As humans live in slums, why do I complain about my privileged life?

By David McElroy · August 18, 2017

I’ve had a terrible day. It’s Friday evening after work. I’ve just eaten dinner. I’m sitting in a restaurant feeling frustrated and anger — partly at myself, partly at others.

I’m unhappy about multiple things. I’m lonely. I want to quit my job. I miss someone. I feel alienated from the people around me. I find myself thinking that life hasn’t been fair to me. (I could tell you why. I have plenty of reasons.)

And then I randomly saw this photograph.

Gautam Basu took this photo of an Indian mother and two of her children. The mother is dressing a daughter while a smaller child clings to her. The pipe in which they’re standing is their home.

Basu is a talented amateur photographer who was named Environmental Photographer of the Year in 2011 by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management. This photo was one of the pictures for which he was honored as he captured the real lives of the poor in India.

This family lives in an Indian area called the Pipe Slum. The sections of pipe are pieces that were abandoned after a local city finished a water project. The rest of the slum is shanties built around the pipes. The sections of pipe were waste debris, but they’re everything for the people who live there.

I wasn’t looking for this photo. Even as I see it now, I’d rather not see it. I would rather wallow in my own hurt and anger and discontent.

But as the photo forces me to compare myself to these people, I find it hard to complain.

To see how these people live doesn’t change the things that are making me whine tonight. It doesn’t make me happy. It doesn’t give me the things I crave most. It doesn’t fix the problems of someone I love. It doesn’t give me a path to the productive and creative future I need.

But it does remind me how privileged I am.

I just ate a fine meal and I could have eaten pretty much anything I chose. I will leave here and go to a home that isn’t as fine as I’d like it to be, but it’s safe and secure. It has a roof that keeps me dry. I have air conditioning in the summer and sufficient heat in the winter. I have a fine bed on which to sleep. I have plenty of nice clothes. I have a dependable and comfortable car to get me to the places I need to do.

I worked today at a job that gives me enough income to provide for a middle-class life. I’m employed in an air-conditioned office at work which isn’t physically taxing. I have to privilege of working with people who treat me well and who generally work well together.

I was privileged enough to grow up in a family and a culture where education was expected and provided without question. I am trained in how to act in my society in ways that cause people to treat me with respect.

My life is terrible — inside my worst fears and hurts — but it is the height of luxury by the standards of billions of people around this globe — including the mother and children in this photo.

The fact that some people have things worse than I do doesn’t change anything for me. I still hurt about the same things. I still fear the same things. I still crave the same things.

But how can I whine and feel sorry for myself when I have so much? More importantly, I have the resources and possibilities to change my life. Over time, I can fix much of what’s wrong for me. If I lived in an open concrete pipe in a slum, I might not know where my next meal would come from, much less have the realistic possibility of finding the future love and security which I care so much about.

I don’t feel guilty for having a better life than billions of people do. I would love to have a way to help them pull themselves out of extreme poverty, but I don’t apologize for the middle class American life to which I’ve been born.

But I am vividly aware that I have privileges that many billions of people will never have. Knowing that doesn’t change anything for me, but it reminds me how very fortunate I am to have a future where I can write my own story and change my own life — while I live in absolute luxury by the standards of the world and the standards of human history.

I have to remember not to feel sorry for myself. I have to remember to take advantage of the awesome privileges I’ve been given — and I have to take advantage of them in order to create the love and life and future of my dreams.

I’m thankful to an Indian photographer and an impoverished Indian family for reminding me of that.

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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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