Which isn’t to say that wealth, or privilege, or certain behavioral traits (namely reserved or retiring ones) are abhorrent in themselves, but only that the momentum of modern society, at least in America, with the cultural values that are particular to it, has produced the conditions in which the individual is encouraged not to see, in those around him, the image of himself and of his maker (so that he might treat others with disinterested love, and a charity that is active and energized, and not afraid to exhaust itself on a world that needs it), but to view them instead, in the best case scenario, as persons who can be categorized by interests, or persuasions, and who thus can be separated into groups that the individual mentally or subconsciously keeps track of, in order to measure his margin of victory or loss against (so that these groups will forever, at least for that individual, remain ‘otherized’), and, in the worst case scenario, to view them as competitors for some ephemeral or ever-shifting prize that is defined materially, or in terms of reputation, or political clout, so that the individual finds himself always dissatisfied, and unable to relate to anyone except as they are ahead of him or behind him in a race that is spiritually vacuous, and that disguises itself with words like ‘progress’ or ‘freedom.’