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.

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Some people may say that I can afford to contribute to culture because I am privileged.

That is correct. I am privileged. I am using that situation to contribute to the world what I have to contribute, that I wouldn’t have been able to contribute if I was less privileged.

Some people see the kind of education I’ve had to be something that's given to someone. In fact education takes hard work. I worked my ass off in school, doing 4 hours of homework a day and learning all sorts of material that is difficult to learn. If
I am privileged, in many ways I have earned it.

There will always be someone more privileged than you, and there will always be someone less privileged than you. In either situation what matters is not the background but what one is doing with it. In China, people are less privileged than they are in
the West; but they are working very hard to rise to a commensurate lifestyle. Whereas there are people in America who think that they are poor when in fact they are richer than most people in the world. And many of these people appeal to their victim
history and their perceived poverty to do ugly things to one another and everyone else.

In my case, I have taken the opportunity afforded by my privilege to do valuable things. I translated a vast body of Russian poetry into English, including full sets of poetry by two major Russian poets. I have my name on a patented invention. I used to
be in computers. I gave up on looking for work in that industry because I don’t see how I can compete against a man from India who can do the same job for $6000 a year and has a master’s degree. However I haven’t stopped contributing, and work that
I’ve performed in translation of Russian poetry was a greater contribution than what I made when I was in computers.

In my case, I am taking the opportunity afforded by my privilege to make valuable contributions that I otherwise would not have been in a position to make. And that is the best application of privilege that one can expect.

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