Question I am from a developing country, a poor country, a very populated country. We live a hard life here. People often say westerners have a life while we only do the living, or according to one of my friends, we only do the breathing. I still remember a line from a popular song here: are we changing the world or changed by the world? And my friend gave me the answer: being an American means one is changing the world while being a non-American means one is changed by the world. So what is the meaning of life for a man living in a developing country anyway?

Accepted:
August 19, 2010

Comments

Whatever meaning life may have, it does not vary depending on where one lives. There is the saying, I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is better, and no doubt that is true, but wherever we live or however wealthy our environment, the basic issues of life and death do not vary. It is also worth remembering that many people in the West are very poor, and come from communities which have persisted in poverty for generations. Changing the world is no big deal, and really does nothing to increase one's enjoyment of living, nor of life itself.

In terms of income, the panelists on this site by and large belong to humanity's top ventile (5%) -- where the average income is 9 times the global average. This is roughly 300 times more than what is available to people in the bottom quarter, where average income is about 1/32 of the global average. (The difference is still about 100:1 if one adjusts for purchasing power parities.) Moreover, people in the bottom quarter typically work longer hours in more exhausting jobs, and have about 20 to 30 fewer years of life. So, yes, those among whom you live do not enjoy anything like our opportunities to live a full human life, anything like our freedom to learn, think, enjoy, and be creative.

These huge discrepancies are profoundly unjust, and it would be good if many people in the more affluent countries used their much greater powers to change the world toward overcoming such injustice. Unfortunately, this is not happening, though some are trying. Those who have most power to contribute to change also have the least vivid sense of how urgently such change is needed.

So I think your friend is wrong, and wrong on both counts. Being affluent does not mean changing the world -- most affluent people make no effort to promote justice or any other greatly needed or otherwise important changes. And being poor does not mean not changing the world. Think of the Manchester dock workers who helped end slavery. Think of the millions who marched with Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Think of those who denied the US victory in Vietnam. Think of the garment workers in Bangladesh who just won an 80% raise in the minimum wage (from $25 to $45 per month), thereby lifting the spirits and in due time the wages of millions of grievously exploited workers in other poor countries. Ideally, of course, rich and poor should change the world together, toward reducing poverty and injustice, and toward preserving the health and beauty of our planet and its many species. Realistically, I would expect at least as much of a contribution to needed changes form the world's poor as from the world's affluent who, despite their much greater freedoms and capacities, typically find the status quo morally quite tolerable. I won't pass judgment on those who feel they are too poor to help change the world. But I do think it wrong, both empirically and morally, to count out the poor as important agents in human history.