means, and practices the arts of flattery, sponging, dependence, exploitation, opportunism, favoritism, and their like—means of plunder veiled behind a screen of honor and pride.
And when we know that the standard of living in our Arab countries is still extremely low, and that the average annual income per person ranges between three hundred and four hundred liras in Lebanon, while it reaches about five thousand liras per person in the United States—when we know this, we find some excuse for the poor, the deprived, and those of middling condition, who make up in our country an overwhelming majority; we see extenuating causes for their thirst for money; and it does not astonish us to see them pour out the water of their brows and take the crooked paths to reach riches, after the straight paths have been shut in their faces.
But how are we to explain the greed of the rich, the men of gathering and withholding? What excuse have these for their scramble to heap up moneys and their striving to attain the millions after they have hit the hundreds of thousands? How do we explain their sick avarice and their grudging of the smallest gift for the sake of the public good, while they lavish much upon harmful amusements and superfluous acquisitions?
Some people may answer you that the absence of social insurance in our country, and the individual's want of assurance about the morrow, and his fear of the vicissitudes of time, breed in him extreme avarice and a wearing anxiety over his moneys. But this answer alone cannot convince us.
The truth is that the lack of social education and the weakness of spiritual cultivation are the first factor in feeding the greed that marks poor and rich alike. For moral education among us is still confined to certain old inherited traditions that fall short of meeting the needs of the age.
Parents direct their children toward the acquisition of money, but they do not know how to prepare them in the manner of gathering it and the manner of spending it. That is why the democratic governments of this age watch over the rearing of the generation's sons and daughters in a national upbringing that teaches them respect for the rights of their fellow citizens and abstention from taking for themselves what is theirs, and trains them to know that their first duty is cooperation with others, giving
and spending upon public projects, and striving to improve their environment and raise the standard of living among its inhabitants.
The fight against self-seeking, greed, and careerism is carried on by fighting their causes: that is, by widening the doors of work before the young men and young women, raising the level of wages, and applying the law of the minimum wage for workers and employees.
When the worker and the employee are given the possibility of securing a decent standard of living, and each becomes confident of his day and easy about his morrow, his desire for plunder and exploitation and for hunting fortune by the shortest road will lessen. And the same holds true of the peasant and the small proprietor.
And when the rich are compelled, by means of taxes proportioned to their incomes, to give for the sake of public projects, and see in the improvement of their environment and the progress of their society what tempts them to continue contributing, they will become an important factor in building and construction, and will count spending on other than their personal pleasures a thing that cannot be avoided.
And when the schools adopt practical programs of social service, and rear the rising generation in the simple life, the sporting spirit, and organized group work, there will arise among us a generation with a social sense, which spends its efforts and its activity on scientific and artistic pursuits, and does not stake its life upon the gathering of money and the heaping up of coin.
Two plain-featured spinsters had lived a long age in the same quarter, and from time to time they would pelt each other with bitter words. One day one of them passed before the house of the other, who was at the window; she looked at her with evident disgust and said:
"You grow uglier every day!"
And the other answered her coldly:
"Good! That is a condition you will never attain—for you cannot possibly grow any uglier!"