[LJ Idol] First World Problems

Jan 07, 2011 23:24

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 - ( Read more... )

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alephz January 9 2011, 19:59:28 UTC
A First World Problem is a problem that can only arise in the First World; that is to say, a problem that can only come up in the context of an industrialized, computerized society with a half-decent support structure and decent physical/social infrastructure that can be reasonably relied upon to at least put on a show of protecting people who aren't in power.

Sure, every society has loss, theft, rape and murder, but there are many where whole segments of the population can expect no justice for those crimes.

Every society has accidents, but not every society has competent medical personnel to fix the damage, insurance (or similar) functionaries to ensure payment/aftercare nor education that might have prevented the accident in the first place.

The mad capitalist bastards are out to screw everyone everywhere, but where in the US (for instance) they do it by stagnating wages and pushing credit cards, in other nations they do it by chaining small children to machines for pennies a day while they talk about how generous it is to give those children pennies. To say nothing of the places where the children don't even rate pennies. Or, y'know, starve in the streets. Or get sold for other kinds of slavery.

Starvation exists in every culture but there is a difference between people who have to stretch meager social assistance payments to feed a family and people who, having run out of food and/or money can expect to die because no aid is coming.

There are places on this Earth that don't even have drinkable water. I mean, I'm all prissy about how leadlike the water in my hometown tasted but that's NOTHING compared to having access to no drinking water that is even theoretically safe to drink.

More, there are places where the only law enforcement persons are either roaming gangs of thugs or people who have been given license to murder people for speaking the wrong language.

Yeah, I agree. We all got problems.

But if you live in a First World nation, the scale of those problems and the potential for finding solutions are, y'know, a shade different.

Just sayin'.

ETA: Replied to the wrong place.

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