Whether you are a subsistence farmer in Africa, a poor fisherman in Bangladesh, or a rich CEO in America, life is all down to random chance. God has nothing to do with your color or your success, or otherwise, in life. You have caring parents who have nurtured and educated you? Well, aren’t you lucky? You could equally have found yourself the child of a slum dweller in Rio. Life is a lottery. Those who make money and think god is with them are deluded. They were there at the right time and the right place, had the right parents and the right schooling and maybe had the IQ to recognize an opportunity when they saw one. But it is all chance and the random gift of nature.

We therefore have to have the humility to admit our luck and have empathy and care for those for whom a silver spoon is sadly missing in their lives.

Epicurus would disapprove of the so-called “self-made” men who “do it all themselves”. They never do do it all themselves, not without schools, roads, a legal system Andall the other things that taxpayers have paid for and which make a modern nation.