Greek philosopher Plato opined that the wealthy fostered a lack of restraint and refrained from conforming to legal and moral standards.

Nearly two millennia later, Hobbes argued in his seminal work ‘De Homine’ (Concerning Man) that the rich were more inclined to cause injuries and unsuited for entering a society of equitable law. ‘The Social Contract’ had Rousseau trying to create a balance by defining an ideal society as one where no citizen was rich enough to purchase another and none so poor that he had to sell himself.

Poverty has always been deemed a virtue and wealth a symbol of debasement. Bertrand Russell saw the downtrodden as better beings; he dubbed it the ‘Superior Virtue of the Oppressed’. Despite this fallacy, the poor have always been vilified and the rich valorized. Factually, wealth or poverty has no intrinsic vice or virtue. Aristotle believed humility to be the golden mean between the two. Humility and empathy are the attributes that transcend material barriers.

A recent tragedy made national headlines. An underage boy accompanied by four friends was chasing and harassing a family. On being admonished, he rammed his car clocking 160km/hour into the family’s vehicle. Such was the impact that the other car flew 70 feet away killing all six family members including a four-month-old and a three-year-old child. Tragic that it was, the preluding events of a father initiating them by handing over the car keys to his minor child, harassment of a family and then the conversion of the vehicle into a deadly........

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