African Einstein
During TED there was a lot of sniping online. People were jealous because they’d never been invited to attend or people were jealous because they’d never be able to afford to attend. People were bitchy about those who go to TED calling them elitist, smug, self-serving etc.
My take on it is very, very different indeed.
I think the reason why TED attracts such interesting and amazing people is due, directly, to the fact that, though it’s very expensive, one’s ability to pay doesn’t guarantee an invitation. There seems to be a typical ‘TED person’: intelligent, interesting, positive, socially aware, altruistic, passionate, emotional, wealthy. That, I believe, is the order in which those traits matter at TED. ‘Wealth’ as the single guarantee of entry would make it a very, very different experience and one that the rest of us wouldn’t care about attending. The thing that sets TED apart from every other important human gathering is the sheer abundance of the previous traits in people.
To be jealous based purely upon the idea of ‘wealth’, I believe, is entirely misguided. What people should be jealous of is that they mightn’t be as intelligent, interesting, positive, socially aware, altruistic, passionate and emotional as the typical ‘TED person’. I know a lot of wealthy people, very wealthy people, but I know very, very few people of the type I met at TED. So please, be jealous of all of those other traits first before ‘wealth’ enters your mind.
One of the reasons why ‘wealth’ is important, however, is the TED Prize. Without the wealth given freely by TEDsters, the TED Prize wouldn’t exist. Every year TED gives three people $100,000 and a ‘wish to change the world’. This year the TED Prize winners were Karen Armstrong, Dave Eggers and Neil Turok. All of their wishes are interesting and compelling- and Dave Eggers’ talk was excellent!- but Brian and I have volunteered to help with Neil Turok’s wish: “My wish is that you help us unlock and nurture scientific talent across Africa, so that within our lifetimes we are celebrating an African Einstein.”
Thursday night after the TED Prizes were announced we talked to Neil at the dinner and met with a couple of graduates from the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) started by Neil. We spoke to Shehu AbdusSalam who is doing his PhD at Cambridge in the Theoretical High Energy Physics Group (he recognised Brian immediately and they talked a lot about CERN). We also spoke to Tendai Mugwagwa who is doing her PhD at Utrecht University doing mathematical modeling of T-cells for HIV research. We had a brilliant time with them and were very interested to hear more about AIMS.
The next day we attended Neil Turok’s TED Prize Lunch for everyone who was interested in helping out with his wish. This was where we were able to write down how we might be able to help out. Brian volunteered to lecture at AIMS for a term; I volunteered my online marketing and social networks experience. Neil isn’t the only one who is looking for ‘geek skills’, but I believe the potential impact on the world from his wish is immense.
Now, this isn’t just for people who attended TED, anyone can volunteer to help out. Like, say, you.
Neil is specifically asking for:
- Individual and corporate commitments of expertise to help build the proposed network of AIMS centers, including project management and management consultancy, academic/teaching, legal, financial/auditing, IT, PR, property development, diplomatic expertise/connections, design.
- A team to build the Next Einstein from Africa website, maximizing use of simple or open-source technologies and designed to be fully operable by AIMS.
- A production company to travel to Cape Town to film and interview young African scientists (around the May 12, 2008, launch) to create core content for the website
- Vital material support in the form of computers, communications and Internet equipment, books, software, office equipment, security equipment.
- Help getting governments, universities, companies, foundations, rock stars, etc. on board the campaign
- Marketing and creative campaign help
- Media partners
- PR
- Endowments, sponsorships, funding
So, I’d like to ask you to be intelligent, interesting, positive, socially aware, altruistic, passionate and emotional and help make Neil Turok’s wish come true. It can be as small as volunteering to help out with their website or as big as getting your employer to fund one student at AIMS per year (if I remember correctly, that’s only £5000 a year) or 5 students or 10 or, if you are a scientist, perhaps you’d want to lecture there for a term or, if you are a film-maker, volunteer to go out to film at AIMS or maybe you are none of those things, but you know someone who is, tell them. Just go to Neil’s TED Prize page have a read of his whole wish and press the ‘offer help’ button.
So, you mightn’t ever be able to attend the 4 day TED conference, but you can join in on the important things TED does during the other 361 days of the year.
**EDIT**
Neil Turok’s talk is up.
Sorry, I may have missed the point, but isn’t wealth still a major barrier to attending the TED conferences? $6,000/year is way beyond the reach of us ‘non-TED people’. Regardless of whatever superhuman activities occur at TED, it is still effectively a modern day Gentlemen’s club. Shame really, as many with a genuine passion for something tend to forgo the acquisition of personal wealth.
To be honest, I don’t really understand why so much money is asked for. According to the website, conference membership is limited to 1300 people a year? Well we’re talking millions of dollars now aren’t we? So why is only $300,000 given out, and why is it given to such needy people as Bill Clinton and Bono?
The results are perhaps honourable, but the intentions certainly are not. It is like a scaled up version of a £2 a month appeal or something. The ideas are certainly as half-baked; what is so special about Africa (in it’s usual ambiguous form I see) or, for that matter, Einstein (apart from the ‘fantastic’ headline)? I would suggest that we have already seen many ‘Africans’ with the same intelligence as Einstein, it’s just that they often (and understandably) have little interest in Physics as well as a poor education to boot. Plus there is the usual problem that modern physics is not really a field which allows for people to rise to prominence as Einstein could in his time. It would be much more realistic and worthwhile to look for the next Ramanujan, African or otherwise.
But I still love reading your blog Gia-cheers!
I don’t know the ins and outs of the cost of putting on TED, *but*…. 30 speakers doing 18 minutes each. All, I would assume, are flown at least business class from wherever they are located. There were quite a few non-Americans so let’s say $6000 per flight for each of them. Then hotels for all of them for 4 nights. Ours was a fantastic suite. I’d assume every other speaker’s was the same. Then the cost of the whole conference centre and several suites for press interviews etc – which wouldn’t have been cheap – and TONS of rooms at the Marriott across the road for lunches, TED University, press interviews etc. THEN the cost of the nightly dinners for 1000+ people – not only the food, but the venues, transport etc…
It adds up. Quickly.
*THEN* included in the $6000, I believe, is attendance at the other TED conferences which have started up – TEDAfrica, TEDIndia and TEDGlobal (next one: 2009 in Oxford).
Also, let’s be blunt, if one wants to attract the caliber of speaker such as Geldof or Al Gore, you really can’t have a bunch of plebs dorking out on it all.
Re: African Einstein. Ramanujan. Who’s heard of him? That’s actually a serious question. If one wants to get people to help educate Africans (you’re correct about African education being inferior, hence the project), then who, apart from those ‘into’ science or maths will have heard of Ramanujan? Why would anyone say, ‘Let’s find the next Ramanujan’? Surely, one wants to attract the attention of as many people as possible.
Also, tell me: why can’t an African make as great a cultural impact as a Western European?
If anyone wants to help an “Einstein” who actually needs it, look into the case of Celia Green. She’s right there in the UK, she’s not hypothetical, she’s actually seeking support and has been for decades, and she’s intellectual dynamite.
So Geldof and Al Gore (peace be upon them) will save the world, but only if they can fly business class? Can you not see why people hate TED now? Millions of dollars, but less than 5% (3k/6m) of it is actually spent on the target audience? That has to be the most inefficient charity in the world. Fat cat celebrities with an excuse to pamper themselves in 4* hotels, but it’s ok because the remaining $300,000 will find the next Einstein in Africa.
RE: Ramanujan. So basically, I am right. Finding the next ‘African Einstein’ IS all about headlines? Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment; why HAVE so few heard of Ramanujan? Why have so few heard of the Indian who came from one of the poorest backgrounds, and with no formal mathematical training shattered the ivory towers of Cambridge? Why had so few heard of this prime (mathematical joke there) example of an ‘African Einstein’? Because the same establishments that exist today (i.e. celebrities) have as little imagination as the establishments of his day.
James, re: business class. Can I ask how old you are, what job you do, how often you travel? You’re not seriously suggesting that Al Gore flies economy, are you? Really? If so, then you must be a student or never travel or do a desk job for local government or something.
When I’ve flown anywhere for work I’ve flown business. I think I only *once* flew economy. I was 22, went to NYC, my row was empty anyway. *I* wouldn’t be happy if I was expected to fly economy for work- you need to be fully rested when you land, not disheveled, exhausted and needing several days to be on top form. To suggest that world-famous people who do a lot more traveling than I do for work ‘turn right’ when they get on the plane is absolutely ludicrous.
Maybe you’d like to start educating the world about Ramanujan then while AIMS gets on with finding the cleverest kids across Africa, giving them a world class education and then sending them out to do their PhDs.
Mitchell, the idea behind AIMS is to ‘help Africans help themselves’. We all know that education is the key to wealth. The idea of AIMS is to find the cleverest kids across the continent and give them the kind of education they wouldn’t get otherwise.
Celia Green (who I hadn’t heard of before) already has an Oxford education. Her issue is probably more a PR one than anything… and I don’t think you’d get me supporting someone who, as I’ve read, is anti-women, I’m afraid. No matter how ‘clever’ they may be. :)
Also, I could decide to amend my post by saying that “a typical ‘TED person’is intelligent, interesting, positive, socially aware, altruistic, passionate, emotional and therefore wealthy.”
If you must know; I am a 21 y.o. Masters student is who is struggling to pay for his course fees as well as a £600 pound holiday to Spain (my first in 4 years) for my girlfriend and I (actually, she’s struggling to pay for the holiday-oops). Of course I am not suggesting that Al Gore suffers the trials and tribulations of flying in economy, just that the whole of concept of TED is fundamentally flawed. If you want to carry out charity work, then do just that. Don’t spends millions of dollars flying people (*celebrities*) across the world and give the small change that is left over to the Africans. Hey, we have the internet now right?
Please tell me how you will find the cleverest kids across Africa? IQ tests for everyone across the continent? Actually scrap that, how would you get that next Einstein to produce the grand unified theory, because that’s what they’ll have to do. Are they not much more likely to turn there intelligence to the poverty and human rights problems in their own countries, rather than care for some western idealistic dream? Oh and I don’t wish to educate the world about Ramanujan, I just wish that celebrities would stop moaning that the next Einstein could be out there, but they’re just too poor to be seen. Have some imagination and pick someone else, for just once, stop caring about whether or not everyone can see your flashy headline.
So the majority attending TED are wealthy simply because they are intelligent? Hmm, if only I lived in the same just society that you do. For me, being dead clever like I am (*raises chin*), I’d rather give the $6000 to a stranger in the street and make them happy rather than spend 4 days having to listen to Al Gore whine on about how good he is.
“I am a 21 y.o. Masters student is who is struggling to pay for his course fees as well as a £600 pound holiday to Spain.”
You’ve explained everything in that sentence.
I could be your mother – legally, even in the States. :) When you reach my age, I would hope that you aren’t still struggling financially to have your only holiday in 4 years and that when someone wants to put you on a 10 hour flight for work that they make sure you’re in business. And I would hope that when you’re my age, you will understand the usefulness of not being squashed in the back of the plane when you’ve got to land and immediately start working.
In the meantime, remember that the only reason you can take a £600 holiday to Spain is that a large part of the cost of the flight is paid for by first and business class passengers. (Also, if flights were only first or business class and didn’t pack in so many people on cheap tickets, it’d be better for the environment- fewer flights, less weight, less fuel! ;)
“So the majority attending TED are wealthy simply because they are intelligent?” No. Not just ‘intelligent’. That’d be silly. ALL of the other things. Yes, there are wealthy people who aren’t ‘positive, socially-aware, altruistic’ etc, but the people at TED *are* those things. As I said in my main post, being wealthy is NOT the only requirement one needs to attend TED. If it was, as I said, it wouldn’t be the kind of conference we’d all want to attend. It would be filled with bankers and businessmen who laugh too loudly and wear ill-fitting suits and whose main aim is earning more money for themselves. :)
Equally, there are a lot of ‘intelligent’ people who aren’t wealthy (though I’d say there are few that are poor, in the West, at least). It is a combination of personality traits that people I met at TED have that I’ve not seen elsewhere in such abundance. Especially, in the UK, which is considerably more negative and still struggling because of its post-war, welfare state mentality.
Would you prefer it if wealthy, influential people *didn’t* use their wealth and influence to improve the world?
Ah I see, mother knows best? Where does that leave my sister, who was a mother at 21?
Of course I have no intention of struggling to find £600 when I am older. I fully expect to see my, and my girlfriend’s, financial situation drastically improve within 3 years when we can finally leave formal training behind and start the career we’ve been aiming for. I accept I am building a debt now in order to provide a better future for myself. But it still does not stop me being jealous of my co-students who have their fees (and holidays!!) paid for them by their parents whilst I am building up debts. It does not stop me feeling slightly miffed that in all respects our lives are equal, except they go to the Far East in the summer whilst I stack crappy shelves. (Kinda like how some can afford to go to the TED conference and some can’t…)
Or, am I guilty of focussing my jealousy on their, or their parent’s, wealth and forgetting what wonderful individuals they all are? Or am I to blame my parents for not being intelligent enough (unlike my friend’s parents, or grandparents etc.) to get rich, even though the state kicked them out of school at 14? Or should I blame my girlfriend’s parents for migrating from Sierra Leone and Jamaica, whilst so carelessly forgetting that life in Britain for their kids would mean living in a 2 bed council flat, shared by 5 people?
Of course not. As I see it, you are the person you are today; I couldn’t care for someone’s personal history (hey, you asked me here). Public school or comprehensive, it’s all the same to me. I hence dislike people labelling themselves or others by anything which is followed by the word ‘class’. However, that does not stop there being a political establishment in the world today.
You can’t seem to see that is exactly who TED caters for. ***Everyone inside TED’s closed doors believes that they deserve to be there, and most frustratingly of all, they all whole heartedly believe they know what is best for everyone else***. Us ‘non-TEDs’ (i.e. ‘norms’) are simply too stupid to help ourselves. Ok, maybe not me here in Britain, but certainly that must be true for those in ‘Africa’. That is exactly why governments such as those in Uganda rely on 50% of their spending power coming from international aid. Is this having a positive or negative effect on economic growth in Uganda? Discuss.
Of course I want those with influence and intelligence to try and do something. Their job is simple; to counter-balance the negative effects of the influential idiots that this world has a habit of producing. From where I am sitting, I’m not sure which camp ‘TED people’ belong to. Meaningful influence rarely need come with wealth, insightful ideas will always travel well. But I do wish those with wealth would exercise their imagination once in a while. Here’s an idea. Why not hold the TED talks in Africa itself, perhaps in Ghana? Then a) It would be cheaper b) The local Ghanaian economy would get a little boost.
PS-the economic argument of business and economic class is simple. Without an economy class, then how would people be able to gauge how expensive business class should be? It’s a bit like ‘Tesco Finest’ and ‘Tesco Value’ in a supermarket. Plus, the more expensive business class is, the more exclusive it becomes and the more spoilt people (or employees!) feel-it is essentially a Veblen good.
PPS-I wonder how many empty first class seats fly across the world everyday? I wonder what that does for the environment?
Last year TEDGlobal was held in Tanzania. From this year, there is going to be an annual TED Africa. They also announced TED India. So, they’d already thought of all that.
Jealousy is so sad and, I think, so British. I remember years ago when I was about 21 and a friend had written a play and got it staged. All of my British friends were seething with jealousy (none of them, by the way, had ever even written a play), my American friend and I were overjoyed for our friend.
I asked my American friend why he thought we weren’t jealous like all the Brits. He said, “It’s cos we think, ‘If she can get a play staged then so can I!’ and they think, ‘If she got a play staged then why can’t I? Bitch.’”
As I said, being jealous about people’s ‘wealth’ is misguided. Aim to be as amazing, brilliant, talented, positive and successful as them and ‘wealth’ will come. Don’t waste your energy being bitter that other people have money and you don’t. And certainly don’t waste your energy trying to tear down the good work that successful people do – who do you expect to benefit by doing that?!
As far as ‘helping Africa’ is concerned, I still stand by my assertion that education is the key to wealth. We learned long ago that ‘hand outs’ don’t work (hence why the UK’s post-war welfare state mindset has created generations of negative, bitter jealousy and laziness ‘If they can have it why can’t I?’). That is why AIMS is an excellent project. If you want to know the ins and outs of it, why not ask Neil Turok (read about who he is first)?
I suspect, James that once you’ve gone through your education and worked very hard to get your Masters which will give you a good chance at starting a decent career and you work hard in order to do well and you move up the ladder and you start earning decent money and you’re able to take a holiday once in a while and you find success and happiness in your life and career, you will start to wonder why some people think it’s appropriate for you to slog your guts out for decades in order to try and build a decent life for yourself, your family and others and then get told that you’re a cunt for doing so.
Misguided.
Interesting article here about why people give to charity.
I am not bitter towards any of my friends and if any of them had a play commissioned (have you met my friends???) then of course I would be happy for them. Their talents are being rewarded, excellent. You see, I am not jealous of the talents of my friends. In fact, with many of my friends, they are jealous of my talents and the position I currently hold (PS-I got a maths BSc last July). Where I do sometimes go on a bit of a downer is when people I know, who are the same age as me (and there is little point in my comparing my position to that of a 40 year old), attending the same course/university/interviews as me (pretty much we have ‘achieved’ the same), go on and on about, for example, the £15,000 car they drive which mummy and daddy bought them. Why should I not be jealous of their car? Their only achievement for getting that car was passing out of a silver lined uterus. What can I be but jealous? I am not wasting energy, nor do I believe there is much more I’d like to have achieved by my age.
Equally, I do not waste energy tearing down the ‘good works’ of others. However, there is no universal truth as to what constitutes good work nor an ethical life. I abjectly refuse to consume animal products, including all by products such as dairy. Everywhere I look, I perceive injustice and suffering; every time I hear someone say how tender the meat of a 6 week old lamb is, I spark up inside. Ideally for me, all cattle farm businesses would be run into the ground, is this good or not? Even if people agree that something requires fixing, why should I not object if I believe the method being instigated is wrong, even if the intentions are good? Am I to stand by and watch the NHS be privatised to solve a critical funding problem, or am I to vote in a government who believes taxes should be raised to solve the problem? Is it ethical to set the tax rate at 40% for the wealthy and let others share their brilliance? (PS-can you explain to me why Davina McCall was paid £1,000,000 for one series of Big Brother UK? Is she really that intelligent, sociable etc.? I am so glad that Eric Clapton was a family friend, just imagine a world without her on TV!?!?!)
One thing I can agree on, and one thing I objectify hate, is lazy ‘good intentions’. Throwing spare change into a charity box is neither well intended nor well though out-such people have no right to pat themselves on the back. Yet this is exactly what TED does. The change that is left over from 4 days of fine wines for 1000 people eventually trickles over to Africa. But even that can be forgiven, after all, good ideas count for a lot more than simple donations (which I gather is the whole principle behind it as very little money seems to come form TED). Indeed, money can’t solve all problems and can actually even make a situation worse. However, what I objectively despise is the attitude that if you have deserve to be there, you will be there-as long as you can afford the entry fee. TED is quite simply a play club of the establishment. Behind it’s closed doors, non-elected, non-representative, self-congratulatory people decide what is best for the poor, for they cannot help themselves.
Of course, being retarded, boring, negative, socially unaware, selfish, dispassionate, unemotional and therefore poor (i.e. a non-TED), I guess I will never understand.
Wow. This is boring.
This is exactly why I think getting myself offline and talking to normal people for a change might be a good idea…. And let everyone online implode in a frenzy of Twittered/commented/blogged sniping.
Aye, but it was fun while it lasted.
Gia, I had to mention Celia Green because she is by far, to the nth degree, the worst case I’ve ever heard of, of manifest high ability going to waste, in a world that manages to spend billions on supporting excellence, seeking breakthroughs, creating opportunity, and so forth. She is basically a road not taken by 20th-century thought, an utterly wasted historical opportunity. So I can forgive her misanthropy, even though it makes things harder.
“You’ve explained everything in that sentence.”
Amusingly, that was also my very first thought.
Excuse me for butting in–I accidentally arrived here through Twitter. Rather than being boring, I find this thread fascinating.
The welfare state does seem to breed a mindset that, by simply existing, people deserve what others have. The thinking goes that poor Johnny should have a Mercedes because little rich Archie drives one. They say that the mere accident of birth shouldn’t entitle Archie to his privileges.
A problem with this line of thinking is that it assumes achievements to come from nowhere. Or that the good things in life are mysteriously allocated to certain groups of people. There is no thought to the effort, cunning, creativity or smarts needed to bring those advantages about.
Believing that everyone deserves the the same probably stems from assuming people are the same. But people are not and never have been. No amount of wealth redistribution will ever change this.
Subscribers to socialism and the welfare state focus so much on wealth. They forget that to create wealth you need excellence on one form or another. A common thread of the TED talks is in humanity’s capacity for excellence.
I suppose that people who think that there’s something wrong in having better, or being better, will probably always be worse off.
‘Subscribers to socialism and the welfare state focus so much on wealth. They forget that to create wealth you need excellence on one form or another.’
It’s hard not to agree with that statement, but the natural question that then arises is, where does the line end? Perhaps the ancestors of Prince Charles were brilliant enough to ensure their rise to royalty, but is he of the same stock? Why him and not Joe from down the road?
There are in fact numerous mathematical models out there that show how, even when all things are initially equal, random fluctuations can result in very uneven distributions. It’s the so called ’20/80′ rule. For example, there is lots of evidence which suggests that 80% of infectious diseases are spread on average by only 20% of a population. This had lead some biologists to theorise the concept of ‘super-spreaders’ as the results can be quite startling, but there is no obvious biological basis to their existence. In fact, on the contrary, mathematical modelling suggests that not only do you not need need super-spreaders, but that their existence would not produce the results seen (largely because you would still have disease being spread by normals).
It’s an open debate, but it’s not too hard to imagine that what applies for epidemiology may apply to, say, the financial markets. On a global scale, it certainly appears to be true that the vast majority of all capital wealth is held by a small percentage of the world’s population. Is the same true for Britain? I would suggest so but, of course, it would be a major leap to suggest that this is solely due to the the ‘random nature’ of Britain’s economic markets. But then why, for example, is my parent’s generation (on average) currently property rich, whilst my generation struggles to climb onto the property ladder? Wasn’t there even a housing recession in the early 90s? You could suggest that your property wealth is a random function of your age. Seems to me that if I was born 15 years earlier (or later, probably) than I was, I’d have found it much easier to get a foot on the property ladder. I’d have money left over to buy that Mercedes then…
James, you are doing a Masters degree. Why? I assume that, at least in part, you feel it will give you an advantage in the workplace. Is that right? What is your motivation for doing that? The ability for you to earn more money than you otherwise would?
Well my basic reason for studying my masters was that whilst I love maths, I wasn’t too sure I wanted to focus in on a career in academia. So, rather than commit to a full-time PhD for the next 3-4 years, I opted to study for a masters, which is becoming ever more a necessity to start a PhD anyway. I’d much rather take on a PhD part-time through the Open University, for which my masters has set me up very nicely, whilst dedicating the majority of my time to pursue the career aspirations I have outside of academia.
Not 100% sure what those career aspirations are but they are somewhere along the lines of (at least for the next 20 years or so) a) work as regional manager for ‘Oxfam’ in West Africa, or b) work within the realms of ‘innovative science and technology’. When I say ‘Oxfam’, I’m not saying that I particularly admire then (nor charity work in general), but the jobs advertised on the website have the particular flavour of what I’d like to do, it’s kind of the ‘dream job’ for me. However, for such a position, I’m going to need something along the lines of ‘5 years management experience’. I’ve explored around a little, and found that being a qualified lawyer for x,y,z firm (as well as a potentially having a doctorate in mathematics) would allow me to aim for a job I would feel worthwhile doing. Hence, my current aim of becoming an intellectual property rights lawyer/construction lawyer and getting myself into a very nice law school for next year. This is great for me because hopefully it will satisfy both my ‘a’ and ‘b’ career paths, but also because I think it will make use of both my numerate skills and non-numerate skills.
I expect, and am secretly quite looking forward to, a significant pay drop by the time I arrive at my ‘dream job’. Although it’s a cliché, I don’t intend on turning a career in law into a money spinner-I’ll be quite happy to quit being a lawyer for the right job. It’d be much easier for me to simply go join a bank now as maths graduate (BSc), my salary would be just fine, but I’d be bored as sin (heck, I could even just start spread-betting on the internet right now). If I am to be wealthy, for there is no shame in wanting to be wealthy, then I don’t really see it coming off the back of my salary. Ideally, any significant wealth I have will come from some fantastic invention I dream up :-D Although, I think having a stint at running my own business could be fun too.
‘…where does the line end? Perhaps the ancestors of Prince Charles were brilliant enough to ensure their rise to royalty, but is he of the same stock? Why him and not Joe from down the road?’
We have no control over what we have when we’re born. To loathe Prince Charles because he was born into wealth is like blaming a slum-dweller’s child for being poor.
Nevertheless, the child can make something of herself and offer her own kids opportunities outside her grandparent’s reach.
Prince Charles is faced with a different set of challenges. He has to safeguard his advantages for Prince William’s grandchildren. Too many stupid princes in a row and everything is lost. (That’s why rich folk have institutions in place to prevent the dumb ones from ruining everything.)
People can say that the slum girl’s challenges are greater than Prince Charles’. Maybe that’s true but it changes nothing. We can spend time complaining about the obstacles brought about by random events. Or we can work to give more opportunities to ourselves and those who come after us.
“…and am secretly quite looking forward to, a significant pay drop by the time I arrive at my ‘dream job’.”
This is something that I don’t understand. Is there something worthwhile or enjoyable about having less money? Perhaps, and I expect this to be true for some people, being poor is a convenient excuse for not having achieved one’s potential.