[LJ Idol] First World Problems
This was inspired by skylanth and commentary by takhys, so all honor to those worthies.
What makes a problem a 'first world problem'? I submit, as takhys put it in Skylanth's repost, that at the core, a problem is a problem, no matter where it happens. Using that term 'first world' just sets up these mental/conceptual barriers between us. My last LJ Idol post - the one on 'brouhaha' - expressed (and not as well as I had wished) my displeasure that these barriers exist in ways that cause anger when the barrier is transgressed in ways that give offense (even if none is offered).
We all have problems. We all have troubles. We all have things happen that displease us.
Maybe if we just accepted that the person over there has their versions of the same problems we do, the same troubles, and we are all locked inside out own skulls so that we don't think it could be the same for anyone else - and yes, yes, I am guilty of this, day after day, I'm not claiming to be a paragon - if we tried just a little more to reach out and take a moment and think about the person's problems, be they across the street or across the world or somewhere between...
...if we thought more about being in their shoes...
....maybe there wouldn't be so many problems that we would need to divide them up into categories like "first world problems".
What makes a problem a 'first world problem'? I submit, as takhys put it in Skylanth's repost, that at the core, a problem is a problem, no matter where it happens. Using that term 'first world' just sets up these mental/conceptual barriers between us. My last LJ Idol post - the one on 'brouhaha' - expressed (and not as well as I had wished) my displeasure that these barriers exist in ways that cause anger when the barrier is transgressed in ways that give offense (even if none is offered).
We all have problems. We all have troubles. We all have things happen that displease us.
Maybe if we just accepted that the person over there has their versions of the same problems we do, the same troubles, and we are all locked inside out own skulls so that we don't think it could be the same for anyone else - and yes, yes, I am guilty of this, day after day, I'm not claiming to be a paragon - if we tried just a little more to reach out and take a moment and think about the person's problems, be they across the street or across the world or somewhere between...
...if we thought more about being in their shoes...
....maybe there wouldn't be so many problems that we would need to divide them up into categories like "first world problems".