{"id":12,"date":"2004-08-02T21:48:33","date_gmt":"2004-08-03T01:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/wasim\/2004\/08\/02\/in-the-land-of-plenty\/"},"modified":"2006-06-07T13:59:44","modified_gmt":"2006-06-07T17:59:44","slug":"in-the-land-of-plenty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/2004\/08\/02\/in-the-land-of-plenty\/","title":{"rendered":"In the land of plenty"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>as-salaamu ‘alaikum<\/p>\n

Today I picked up some surveys for a really noble project that I\u00a0initially didn’t ever plan to join.\u00a0 The idea is to create a free health clinic for everyone in Cambridge, and I am trying to gather survey responses from shelters in the Central Square area.<\/p>\n

Reading through the dozen responses I have so far, I find myself thinking about the individuals who completed the surveys.\u00a0\u00a0Despite good spelling and an education, each of these individuals are in\u00a0really difficult situations that have forced them to end up at a shelter.\u00a0 I know so little about these people and their needs that I don’t really understand how one comes to the position where a shelter seems like the best sanctuary.\u00a0 I feel so ignorant.\u00a0 Several of the responses said that\u00a0they were very\u00a0dissatisfied with free health care and, for example, were not able to see a dentist for several months despite continuous pain.\u00a0 This, in the city of Mass General, Harvard Medical, Beth Israel… ?<\/p>\n

There is so much wealth in this city\/state\/country and yet there’s still so much suffering.\u00a0 Why is man so eternally ungrateful for what God has given him?\u00a0 Why\u00a0do we\u00a0turn a blind eye to those\u00a0who need th most help in society, while we spend so\u00a0frivolously?<\/p>\n

How can those of us who are concerned help to increase awareness by creating a welfare ethic in society?\u00a0 I know it is human nature to help someone in need — I am convinced we all have an innate desire to be charitable — but in contemporary society where we don’t know each others names and rarely ask about one anothe, how is it possible?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

as-salaamu ‘alaikum Today I picked up some surveys for a really noble project that I\u00a0initially didn’t ever plan to join.\u00a0 The idea is to create a free health clinic for everyone in Cambridge, and I am trying to gather survey responses from shelters in the Central Square area. Reading through the dozen responses I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":304,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[604],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beliefs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/304"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/wasim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}