The Affordability of Intellect
It is more or less common knowledge that those who are hungry do not have capacity to think about anything other than their hunger. Those who are poor are too focused on making their ends meet for survival reasons, with no time to divert attention elsewhere. Thus hunger and poverty unfortunately correlate to lack of sophisticated arts, deep-level thinking, and a non-pluralistic society where the needs of everyday life overwhelm all else that the human mind is capable of achieving. Unfortunately, in many part of Southeast Asia, as is the case for elsewhere in the world, lack of economic development maintains such harsh reality.