First world problems
My grandfather has a telescope that he keeps in front of a window facing across the lake at our family cottage. I remember fumbling around with it when I was younger, hoping to see the wonders that must exist on the other side of the lake, but perpetually stuck in a world of pretty blurry colours whose meaning I could only project. As I got to the age at which you can effectively turn fiddly nobs, and the world across the lake came into focus, I remember being a bit disappointed by how much it resembled things I had already seen before.
There are a lot of things in the world that are more exciting and enticing when they are out of focus, and as a result there are a lot of people who will give you an unfocused lens in an attempt to get your attention. With this blog post, I want to take one of those things and bring it into focus: #firstworldproblems. Though this mantra peaked a few years ago, it lives on in both substance and spirit, and I do not think this is for the better. In case you missed this fad, ‘first world problems’ is most commonly used as a humorously self-deprecating hashtag to point out the trivialness of many of the problems we get frustrated over in the first world, or even to remind us of how lucky we are to be able to have problems that are only permitted by our richness. Some recent #firstworldproblem tweets:
“I’m getting tired of my coconut scented soap, but I don’t really want to open the new apple scented one either. #firstworldproblems”
“The struggle to get out of bed this morning is real. #firstworldproblems”
“So depressed my snapchat isn’t working #firstworldproblems”
“Feel so awkward when the cleaners are round my house. Dunno what room to sit in. #firstworldproblems”
I do not want to criticize anyone for a little bit of self-deprecating humour, for injecting a little bit of perspective into a moment of frustration, or for showing some gratitude for the great things they have. The thing is, ‘first world problems’ says a lot more than just these things, even if it was not intended that way.
One of the biggest subtleties of ‘first world problems’ is what it implicitly says about the difference between wealthy ‘first world’ countries and poor ‘third world’ countries. The first world is where people experience the trivialities of life; the third world is where people are too busy being overwhelmed by ‘real’ problems of starvation and war to worry about little things. This criticism was already well-put by novelist Teju Cole through a series of Twitter posts:
“I don’t like this expression “First World problems”. It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: The inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.
One event that illustrated the gap between the Africa of conjecture and the real Africa was the BlackBerry outage of a few weeks ago. Who would have thought Research in Motion’s technical issue would cause so much annoyance and inconvenience in a place like Lagos? But of course it did, because most people don’t wake up with “poor African” pasted on their foreheads. They live as citizens of the modern world. None of this is to deny the existence of social stratification and elite structures here. There are lifestyles of the rich and famous, sure. But the interesting thing about modern technology is how socially mobile it is – quite literally. Everyone in Lagos has a phone.”
There are real-life implications for the problems Teju Cole is talking about (besides fairly insulting stereotypes of the ‘Third World’). One of the ones I have been most exposed to is bad development work. There are a lot of reasons an ‘international aid’ project may be ineffective or even harmful, and one of them is that people doing this work, especially people coming from the First World, neglect the complex and subtle systems that govern the community they are working in. It is surprisingly easy to look at a person or community and see only a big problem. It is easy to look at a rural village in rural Kenya and say, “These people have food for only two meals a day. We need to get the more food.” Or, “These kids do not go to school. We need to build them a school and hire them a teacher.” And this is urgent work, because this is not like the time your parents bought your ipod in the wrong colour – this is a #thirdworldproblem.
I commend the recognition of inequality, poor living conditions, and limited opportunity as problems. However, this line of thinking will always get you into trouble. There is a story often used to discuss the issues with this approach, where a non-profit went into a rural community in a West African country – I do not remember which one – to build a well. Women were having to make long journeys of over an hour to the nearest water source, so this would make their lives easier. Someone from the non-profit returned a year later to find the well had been broken. Further investigation revealed the women had broken this well themselves. The time they spent walking to the well was the only time the women had to socialize without the men nearby, and the well ruined this dynamic for them.
This seems like a ridiculous proposition if you are looking through the blurry telescope of #firstworld and #thirdworld problems. However, it is much less confusing when you sharpen the focus and remember that while this community likely faces many real issues around meeting their basic needs and accessing opportunities, they are also a group of real people. Like any group of real people, they have personalities! They have habits! They have social relationships! They have opinions! They have big problems, and they have stupid petty ones! And, as Teju Cole points out, even though they are missing basic infrastructure that forces them to travel far for water, they are likely to have cell phones and other modern items – after all, they live in a modern world.
The blurry lens through which we look at the ‘poor’ people living in ‘underdeveloped’ countries also enters into the way we perceive and approach the world as individuals. It affects how we understand ‘global issues’. It affects how we interact with charity and aid-based campaigns. It affects how we perceive ourselves and our place in the world. It affects what we know to be ‘true’ and ‘false’ and ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
‘First world problems’ did not cause these dynamics and misperceptions, nor is it the last to re-enforce them. We see these dichotomies, these simplifications, in movies, in books, in the news, and unfortunately, especially in non-profit ads. In fact, there is a charity that created a widely-circulated ad based on the first world problems hashtag. Again – it is true that there is much to be said prompting people to be aware of the good things they have, and non-profits do need to raise money to do effective work (although not all non-profit work is effective). However, I will never be in support of media that re-enforced the already entrenched and two-dimensional conception of the plight of the poor and the luxury of the rich.
I must admit that although I do not like or use the phrase ‘First World problems’, I struggle to understand how big an impact such a small phrase really has. It is a question I leave to you. The point I wished to open up here is that this hashtag is an unfocused lens. It allows us to see the world in generalized blurs that poorly represent the real picture. It is nuanced in ways we do not usually discuss, and that it feeds off of and into societal attitudes that negatively impact our world.
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