Inequity

There is one kind of success that baffles me and makes me jealous, the kind that appears to come solely from good fortune. You do nothing, it comes to you; you go the other way, it follows you. You can be the most incompetent, illiterate, bungling idiot, but if the heavens have ordained you to be successful, then you are. It is the kind of success that simply eclipses that which is borne out of long years of hard work and the acquisition of knowledge, and probably even patient, persevering prayer. For the fortunate person, it is simply there for the taking.

I used to have this runaway kind of success, but it has run out somewhat. Now I have become like most other people in this country, with an existence mostly barren of hope and dreams, and with only the minutest chance for redemption. Literacy and knowledge serve no other useful purpose here other than to make one more aware of the stifling onus of stagnation.

There are the fortunate few, however. Those who pluck out riches from thin air, the corrupt politicians and officials who steal from the national coffers through their malevolently-designed contracts; the unscrupulous men of commerce who hoard and overprice goods, exploit the desperate many through slavish labor and, consequently, amass immoral profits; the warlords who terrorize their subjects into submission, steal whatever little they have, and commit them to a lifetime of poverty. They are appropriately called the "lucky bastards", anomalies in an otherwise equitable and harmonious world.