You start with nothing. To get something, someone has to give or you have to take. Ask for it, and the answer is not up to you. Work, and what you get paid is someone else’s decision.
So go and improve yourself, because your fortune is up to you. Read, write, practice handiwork, study, exercise, and you will be a better person. But does that improvement really make you better? Your betterment is worth what the world gives you for it. If the self-improvement gets you nothing, then you are not better. If with your ambitious acquisition of knowledge and skills you stay doing nothing, you’re nothing in society’s eyes.
Does civilization view the wise, articulate, poor man in dirty clothes taking the bus equal to the rich idiot in a nice car? If it did, why would the wise man still be poor? No person, let alone a wise person, would choose abject poverty. Your value is what society decides you are worth. No one can see a great personality, but they can see nice sunglasses. If you have nothing, you are nothing, if you have little, you are of little consequence.
You want to matter so you step into a chamber that turns you into a perfect man. But once you leave the chamber as an embodiement of excellence, you are ignored, unloved, and exiled. You are a tall, handsome, worthless nobody. You can tell yourself you are great. But if the rest of the world does not, you are lying to yourself. Because society’s perception of you, which gives you what you have, is the truth. Hence the saying goes, perception is reality.
The repugnant man with valuable possessions might, or might not, want to be tall and handsome. Either way he is more perfect than the ideal, because of where society says he stands. There is a chance that being imperfect lit the fire within him that society rewarded. However, he could also be getting rewarded for reinforcing negatives, like the German Nazi-supporting Reimann family (Berg). You are not who you think you are, or who you want to be, you are how you are treated; whether it is deserved or not.
Even if you have the correct answer to every question, you can’t force anyone to listen. Almost nothing is up to you. But keep your confidence up because with all your ability and expanding repertoire, you are making yourself proud. However, you are the only one who cares. In the eyes of the world, you still are nothing because you have nothing. Despite your omniscience, you don’t exist. Get something and you will. Your ability is not the ultimate factor, because to have anything given to you is not your choice.
Similarly, say a student gets perfect grades. Yet every college turns him down. He then channels the depression into strength and writes a book. By every measure it is brilliant. Yet no one will publish it and no one will buy it. With time having passed and now being poor he can’t afford to do anything but keep a roof over his head and food in his belly. That is who he is. He is not smart. He is not a talented writer. He is not dependable and organized. He is a poor guy because that is how the world has defined him. Poor is not good, it is bad because wealth is better. His nothingness is bad. He is bad. The less you have the worse you are because having more is better. Nothing buys happiness, but wealth buys things and poverty gets you nothing.
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These people that have nothing are still alive. But with nothing they are powerless. You can think of power in many ways. In this case apply it to how electricity gives power. Therefore, if you have no power, you have no light.
You think the poor man is blind because he can’t see you. But with nothing to his name, he has no light and can’t see through the darkness. He doesn’t exist in the eyes of society, and blinded without power, society does not exist to him. No matter who he is and what makes him, he is nothing and can do nothing. Such is the plight if the world frowns upon you.
When you read the words poor man, you do not think of a great man or brilliant man or a charismatic and talented man, you think of the adjectives that relate to poverty. That is the economics of existence. His state of nothingness is who he is, regardless of anything about him. Because all those things about him, even if they are great, do not show in any tangible part of his life.
On the other side with power the light shines far and wide. The more you can see, the more the world has to offer. You can ask for power, and maybe someone will give it to you. But for most of us without infinite reserves, power is temporary. Because you do not create power, you can only be given it, and the light does not care. Without a vast surplus, it is only a matter of time till you are powerless again if society turns its back on you.
Doing good only means just that. It does not mean society will give you anything for it. Was the best, kindest slave paid? For most people it is a life of struggling to see. But the struggle is relative because many are content with only what’s in front of them. You have little to look forward to if society does not value you.
But if you can see everything, there is no need for more power. At the top, more power and light does nothing. There is no more to see, and we know too much light blinds us. That is the only thing excess power can do besides keeping those who don’t exist in darkness. Blinded by too much light at the top or no light at bottom is so different of an existence because of how society sees them. Without enough power for light, you do not exist. Blinded by too much light, you can’t see, but everyone else can see you that much more clearly.
The power to see the world is not yours. You live in darkness, are nothing, and don’t exist unless existence is economically given. Your worth isn’t you, it is what society gives you.
Work Cited
Berg, Madeline. “More Than A Dozen European Billionaires — Linked To BMW, L’Oréal, Bosch — Have Families With Past Nazi Ties.” Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2019/04/02/more-than-a-dozen-of-europes-wealthiest-billionaires-and-their-families-had-nazi-ties/?sh=855c06160154.
