fair complexioned and the same Indian in America, may be considered otherwise. A comparatively light-skinned person may be considered beautiful in South Africa. Now how would you consider this person in India? In America, thinness is considered a popular beauty standard. Fat girls often feel that they don’t measure up to society's beauty ideal. Similarly, a five-foot-tall man may be considered tall in one country and short in another country.

Look at life from your own perspective first

One of the silliest things we do is to advise someone who is dissatisfied with their situation, to consider life from the perspective of someone less fortunate, in the pursuit of finding satisfaction and contentment. For instance, we might tell someone who has no shoes that there are other who have no legs. While it's important for a king, for example, to consider the perspective of a beggar in order to work towards their betterment, I sometimes question why one should engage in this exercise solely for the sake of finding satisfaction and contentment. Understanding others’ situations for positive outcomes is good, but viewing life from the perspective of those less fortunate, in pursuit of contentment, makes no sense.

This game of looking at life from the perspective of someone less fortunate for the purpose of finding satisfaction and contentment seems to be a tactic employed by the wealthy and powerful to quell the discontent and envy of the less fortunate, ensuring that no resistance arises from the exploited or deprived, and that any seeds of revolution are destroyed before they have a chance to grow.