The luxury of not being hungry

Some of us have got the luxury of not being hungry (J.S. - más de cien palabras).

I can go and get ice cream whenever I want to. I can quit my job because I'm going through a delayed stage of teenage indecision.

I never worry about where I'm going to sleep.

I don't have to get my hands dirty to get food. I don't have to squat down, bend my back and sink my hands into brown soil to sow or to reap. If I ever decide to get my hands dirty it is out of a romantic urge to feel the land - to be able to say "you the bourgeoisie" and "we the people".

In the end, though, I am privileged. I can seriously contemplate buying a $1,000 usd plane ticket to half-way around the world - a plane ticket that represents significantly more than the yearly income of half the people living on this planet; a plane that will spew unconceivable amounts of CO2 into the air. I've even been privileged to have Nobel Prize winner Mario Molina explain climate change - its causes and effects - in a rather personal (though not exclusive) encounter.

Maybe my vegetarianism and my urban bike-riding are nothing but a fashionable façade. A cheap and chic way to buy myself a conscience. Like a skyscraper that destroyed a park but justifies its existence through a roof garden and "intelligent" energy use.

For all effects and purposes, I'm part of the "leisure class" as described by Thorstein Vebler. In my everyday life I need not get my hands soiled, nor worry about food (Stephen Morison has an interesting treaty on this). I get to sit in front of a computer and attend meetings and say that I'm saving the world.

Trying to justify myself, I can innocently shield myself in a dubious interpretation of John Rawls' Theory of Justice: what I truly wish for, is for everyone on this earth to have the same opportunities as me.

The base-line for humanity should be my lifestyle: we should all have the luxury of not being hungry.