"I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at a trough."

--Diogenes

There is one great question all of us must answer if our lives are to have any meaning. How can we continue to tolerate the few having too much, while so many have so little? 

Ironically, it is from compassion for their lot that I have learned to hate the rich. I hate what their positions do to their characters and to their prospects for any real happiness. Even more I despise the examples they set in promoting the great lie that meaningful satisfaction can live together with luxury, while all about us our world is filled with suffering and want.

There is no means by which great wealth confers blessings on those who have it. The moral philosopher the Greeks called Jesus put it well; the only way the rich can experience true joy is to give away most of what they have, excepting the little needed to live simply and frugally.

Great wealth leads inexorably to emotional and psychological decay. One must justify constantly having too much for oneself in a world where many go hungry, where innocent children starve and, even if they survive, do so stunted from privation.

Thus, if our love of all humankind is to extend to the rich, we must hope (and pray, if we are given to prayer) that they might escape the mortal curse they've chosen. I do not blush to hate them for what they are, as I would hate myself were I in their place.

Until the material lives of all become more or less equal, men, women, and children will continue to suffer needlessly. Both individuals and societies at large (literally or figuratively) do the Devil's work in equating "success" with having far too much, while far too many have far too little.

Are you a rich and selfish? Can't you see past your greed and grasp the profound truth of what decency and virtue require of you? "Giving back" though meager charity, though never enough to compromise your status, will buy you only thin salve for your conscience.

We are past the time when the moral needs for equality and a modest but adequate living for all can be laughed away in favor of excess for a tiny minority. We can no longer stand idly by and tolerate the continued indifference of the rich to the suffering of so many on Earth. We must demand equality both for the sake of those blinded by their excess and for those not so blinded but weak from need.

Thus there remains but one great question for our times: "Which side are you on?" If you cannot honestly answer "The side of those in need," then I want nothing to do with you, or with any benighted ambition for "success" you may harbor.

This, at long last, is the last thing I have to say at this site:

"If you are poor, fair thee well.

If you are rich, burn in hell."