You live in one of the most developed parts of the world. You have access to the best healthcare and the latest technology and your country’s life expectancy is amongst the highest in the world thanks to the conventional science and medicine your public institutions adhere to. Yet you don’t know what conventional science and medicine means.
You live in one of the freest countries on the planet, with no worries about the secret police or imprisonment for freely expressing yourself in whichever way you can conceive of. Yet you think you’re a freedom fighter for protesting against mandatory pieces of cloths on your face, or anytime a social media platform whose terms you’ve agreed to and violated removes your blabber. Overseas violations of basic rights such as right to life, freedom of speech or of sexual orientation don’t touch you, as you’ve never really experienced them.
You have access to the best education system in the world and endless opportunities to develop professionally and make real change in the world. Yet you choose to do research in your bedroom, not in a lab, and preach on Facebook and Twitter, not in a city hall, on how you can’t trust the government. All whilst collecting Starbucks points and stickers for your £1500 worth laptop.
You have one of the strongest passports in the world, giving you access to travel unrestrictedly around the globe. And when you get to less developed countries you can’t help but express how free you feel and how much happier people are with less, whilst completely ignoring all of their problems. But it’s okay, as you will soon start teaching them English, Yoga, or Afro-Dancing and then perhaps make an online course of how you’ve beaten the 9-5.
You were born in this vastness of privilege yet you seem completely blind to it as every day that passes you take it for granted it a little bit more, one post and tweet at a time. You don’t see colours, don’t see sexism, don’t see racism. You being ignorant and not realising you’re ignorant does not make you less of an ignorant. People walk and swim for thousands of miles and most of them die just to get a taste of the privilege you are born with.
Your ignorance is not bliss. Your Ignorance is an insult and disrespect to all the people that have been exploited, murdered and have died over the course of millennia just so that you can be as privileged as you are currently.
You should not be ashamed of your privilege , but grateful for it. You should be ashamed of your ignorance.
Yours,
An Easterner
