The hierarchy

 

It’s a pyramidal socio-economic structure. At its any given point, there are less (in numbers) luckier people above and more (in numbers) unluckier ones below. That’s almost a natural law.

Prosperity softly narrowing down to a point at the apex; poverty and misery broadening to cover the entire earth. The ribald splutters of some unjustifiable, cruel derivation of the unknown cosmic laws. Millions on the burning, hammering anvil as a prelude to small shapes of luck for the chosen few. And mother existence looking with a kind of pre-selected apathy. Mass austerity for little lucrative fates.

Wherever you are placed, just analyze your standing in socio-economic terms. You will find that for dozens of luckier people (let’s say better placed people—both on account of inheritance and hard work), there are hundreds who are placed lower than you mostly by the accidents of birth, by being born in more challenging situations. Wherever you are situated, you are still standing on the soil of myriads of unluckier fates.

The baseline comprises teeming billions who are cast in the same mould of poverty, hunger, misery and numerous other disadvantages. They symbolize loss and pain itself. They are the benchmark. They have the luckier and unluckier ones only among themselves. There is absolutely no one below them as a class or group. They are the base field for any windfall, any successful parley, any congratulatory word buzzing around, any precursor to smile, any tiny step leading to quantum leap, any ounce of progress, growth and development in the world above them. They are the broad canvas of pain on which a few pictures of pleasure are drawn by the unknown hand. 

The same applies for the few odd people at the pyramid’s apex. They have nothing to look up above their heads. The well-heeled elitists can just look within their peer group for some relative perspectives. But for the majority in the pyramid, it’s just dozens of luckier people and thousands of unluckier ones.