Unknown Egyptian Artist of the Ptolemaic Period
Statue of Horus
(332–30 BCE)

"Prosperity won't necessarily make anything easy, but it might render pretty much everything easier."

I began this series by classifying Prosperity as probably the goal, the attainment of which might serve as at least a prominent sub-theme of this work, if not the underlying purpose. In the week and a half since I started this effort, though, my perspective has shifted. What if Prosperity doesn’t qualify as an endpoint objective? Perhaps it works better if I consider it to be Foundational, table stakes in a larger, more dynamic puzzle. Would anyone be satisfied with a static and stable Prosperity, or would achieving it not open up otherwise unimaginable possibilities? Abraham Maslow long ago proposed what he labeled a Hierarchy of Needs. In it, he imagined human needs arrayed from lower to higher. He speculated that before satisfying the lower-order needs, the higher-order ones might remain out of reach. For instance, nobody seriously pursues enlightenment on an empty stomach, or so he insisted. In practice, of course, enlightenment might be best pursued on an empty stomach, and something else must propel a novice to chase after higher forms of consciousness. But what if—and I’m not insisting, like Maslow did, that this must be the case—what if I’m better off imagining Prosperity as being one of those lower-order needs as opposed to being of the highest order? What might happen then?

Prosperity becomes more a context than a purpose.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz