Relative Hardness
There is a famous anecdote about Voltaire and a whinger. The latter complained to the philosopher, "Life is hard!"
Voltaire replied, "Compared to what?"
It's an interesting reply, and one worth worrying about. It's possible to compare life to life in some ways. But what I've been thinking is that if you're a university student, you're already in the top 10% of the world's population. There simply aren't many people being educated in universities as a percentage of the world's masses.
One estimate of the current enrollment of students worldwide at the tertiary level is 150 million. Compared to the total world population of about 6.8 billion, that's 2.2% of the world. The current enrollment is the highest it's ever been; one forecast says that at this rate, India alone will need 2400 new universities to educate all those who might meet the current criteria for entry to a university.
It's probably quite accurate to say also that the top 2% of the world's population owns about 50% of the world's assets; that's what this UN study claimed about the world in the year 2000. The same study points out that if you had US$2,200 worth of assets, that made you richer than the average human being; US$61,000 would have put you in the top 10%.
My conclusion is that if you are debt-free (or tolerably so) and own a house or apartment in an alpha or beta world city (or you are a member of a small family that owns one), and if you also have a university education or are a university student, then you are blessed beyond any kind of complaint you might want to make.
Voltaire replied, "Compared to what?"
It's an interesting reply, and one worth worrying about. It's possible to compare life to life in some ways. But what I've been thinking is that if you're a university student, you're already in the top 10% of the world's population. There simply aren't many people being educated in universities as a percentage of the world's masses.
One estimate of the current enrollment of students worldwide at the tertiary level is 150 million. Compared to the total world population of about 6.8 billion, that's 2.2% of the world. The current enrollment is the highest it's ever been; one forecast says that at this rate, India alone will need 2400 new universities to educate all those who might meet the current criteria for entry to a university.
It's probably quite accurate to say also that the top 2% of the world's population owns about 50% of the world's assets; that's what this UN study claimed about the world in the year 2000. The same study points out that if you had US$2,200 worth of assets, that made you richer than the average human being; US$61,000 would have put you in the top 10%.
My conclusion is that if you are debt-free (or tolerably so) and own a house or apartment in an alpha or beta world city (or you are a member of a small family that owns one), and if you also have a university education or are a university student, then you are blessed beyond any kind of complaint you might want to make.
etched with acid at 2:30:00 am
2 Comments:
Yeah, I hold that view too. But sometimes it's hard to do so without trivialising others' worries/loneliness etc.
I don't think of it as trivialising others' worries and lonelinesses... I think of it as this: that anybody can have worries and be lonely, but it takes a kind of sad modern sensibility to be more worried and more lonely than someone who is far worse off than you.
It all comes back down to trying our best not to conform to the pattern of the world (or as Newton put it, the system of the world). And it's OK to whinge, as long as one remembers Voltaire's response... :)
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