Choosing Poverty

(New Delhi, India) By rejecting the benefits of modern society, anti-consumerist Australians Mark and Cathy Delaney have also achieved a strikingly small environmental footprint.

The college-educated couple claim they have freed themselves of money and possessions in a "radical detox" from consumer society.

What they don't say is that their masochistic lifestyle is arguably the result of a progressive value system, likely punctuated by self-loathing. Whereas virtually all of humanity wants to build better lives for their offspring, the Delaneys have done the exact opposite.

Mr. and Mrs. Delaney, along with two sons, live in a bedroom-sized home with no running water, no television, no refrigerator and no washing machine in a shanty town on the eastern outskirts of Delhi. A putrid canal near the Delaneys' front door carries away sewage.

Two mattresses, used to sleep on at night, double as a "lounge" during the day. Meals are eaten sitting on the floor and they share with neighbours a squat toilet in a small bathroom.

But the Delaneys are not complaining. For them, living in a slum has been deeply enriching.

"It baffles us that more people in Australia who say they are sick of their lives don't do something like we have," says Cathy Delaney, who holds a masters' degree in pure mathematics. [...]

Things that most families take for granted bring the Delaneys great satisfaction.

Such as electricity. The power goes off in the neighbourhood several hours each day.

To help the family cope, Cathy got a small solar panel worth about $100 for her 40th birthday that powers a lamp during the blackouts.

Forty-two-year-old Mark Delaney, a lawyer, is a little less enthusiastic about scratching out a life amid abject poverty.

"Cathy is a bit harder line than me," says Mark.

"Sometimes she says 'let's move down a bit' but I'm usually a bit resistant. Most people think we are pretty stupid already."

Heh. I would go a step further and say the Delaneys are nuts.

Personal choices such as rejecting television and leading a simpler lifestyle are understandable. However, living without running water nor a functioning sanitary sewage system is over the top.

One has to wonder what exactly they learned while obtaining their college degrees. An education isn't required to move into an illegal squatter settlement with 60,000 neighbors packed into a square kilometer.

Furthermore, given that squatter settlements are customarily crime-ridden, vermin-infested and prone to disease outbreaks, everybody except the Delaneys are trying to get out.

Lastly, it's reasonable to ask what exactly are the Delaneys teaching their children?

Companion post at The Jawa Report.