#1stworldproblems (not)
Nov. 20th, 2011 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraLong discourse. Phrase that annoys me. Classism! Confusing categorizations for nations! Goal-oriented, linear models of history!
The hashtag--and the phrase--"first-world problems" pop up frequently. You hear it about food that got too hot in the microwave, about brief technology problems thwarting some frivolous goal, about getting an iffy grade on a test.
Places you don't hear it: When houses got foreclosed on. When people lose their jobs to the tumbling economy. When people get PhDs and then, loaded with student debt, are quote-unquote overqualified for jobs. When people who can't afford health insurance ignore health problems or hope they'll go away.
These are problems in the USA, too. These fit every criteria for so-called "first world" problems.
I'd heard the phrase "first world" growing up, but I was in my senior year of high school before I learned of its origins in the Cold War. The first world was the USA's side, the second the USSR. The third? Everyone else.
When we talk about the "first world" today, though, we mean something more like a later word: "developed". The developed-developing-undeveloped system was invented at some point after the year of my birth, presumably--after the USSR fell.
What does "developed" mean? Well, that's under dispute. Most of the definitions involve economics, the industrialization of the country, or (apparently) a complicated measure involving life expectancy and average education levels.
The idea that a country can go from "undeveloped" to "developing" and then to "developed" tries to squeeze countries' histories into nice, linear, goal-oriented trajectories. More than that, it defines what those goals should be. First you're peasants scratching in the dirt, then you have Victorian London, and then if you rack up enough points eventually you get to be the USA! (Presumably after that there are little lights flashing around your display and a tinny song plays.)
Defining "first world" to basically mean "developed" clarifies how people use the phrase these days. They aren't saying "I got a bad test grade--issues of capitalism, guys!" but rather "we have a long life expectancy, we have lots of education, what am I complaining about a B minus for? We are still so much better off than those early-dying, illiterate, peasants scratching in the dirt."
Why haven't we picked up the phrase "developed" instead? Well, being the "first" world appeals to us. We're the best! We're "first"! Obviously.
Yet, if nothing else, the Occupy Wall Street movement is showing that a long life expectancy and lots of education aren't automatically win conditions. You can't sit back and say "hey, yeah, we won it! We won at the world!"
Thing is, you can't win at the world. Yes, the USA has plenty of advantages, but it has plenty of problems too. Problems that are problems of capitalism. Problems that happen regardless of long life expectancy and lots of education. (Some of them are even problems that spring, arguably, from long life expectancies and lots of education.)
First world problems.
If we keep lauding ourselves for having those long lives and all that education, if we keep comparing ourselves to those "undeveloped" people, if we persist in believing that our worst issues are burnt microwave burritos and blips in technology, we are never going to be able to solve the deeper problems of our society.
It might be useful to use the lens of the American Dream and the expansion of the phrase "middle class". No one wants to be categorized as "lower class"; the "lower middle class" goes down pretty darn low these days. People tend to emphasize the ways in which they are in a higher socioeconomic class bracket and de-emphasize the ways in which they belong to a lower one, possibly to impress others and possibly to make themselves think that the American Dream is working for them. (When in fact the American Dream doesn't work for most people.) Using the phrase "first world problems" is a way for people to emphasize the trivial issues of life, to suggest that those are the worst problems they have, and to implicitly make a comparison between those issues and the issues of the "third world"/"undeveloped countries". Even if worse things are going on in their life, they might use the phrase in lighter contexts to make all of their problems seem less terrible in comparison.
The categories of "developed" and "first world" both imply we've gotten there, we're done, we're finished. Where do you go from "first"? "Zeroth"? How do you develop past "developed"? How do you measure a country without, beyond, past the current metrics?
There aren't easy answers for these questions. It's quite possible that there aren't answers at all. Any model which says there are easy answers is, in fact, a model that I don't believe. (I'm a physics major, we don't believe in easy answers.)
Part of the backlash against OWS that I've seen says, "They have no coherent demands! They don't have a solution! How can we take them seriously?"
You can take them seriously because they're asking. They are brainstorming. They are saying, there's a problem here. We have problems, first world problems, and they aren't going away.
Do you measure a country by how many of its citizens are employed? By the gap between richest and poorest? By happiness? How can we redefine "worth"?
Maybe there aren't any answers, but at least we're starting--finally--to ask the questions. To ask them publicly. To gather. To speak out.
To me, at least, that's something more valuable than any pat agenda.
The hashtag--and the phrase--"first-world problems" pop up frequently. You hear it about food that got too hot in the microwave, about brief technology problems thwarting some frivolous goal, about getting an iffy grade on a test.
Places you don't hear it: When houses got foreclosed on. When people lose their jobs to the tumbling economy. When people get PhDs and then, loaded with student debt, are quote-unquote overqualified for jobs. When people who can't afford health insurance ignore health problems or hope they'll go away.
These are problems in the USA, too. These fit every criteria for so-called "first world" problems.
I'd heard the phrase "first world" growing up, but I was in my senior year of high school before I learned of its origins in the Cold War. The first world was the USA's side, the second the USSR. The third? Everyone else.
When we talk about the "first world" today, though, we mean something more like a later word: "developed". The developed-developing-undeveloped system was invented at some point after the year of my birth, presumably--after the USSR fell.
What does "developed" mean? Well, that's under dispute. Most of the definitions involve economics, the industrialization of the country, or (apparently) a complicated measure involving life expectancy and average education levels.
The idea that a country can go from "undeveloped" to "developing" and then to "developed" tries to squeeze countries' histories into nice, linear, goal-oriented trajectories. More than that, it defines what those goals should be. First you're peasants scratching in the dirt, then you have Victorian London, and then if you rack up enough points eventually you get to be the USA! (Presumably after that there are little lights flashing around your display and a tinny song plays.)
Defining "first world" to basically mean "developed" clarifies how people use the phrase these days. They aren't saying "I got a bad test grade--issues of capitalism, guys!" but rather "we have a long life expectancy, we have lots of education, what am I complaining about a B minus for? We are still so much better off than those early-dying, illiterate, peasants scratching in the dirt."
Why haven't we picked up the phrase "developed" instead? Well, being the "first" world appeals to us. We're the best! We're "first"! Obviously.
Yet, if nothing else, the Occupy Wall Street movement is showing that a long life expectancy and lots of education aren't automatically win conditions. You can't sit back and say "hey, yeah, we won it! We won at the world!"
Thing is, you can't win at the world. Yes, the USA has plenty of advantages, but it has plenty of problems too. Problems that are problems of capitalism. Problems that happen regardless of long life expectancy and lots of education. (Some of them are even problems that spring, arguably, from long life expectancies and lots of education.)
First world problems.
If we keep lauding ourselves for having those long lives and all that education, if we keep comparing ourselves to those "undeveloped" people, if we persist in believing that our worst issues are burnt microwave burritos and blips in technology, we are never going to be able to solve the deeper problems of our society.
It might be useful to use the lens of the American Dream and the expansion of the phrase "middle class". No one wants to be categorized as "lower class"; the "lower middle class" goes down pretty darn low these days. People tend to emphasize the ways in which they are in a higher socioeconomic class bracket and de-emphasize the ways in which they belong to a lower one, possibly to impress others and possibly to make themselves think that the American Dream is working for them. (When in fact the American Dream doesn't work for most people.) Using the phrase "first world problems" is a way for people to emphasize the trivial issues of life, to suggest that those are the worst problems they have, and to implicitly make a comparison between those issues and the issues of the "third world"/"undeveloped countries". Even if worse things are going on in their life, they might use the phrase in lighter contexts to make all of their problems seem less terrible in comparison.
The categories of "developed" and "first world" both imply we've gotten there, we're done, we're finished. Where do you go from "first"? "Zeroth"? How do you develop past "developed"? How do you measure a country without, beyond, past the current metrics?
There aren't easy answers for these questions. It's quite possible that there aren't answers at all. Any model which says there are easy answers is, in fact, a model that I don't believe. (I'm a physics major, we don't believe in easy answers.)
Part of the backlash against OWS that I've seen says, "They have no coherent demands! They don't have a solution! How can we take them seriously?"
You can take them seriously because they're asking. They are brainstorming. They are saying, there's a problem here. We have problems, first world problems, and they aren't going away.
Do you measure a country by how many of its citizens are employed? By the gap between richest and poorest? By happiness? How can we redefine "worth"?
Maybe there aren't any answers, but at least we're starting--finally--to ask the questions. To ask them publicly. To gather. To speak out.
To me, at least, that's something more valuable than any pat agenda.