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My First Time
I do not mean to sound critical about my students. I am no better myself.
In 1972, as a fourth-year medical student, I studied at the medical school in Bangalore. The first
class I attended was on examining kidney X-rays. Looking at the first image, I realized this must
be kidney cancer. I decided to wait awhile before telling the class, out of respect. I didn’t want to
show off. Several hands then went into the air and the Indian students one by one explained how
best to diagnose this cancer, how and where it usually spreads, and how best to treat it. On and on
they went for 30 minutes, answering questions I thought only chief physicians knew. I realized my
embarrassing mistake. I must have come to the wrong room. These must not be fourth-year
students, these must be specialists. I had nothing to add to their analysis.
On our way out, I told a fellow student I was supposed to be with the fourth-years. “That’s us,”
he said. I was stunned. They had caste marks on their foreheads and lived where exotic palm trees
grew. How could they know much more than me? Over the next few days I learned that they had a
textbook three times as thick as mine, and they had read it three times as many times.
I remember this whole experience as the first time in my life that I suddenly had to change my
worldview: my assumption that I was superior because of where I came from, the idea that the
West was the best and the rest would never catch up. At that moment, 45 years ago, I understood
that the West would not dominate the world for much longer.
How to Control the Generalization Instinct
If you can’t travel, please do not worry. There are other ways to avoid using
wrong categories.
Find Better Categories: Dollar Street
Anna would always insist that the trips I did with my students were a naïve
and unrealistic way to teach most people about the world. Few people wanted
to spend their hard-earned money traveling to far-flung places only to try a pit
latrine and experience the unglamorous everyday life on Levels 1, 2, or 3, far
from the beach, the great cuisine and bars, and the fairy-tale-like wildlife.
Most people were just as uninterested in studying the data about global
trends and proportions. And anyway, even looking at the data, it was pretty
hard to understand what it meant for everyday life on different levels.
Remember the photos used to describe the levels in the chapter on the gap
instinct? They all come from Dollar Street, a project that Anna developed to
teach armchair travelers about the world. Now you can understand how
people live without leaving your home.
Imagine all the homes in the world lined up on one long street, sorted by
income. The poorest live at the left end of the street and the richest live at the
right end. Everybody else? Of course, you know it by now: most people live
somewhere in the middle. Your house number on this street represents your
income. Your neighbors on Dollar Street are people from all over the world
with the same income as you.
Anna has so far sent photographers out to visit about 300 families in more
than 50 countries. Their photos document how people eat, sleep, brush their
teeth, and prepare food. They capture what their homes are made of, how they
heat and light their homes, their everyday items like toilets and stoves, and in
total more than 130 different aspects of their daily lives. We could fill a whole
book with images showing the striking similarities between the lives of
people living on the same incomes in different countries, and the huge
differences in how people live within countries. We have over 40,000 photos.
What the photos make clear is that the main factor that affects how people
live is not their religion, their culture, or the country they live in, but their
income.
Here are some toothbrushes from families with different income levels. On
Level 1 you brush with your finger or a stick. On Level 2 you get a plastic
toothbrush. On Level 3 you get one each. And Level 4 you are already
familiar with.
The bedrooms (or kitchens or living rooms) of families living on Level 4
look very similar in the United States, Vietnam, Mexico, South Africa, or
anywhere else in the world.
1
The way a family living on Level 2 in China stores and prepares food looks
very similar to the way a family living on Level 2 in Nigeria stores and
prepares food.
In fact, when you are one of the 3 billion people living on Level 2, whether
you live in the Philippines, Colombia, or Liberia, the basic facts about your
life are quite similar.
Your house has a patchwork roof, so if it’s raining you might well get wet
and cold.
When you go to the toilet in the morning it is smelly and full of flies, but at
least there are some walls to give you some privacy.
You eat the same for almost every meal, every day of every week. You
dream about food that is more varied and more delicious.
The light flickers because the electricity is unstable. You have to rely on
moonlight on the nights when the power is out. You secure the door using a
padlock.
When you go to bed in the evening you might brush your teeth with the
same toothbrush as the rest of the family. You dream about the day when you
don’t have to share your toothbrush with Grandma anymore.
In the media, we see photos of everyday life on Level 4 and crisis on the
other levels all the time. Google
toilet, bed,
or
stove.
You will get images
from Level 4. If you want to see what everyday life is like on the other levels,
Google won’t help.
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