EDUCATED HAVE SHITTY LIVES, BUT SUPERIORITY COMPLEX
- Madhukar Dama
- 6 hours ago
- 8 min read

INTRODUCTION
You did everything right.
You went to school, followed rules, earned degrees, got a job, and moved to the city.
You followed the path laid out for you — and now you live with a strange emptiness.
You are exhausted, constantly short on time, surrounded by comforts, yet disconnected from yourself.
And despite all this, you’ve been taught to believe that your life is somehow better than those who live simply.
This is not your fault. But it’s time to see the truth.
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SECTION 1: YOU ARE STRUGGLING IN WAYS NO ONE PREPARED YOU FOR
1. Your Health Is Declining
You frequently suffer from acidity, back pain, low energy, poor sleep, or chronic disease.
You visit hospitals more than your grandparents ever did.
You rely on screens, medicines, and stimulants just to function.
Your body is reacting to a life that doesn't suit it.
2. You Don’t Have Time for What Matters
You have no time to rest, walk, cook, play, think, or simply be.
Your schedule is always full, but your life feels incomplete.
Even on holidays, your mind is elsewhere.
You have been trained to be productive, not present.
3. Your Relationships Are Hollowing Out
You rarely have deep, honest conversations.
Most of your interactions are digital, formal, or rushed.
You don’t truly know your neighbors, and you barely have time for your parents or children.
You feel the gap but don’t know how to close it.
4. You Have Forgotten Basic Life Skills
You depend on others for everything — food, health, transport, entertainment, even your emotions.
You’ve been trained to specialize in one job, but not how to live.
You may have degrees, but can you grow food, fix a roof, or survive without apps?
5. You Are Not Free
You have multiple options but very little real choice.
You cannot stop working. You cannot leave the city.
You fear loss of income more than loss of health.
Freedom has been replaced with transactions and obligations.
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SECTION 2: YOU’VE BEEN CONDITIONED TO FEEL SUPERIOR
1. You Were Told Your Degree Defines You
You believe that education makes you smarter.
But you were trained to memorize, follow instructions, and seek approval.
You may be intelligent — but your degree doesn’t prove it.
Real intelligence is not certification. It’s clarity, self-reliance, and understanding life.
2. You Were Taught English Equals Value
You’ve been made to think that fluency in English makes you important.
But language is not wisdom.
Knowing local plants, relationships, seasons, and instincts matters more than accents or vocabulary.
3. You Believe City Life Is Success
You were made to think that high-rises, cafes, air conditioning, and fast internet represent progress.
But often, you pay more for less health, less space, less connection, and more stress.
A simpler life isn’t backward. It’s efficient, direct, and honest.
4. You Hold on to Job Titles
You proudly identify as engineer, manager, doctor, or analyst.
But behind the title, you often feel replaceable, tired, and unsure.
Your role is clear. Your meaning is not.
A title can’t replace purpose.
5. You Were Sold the Life of a Consumer
You were told to earn more so you can buy more.
You assumed consumption equals growth.
But the more you own, the more you owe — in loans, in maintenance, in stress.
You’ve been made a customer in your own life.
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SECTION 3: YOUR MIND HAS BEEN TRAINED TO OBEY, NOT TO THINK FREELY
1. Your Schooling Was a Factory
You were rewarded for sitting still, not asking questions, and competing.
Your creativity was filtered out.
You were prepared for exams, not for relationships, self-care, nature, or pain.
Now, you look smart on paper — but unsure in life.
2. Your Work Is a Modern Cage
You were told that jobs give dignity.
But often, your job leaves you drained, numb, and distant from real life.
You serve systems you don’t control, goals you don’t choose.
And yet, you can’t stop — because survival has been tied to salary.
3. Your Lifestyle Was Designed for Dependency
You were made to believe that only branded products, gadgets, services, and expert advice can meet your needs.
So now, you don’t trust your hands, your taste, your instinct, or your neighbor.
You pay others to do what your ancestors did freely.
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SECTION 4: HERE’S WHAT YOU WERE NOT TAUGHT, BUT NOW YOU CAN LEARN
You read about farming — but you can also grow your own food.
You buy rotis — but you can also make them.
You search online for symptoms — but you can also learn natural healing.
You buy toys — but you can also create with your hands.
You watch nature documentaries — but you can also step out and observe real wildlife.
You quote thinkers — but you can also live their truths without quoting anyone.
You seek validation — but you can also reclaim quiet usefulness, even if no one applauds.
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SECTION 5: YOU’RE NOT BROKEN — YOU’RE MISDIRECTED
You feel confusion, not because something is wrong with you — but because something is wrong with what you were taught.
Your instincts are alive, but they were buried.
Your body is intelligent, but it was ignored.
Your inner voice was silenced to make you fit into systems that don’t serve you.
You can stop now.
You can observe.
You can begin again — without shame.
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CONCLUSION: YOU HAVE A CHOICE
You can continue defending a lifestyle that makes you tired, dependent, and disconnected.
Or you can let go of the illusion of superiority, and start reclaiming life in its simple, direct form.
You don’t need to prove anything.
You need to remember how to live — honestly, skillfully, freely.
You were educated to become someone.
Now educate yourself to become yourself.
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healing dialogue where a family of highly educated professionals visit Madhukar, the forest-dwelling healer, and slowly come to realize — through simple, brutal truth — that despite all their qualifications, they are far more deprived, helpless, and hollow than the uneducated people they once looked down upon.
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SETTING:
A quiet clearing outside Madhukar’s earthen home near Yelmadagi forest. Birds chirp. Smoke rises gently from a wood-fired stove. Madhukar sits on a low wooden plank, weaving a basket. The family of four — Dr. Ajay (father, 58, professor), Rekha (mother, 54, retired bank officer), Ananya (daughter, 26, MBA), and Rahul (son, 24, software engineer) — arrive, all dressed in modern trekking gear, tired, confused, slightly arrogant, slightly broken.
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PART ONE: THE SUPERIOR ARRIVAL
Ajay:
Madhukarji, we’ve heard a lot about you. I teach at the university... thought we’d finally meet someone truly wise.
Madhukar (smiling):
If you’ve come to find someone wiser than yourself, you must be deeply tired of your own wisdom.
Rekha (chuckling):
You could say that. We’ve achieved a lot... but lately, it all feels... empty.
Madhukar:
Tell me something simple. Can you grow your food?
Ananya:
No. But we buy organic. We’re very conscious consumers.
Madhukar:
So you outsource your survival and call it awareness?
Rahul:
We’re not farmers. We’re educated.
Madhukar:
What use is education if you can’t feed yourself?
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PART TWO: THE PEELING BEGINS
Ajay (offended):
We’ve studied. We’ve worked hard. We contribute to society. Isn’t that enough?
Madhukar:
You studied everything except how to live.
You work for systems that profit from your confusion.
And you contribute to a society that’s collapsing from its own cleverness.
Rekha:
But we’ve never been lazy. We’ve given our children the best. English medium, degrees, jobs...
Madhukar:
And they don’t know how to sit with themselves for ten minutes without a screen.
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PART THREE: THE FAMILY’S SYMPTOMS
Ananya:
I have anxiety and PCOD. I eat healthy, exercise... still feel dead inside.
Rahul:
I have back pain, no sleep, no motivation. Nothing feels real anymore.
I build apps for people I’ll never meet, for things I don’t believe in.
Madhukar (looking at Ajay):
You taught others, but never taught them how to be free.
You bought everything — ACs, insurances, honours — but you can’t buy rest.
Ajay (whispers):
I’m on medication. For BP, cholesterol, now depression.
I spent a life proving I was educated. But now I can’t feel anything.
Madhukar:
You believed that being certified means being complete.
But certification gave you a cage — not capacity.
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PART FOUR: THE TRUTH BREAKS OPEN
Rekha (voice trembling):
We used to mock our maid’s life.
Now I realise — she walks barefoot, eats home-grown food, sings while cleaning...
And we take pills just to fall asleep.
Madhukar:
She has less. But she owns what she has.
You have more. But you lease everything — even your identity.
Rahul (softly):
We mocked villagers for not knowing English.
But they know every tree, every herb, every season.
I don’t even know where milk comes from.
Madhukar:
You see now? Education didn’t make you superior.
It made you obedient. Dependent. Blind.
Ananya:
We thought we were modern.
Now I see — we are sick, scared, and disconnected.
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PART FIVE: THE TURNING POINT
Ajay (quietly):
So what do we do now?
Madhukar:
Unlearn.
Grow something — even one plant.
Touch soil. Cook your food. Walk long. Sleep without guilt.
Be useless to the system for a while — and useful to your own life.
Rekha:
Where do we begin?
Madhukar:
Right now.
Stay here.
You will clean, cook, carry firewood, fetch water.
You will do what your degrees never taught you — live.
Rahul:
Will that fix everything?
Madhukar:
It will not fix.
It will return.
Return your senses. Return your dignity. Return your instincts.
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PART SIX: THE FIRST CHANGE
Later that evening — Ajay is chopping vegetables. Rekha is washing clothes by the stream. Ananya is lighting the fire. Rahul is silent, watching ants. No one touches their phones.
Madhukar sits nearby, still weaving the basket.
Madhukar (softly, to himself):
Educated minds forget life.
But humble hands remember it again.
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“YOUR DEGREE IS A CAGE, AND YOU CALL IT A CROWN”
you woke up in an apartment
paid for with years you’ll never get back.
you made your bed with EMIs and smiled
like a hostage who’s been told
the chains are made of gold.
you speak english like a sword
but don’t know the name of one damn tree
outside your 14th floor window.
you collect certifications
like a child collects bottle caps —
only you frame yours
and cry into them every night
when the stomach burns
and the heart races
and you realize your child doesn’t know your voice
without background noise.
you laughed at the farmer
you mocked the maid
you pitied the tribal
and you cheered for your own suicide
disguised as a career.
you believed
your job title was your name,
your ID card was your soul,
your retirement plan was your freedom.
and now
you pop pills to sleep,
scroll like an addict,
and fear silence more than death.
you eat food made by strangers
drink water that smells like factories
and take advice from machines.
your gut is rotting.
your spine is collapsing.
your child hates you.
but your LinkedIn profile is strong.
you taught the world
about logic, algorithms, GDP
but couldn’t teach your hands
how to knead dough
or your eyes
how to find peace in sunlight.
you sit in glass rooms,
talking about innovation
while the barefoot man grows your rice
laughs without WiFi
and buries his dead with his own two hands
while you book slots
to grieve online.
your life was built
by men who sold you the word “progress”
while robbing you
of instincts, land, touch, truth.
you are not superior.
you are severed.
from earth, from body, from everything that breathes without your permission.
your degree is a cage,
and you call it a crown.
but the uneducated —
they sleep early.
they eat what they grow.
they live with pain, but not confusion.
they don’t know spreadsheets,
but they know how to live.
you have everything,
except a reason to wake up.
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