The Lost Inheritance - Chapter Headings

Chapter 1: My Career Gone

It seems to be a cherished belief in Western society that if you get a good education and work hard then wealth and well-being are bound to follow. My career has been an irrefutable and painful demonstration of the fact that this is simply not true.

Chapter 2: A Point Of View

Society promotes - often enforces - a collective point of view. But a point of view is, by definition, a view from one point: a single position in time and space, a place in the social order. The only valid point of view is therefore that of the individual.

Chapter 3: The Vital Key

For true communication of a point of view, writer and reader must share not only the same language, but also a common perception of reality. Since no two people can ever experience life identically, perfect communication is impossible. Misunderstanding is inevitable.

Chapter 4: A Futile Chore

The blind bureaucratic rules forced upon me by unemployment have locked me into an endless iterative procedure which can't possibly succeed. For ten years this has dissipated my meagre resources which, under the control of my own better judgement could long ago have freed me from this miserable state.

Chapter 5: Staying Alive

It is reasonable to expect us to make cut-backs and accept reduced living standards during times of recession. But how far can the domestic belt be tightened before graceful degradation becomes functional amputation?

Chapter 6: Poverty Sticks

A capital economy embodies a nasty self-latching mechanism which ensures that once you become poor, you remain poor. To break the chains of poverty it is therefore necessary to venture beyond the frontiers of conventional economics.

Chapter 7: Relative Heaven

I am told that, compared to the poor of the Third World, my poverty is only relative. But that does not justify my poverty. Neither is it true. Human needs are absolute. They are also extremely complex. We are both poor, but in different ways.

Chapter 8: The Family Estate

All human beings have the same basic needs. But most are denied the means of providing them, while a favoured few possess such means in unnecessary and obscene abundance. The consequential disparity of wealth breeds dichotomy of thought which inevitably leads to conflict.

Chapter 9: The Historical Line

We live on a planet which is able to provide the needs of its 6 billion inhabitants 6 times over. But we live in a world which, while providing unbelievable wealth for some, sentences most to the depths of poverty. What has forced history to follow this line of ever-growing disparity?

Chapter 10: The Capital Men

Despite the hard efforts of many morally-motivated social reformers, unrestrained free-market capitalism is enveloping the globe at an ever-quickening pace. But how does it work? And what will be the final consequences for the common inhabitants of Planet Earth?

Chapter 11: To Each Must Be Given

6,000 million human beings collectively share this planet's 130 million square kilometres of habitable land. Natural justice suggests that this bounteous heritage should be apportioned to each of us in a way which would ensure that the needs of life were provided in fair measure to all.

Chapter 12: The Job We All Shelve

Under capitalism, one is either over-worked or unemployed. One either has no time or no money. In the struggle to hold a job or make ends meet, most permanently shelve the most important thing in life: of seeking answers to the questions posed by the very existence of human consciousness.