appetite

Note that when many people discuss the poor, they blame them. Their poverty is often blamed on their skewed priorities. It is true that money and resources spent on finding a liquor bottle, a gram of pot or various amounts of heroin and cocaine could be used to rise out of poverty. Some people can do this, and more power to them. Yet it would be foolish to blame the ones who can’t.

As a society, we commonly overlook appetite. Appetite, for many of us, trumps hunger tenfold. That is why the underbelly of society is able to forego a job for a vice, and forego food for drugs. This isn’t limited to the homeless and other scavengers. For those with jobs and shelter, they forego healthful foods for junk food. They find their paycheck obliterated by more socially acceptable thrills.

The common reaction to this is that those with such appetites are simply irresponsible. The idea being that those deserving of success and livelihood are those who have no such appetites. The perfect citizen by this standard is someone who simply goes to work, takes the money they earned, and buys the housing and food they need. If there is any left over, it is profit, and they give it to their offspring or charity. In my estimation, this is a very small minority of the population. So why is it the standard?

More often, human beings have seemingly needless appetites. Considering the sheer mind-numbing toil of everyday life, this shouldn’t be frowned upon. Before looking down your nose at the homeless addict asking for money, consider your own appetites. If crack, heroin, meth, pot, and painkiller abuse were the norm; and booze, cigarettes, fast food, TV-watching, and psych medications were illegal, you’d be asking strangers for a buck and sleeping by the side of the road instead of him.