“Who, being loved, is poor?” ~ Oscar Wilde
The hungry do not go to heaven. Even if you don’t believe in afterlife and judgment, you don’t need a lot of demonstration to know what hell is like. Poverty creates and breeds heathens “كاد الفقر أن يكون كفراً”
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Since there are seven elements of wellbeing, logically there are also seven elements of hunger.
I’m not talking about one-time off kind of hunger. I’m talking about ingrained, prolonged and excruciating starvation. The kind that creates the greedy, lonely and anal persona that never seems to be satisfied. Or see beyond their hands-to-mouth rituals.
The Maslovian Hierarchy illustrates the order in which these needs be fulfilled. You can’t expect the hungry to excel at handling temptation. You can’t think about intimacy if you barely had anything to eat for days. You can’t think of pretty things if you have been cold all winter.
The quality of your character is defined by your most dominant type of hunger.
Which is why prophets and social leaders only come from wealthy and well-established families. Prophecy and leadership can only be entrusted to the well-fed, well-protected, well-educated and well-loved. The integrity of their character could have only become theirs through years of satisfaction, across all the elements of wellbeing.
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The good thing, though, there are religious days where the poor can have a chance at enlightenment. Days are marked with lavish feasting. Days, in which the gluttonous act of stuffing of one’s belly with so much protein and carbohydrates borders on piety and enlightenment.
Eid, Thanksgiving, Chanukah and Holi feasts are marked with the enlightened rich flipping the Maslovian pyramid head over heels, bringing momentary satiety to the hungry poor.
…because satiety is supposed to us closer to detachment, and the answering of universal questions.
