Today, I saw a proud man driving a shiny red Ferrari and was reminded how extravagance is too often a source of pride and envy.

In a modern world where an estimated 25,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger related causes (source: http://www.poverty.com/) and by the time you’ve read this, another person has also died to add to this faceless, yet horrific statistic, then I really think that extravagance should not be glorified at all, but should be regarded as a source of real shame.

Don’t get me wrong, hard work and genius should be rewarded (there’s a case to argue that genius is in itself a reward), but when we have people – mostly children – dying every few seconds, then there is no way our species should be content with the way we live our lives.

I suppose extravagance is a matter of perspective, there are those that own private cruise ships with built in helipads to those that are victims to designer brands – and of course Mr Ferrari guy.

It’s at this point that I recognise that I am to some degree a righteous hypocrite, and appreciate that something external – and dare I say internal – moulds us into this way of behaving.

I too often crave for the latest smartphone and the gimmicks that I mistakenly think will improve my life (yes, I’m with down with the latest Facebook updates, but forget the last time I spent quality time with my real friends. That’s another story though).

Even worse, when I travelled to China, along with the rest of the wave, I walked past badly disfigured beggar children laying face first in the floor and – other than tangible pangs of guilt – not tried to help more than throwing some loose change.  In an ideal world, nobody – especially children – should be in this situation. Anybody who witnessed this should have cared for that child as if they were their own son or brother. Instead, these kids are by in large ignored and avoided very much like excrement on the pavement.

So, I’m no true Samaritan.

But I do recognise how tragic it all is and that we can’t continue to condone a society that fosters greed, rewards with gratuitous extravagance and forgives wanton waste while at the forgotten end, innumerable lives – each so precious – are lost forever.

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