The Problem with Wealth

The penalty of affluence is that it cuts one off from the common lot, common experience, and common fellowship. In a sense it outlaws one automatically from one’s birthright of membership in the great human family.

- Arnold Toynbee

Incriminating, but true. We know it. With every up-step in status, income and lifestyle I am distancing myself. Increasing status makes me inaccessible to many, worse still, it walls me off from reaching out. Look at the high-security gates we build - who is being protected from whom, I wonder? When faced with choices to 'upgrade', I must consider the larger consequences.. I am not always enriched by becoming richer. Gaining wealth, I can lose my place in humanity.