There are people who envy me, because I am more privileged than they are. My response is that there will always be people more fortunate than you, and there will always be people less fortunate than you. I may be more privileged than these people, but they are more privileged than the folks in Nigeria.

I attended an elite private school on a full scholarship. Being an immigrant I was poorer than most other students. However I do not covet what they have. The tenth commandment is, Thou shalt not covet. And I do not, even though I know many people who are more fortunate than me.

I know that, compared to most of the rest of the world, I am privileged. I use that situation to do work that results in benefit for many other people.. I don’t complain about my life; indeed I would find it obscene to complain about my life. Sometimes people mistake the social analysis that I write for whining or blaming. No; it is analysis of major issues impacting upon many people.

As for education, it is not something that is merely given a person. Real education takes hard work. I busted my ass in school, doing 4 hours of homework a day and learning all sorts of material that is difficult to learn. There were people there who attacked me, saying that my academic knowledge was worthless and that all that mattered in life were common sense and social skills. I learned social skills later in life. As for common sense, I do not want it. I want real knowledge and real understanding.

What many people don’t understand is that, even in privileged situations, there can be problems. I had a difficult home situation and a difficult school situation. I never had to put up with severe violence, but there were other things that people did that were just as destructive. Some of it was done by people more fortunate than me, and some was done by people less fortunate than me. In either case it was not nice.

Bad things can happen even to the most privileged people. I was with a woman descended from British loyalty whose husband of 15 years made her spend 6 hours a day cleaning their mansion and came at her with fists if he found a speck of dust on the floor. Everyone expected that woman to be perfect. The less-privileged women would think that she had everything. In fact her life was very difficult, and what was the most difficult, once again, was the expectation that she be perfect. Most disadvantaged women do not have such expectations placed on them.

It is most certainly valid for the more privileged to reach out to, and help, the less privileged. What is not valid is hatred on the other end. By historical standards, all people in the West are privileged. And it does not mean that people in places such as Nigeria should hate the West.