Tuesday, October 13, 2020

How Can I Be Useful For You?

I've been thinking about this for a long time. I haven't still figured out how to execute this. But here's the idea. I'm very privileged, purely by the accident of birth. There are millions of people less privileged than me in many ways. I think the right use of my privileges would be to help bridge the inequities in our society. And for that, I have to start somewhere. I'm doing various things, but I think I'm not doing all I can.

Here's the deal. I'll list down a list of things that I think I can effectively help others in. I'll also list down many of my privileges here. If you aren't as privileged as I am in any one of these, you can feel free to reach out to me on any topic on the first list, and we can work out a way for you to take my time for your own benefit/growth/advantage.

List of things I can work with you on

  1. Learning medicine, learning basic sciences.
  2. Learning programming, learning GNU/Linux system administration.
  3. Learning to use the internet.
  4. Contributing to free software projects.
  5. Writing essays/articles in English, learning English
  6. Conceptualizing research studies in health, academic writing, and publication.
  7. Public speech.

I'm going to be a bit selfish and not list down everything that I can actually do for others. I'm sorry for that. But if you think there's something related to the above but not exactly in the list, we can talk about it.

List of my privileges you can use to compare

By listing something down here, I don't mean to imply that one is better than the other in any way. I just feel certain things have made things easier for me in my life, and I've listed those as privileges.

  1. Being male
  2. Being cisgender
  3. Being heterosexual
  4. Being born in a privileged caste
  5. Being born in an economically stable family
  6. Having my parents alive well into my adulthood
  7. Having young parents
  8. Being born to a doctor
  9. Being born to a teacher
  10. Being born to parents who are in government service
  11. Not having to support family
  12. Being the grandchild of three teachers
  13. Being born in a majority religion
  14. Having access to books from early childhood
  15. Having access to internet by 8th standard
  16. Having been to an English medium school
  17. Not having suffered psychological or physical trauma in childhood
  18. Not having physical disabilities
  19. Being tall
  20. Being fair skinned
  21. Having a lean body-nature
  22. Not having congenital or acquired illnesses that require medical care

This is by no means a complete list. I haven't added all the privileges that I accrued thanks to the above privileges. So have I not added the privileges that I am not aware of. Anyhow, if you think I am more privileged than you in any way, you should not hesitate to take this deal.

You can find my contact details here.

 

 Post script: I have thought about how this can be considered virtue signalling. I am open to discuss ways of making this less about me and more about others. I've considered the idea of volunteering at NGOs. But I haven't found a right fit at the moment. Neither is it feasible at the moment due to COVID. Also, I want to somehow be able to scale this idea and figuring out first hand what works and what doesn't might be useful in that.


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