Imagine scientists are performing an experiment on resource hoarding in mice. They give a surplus of food to one set of mice and very little food to the others. Perhaps they keep the offspring of the wealthy mice separate, giving the poorer mice less and less, then after a few generations they reintroduce the two sets.

What if, hypothetically, upon seeing the others starving and unable to feed their offspring or themselves, the wealthy mice immediately became more guarded and started hoarding increasing amounts of food within sight of the others.

Imagine if, despite the fact that there was enough food to comfortably feed everyone, the ones who started with more made the choice to hoard the resources to the detriment of the others. The experiment would demonstrate a worrying lack of empathy and would probably be used to highlight a discrepancy between the compassionate nature of humanity, and the selfishness of animals.

In reality that experiment might go a completely different way. Mice are actually quite empathetic creatures who have been shown to respond to the pain and fear of other mice, but it's interesting how resource hoarding sounds significantly more cruel and evil when we take away the structures, titles and celebrity which normalise and justify it within our society.

Oscar Wilde once said of charity that it “is not a solution [to poverty]: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.” This rings out in my head like the tolling of some monotonous perpetual bell whenever I see glossy, curated footage of celebrities engaging in charitable pursuits, seemingly unable to anticipate anything other than fawning gratitude from their audience.

Make no mistake, though........

© Herald Scotland