Hurricane sandy has left destruction and chaos in its attack. Some of its features were power outages, homes lost, and personal possessions destroyed. The value of these losses cannot be quantified. You can see some 323 vivid images of its destruction. If you are a victim of Hurricane sandy, take heart. You could do well to ask yourself: in the wake of Hurricane sandy, where did you turn to for protection?
It is an established fact that in times of crisis, a person’s reaction shows what class he must possibly belong to. There are those who place their protection and security on material wealth and possessions; on the other end of the pole, are those who place their protection on love and acceptance by people and society. Those who fall into the latter class run to community funded institutions for help, while those in the former class run towards financial institutions and material possessions.
Have you noticed that sometimes people fight over issues like respect, greetings and memorabilia? Are they useless goods? When family members fight over inheritance, some run to established customary institutions for arbitration, while some use the police and power derived from their wealth for arbitration. Where do you fall into? It depends on which of the above classes you fall into.
Where you money is, that is where your heart will be.
If you have lived in poor neighborhoods, you would realize that religious institutions play a major role in the lives of the people, while in richer or wealthier neighborhoods, financial and governmental institutions have more say in people’s lives. The poor have always sought love and acceptance by others, placing these on a higher plane than material wealth, while the reverse is the case for the rich. The poor can proudly say that “love of money” is materialism, and can readily
decrease the value of material wealth and possessions .
When troubled, as by chaos and uncertainty, conflict, crisis or even a hurricane, the rich have found material wealth to be a
salient, accessible and preferred individual copying mechanism within the social environment, more than relationships can provide, and vice versa for the poor.
So, when you feel that the world is unpredictable, seemingly random, or that things have turned topsy-turvy in your life, your reaction is an indicator of where your protection lies.
When under enormous stress, do you think of how much it’d take the psychiatrist for a diagnosis, or do you run to friends for a heart-to-heart? If the tuition for your college was hiked, or you anticipate academic failure, where do you turn for help? Faced with a family squabble, where do you turn for arbitration? What would you answer to the question: “Money or humans, which is more important”? If given the opportunity to migrate to a country where you can earn more money but lose something like spirituality, contact with people, friends and family, which would you chose?
Whatever choice you make, whether rich or poor, you can rightly say that you value love and acceptance by people, and that you want to maintain it, or that you value wealth and material possessions above the former, and you can do everything to maintain it.
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