good post nigee. I try to think about things like that when my "whole house" DVR system won't let me watch the shows I record in the bedroom down stairs in the family room - GODDAMNIT that pisses me off! it's not really "whole house" is it, if I can't watch it in the whole fucking house GRRRRRR

But then someone posts something like that and I think that I'd do without TV altogether than live live anywhere like that.

Wait - that still sounded like a spoiled westerner, eh? "ooooh no TV rather than having your daughters, sisters and mothers raped! How very sacrificial of you ..."

Oh well, The sentiment I was trying to convey was genuine.

+1 to Nigee for helping us fortunate ones remember that we are indeed fortunate!

The "put up with shit because somewhere there are others in deeper shit" argument? It didn't convince me when I was 5 and being force fed butter beans by my mother, and it's even less convincing now.

Good point Oct, I'm calling DirectTV and giving them a piece of my mind! Fuck them and their "whole house" DVR!!! Maybe I'll get the NFL package for free next year for my inconvenience!

:-)

Hang on... Pakistan has snooker halls?!?

:-)

@ Octavious - I bet your mom told you the kids in South Africa would love to have your butter beans. But she may have been wrong. I have friends who work with AIDS orphans in South Africa and they tried distributing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches once. Only once. No one would eat them, starving or not.

That is because they are sick and poor, FlemGem, not stupid :)

It's good to remember that our own problems are minor compared to the trials others face every moment, but we shouldn't let it stop by feeling fortunate. We should try to do something about the disparity.

Thanks for the post.

Minor problems are minor, and major problems are major. Neither the first nor the third world has a monopoly on either.

Sage advice Octy. If it helps put things in pspctve, let me point out that i dont care about your problems either. Chur.

Far away problems are far away; it is easy to say 'not my problem' and also correct - to think we can go into other countries and solve their problems is the height of arrogance; we have our own problems to solve (like philcore's DVR and bigger ones at a national level) and the correct responce is to DO SOMETHING.

If other countries ASK for help, such as after a natural disaster or famine; then we should do what we can (and be prepared with emergency aid).

I'll tell you the height of arrogance: believing that someone is less important than you just because they are not in your country.

Watch this through and tell me we should do nothing. The picture is infinitely more complex, and if you knew that, you'd know that saying "not my problem" is about as righteous as the slaver who says he is just doing his job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YPldzhAKgk

Your parochialism might be acceptable if you lived in a slum, but as a rich Westerner, like me, who owes so much of your comfortable life to the countless miseries of the inhabitants of the global south, past and present, it sounds like nothing more than a Scrooge who is desperate to justify his continued comfortable status.

Famines and floods are not the only times when people outside of a line on a map need help.

Octavious, do you intentionally distort my words and meanings? Or do you just hate Latinos and Africans or something?

Crying out "but there are bad problems here at home too!" sounds a lot like "white people are discriminated against by black people, how come nobody talks about that?"

Because of the dictionary definition of oppression is why. It applies to unjust disparity between nations as well. We are centuries beyond a day when a normal person in the West can claim ignorance as their excuse for profiting from the faraway poor.

if I could +5 that I would ..... well said

The three greatest problems a man can face are being forced to leave someone they love, being left by someone they love, or never finding love. By virtue of us all being mortal these problems are distributed equally across all races and classes.

An obsession with solving far away problems is often more a symptom of being overwhelmed by problems close to home. I hope this is not the case.

Certainly not. My life is too good, and if we are pointing emotional fingers, it is more guilt with this extra-lavish way of life that has motivated me to change things.

I'm tired of eating food with soy harvested by slave labor in Brazil. Tired of eating chocolate harvested by child slaves in Ivory Coast. Tired of using cell phones that contain coltan mined off of land that was inhabited by peaceful people before greedy warlords drove them off, while the world watched. Tired of living in a country where things like working infrastructure and freedom of speech are demanded as rights even as 1 billion people will go to bed hungry tonight.

No decent person can learn of these things and do nothing.

Yet so many learn of them and do nothing. I don't see how there is no other "problem" in life than those revolving around love. I mean, hey, what's it mean when kids die of AIDS at 30 if they found someone they loved? No big deal, at least he found love, right. No reason to think he coulda spent another 50 years with her if someone would help, you know?

Note, I'm coming into this thread late, and having read only the last few posts. So count me ignorant of the entire context. Now that said -- interesting post, Thucy, but I was (mildly) troubled by this part:

"Tired of living in a country where things like working infrastructure and freedom of speech are demanded as rights even as 1 billion people will go to bed hungry tonight."

It's not a bad point, except I think it kind of implies that the right to food is somehow more basic than free speech. I'm totally with you on infrastructure, but I think speech is even more basic than food. Oh sure, you can't eat it, and you'll die with speech and no food, but at least you can speak out about it. With food and no speech, you're not even being treated as a human.

@Thucy, i didn't say 'not my problem' - i said we rich westerners can't solve other's problems for them.

Development aid has done more damage in the last 60 years to the development of the south than anything else; i said we SHOULD help, but only when asked. On the terms of those whose problem it is.

I am not responcible for fixing your marriage, and it would be arrogant of me to think that just because i come from a successful healthy relationship i shoupd come in and interfere with yours; unless you ask for my help.

The same is true of countries. There may be Brazilian slave labour, and you may be exploiting them indirectly, but if you did not buy their traded goods their lives would be worse.

If the work they currenty do is so terrible then they will take any alternative, and if no alternative exists then your economic activity is not harming them.

I can't watch the video you linked right now, but the implication you are making is that you know better how to fix whatever problem you are pointin to. I somehow doubt this is the case, or maybe you can outline how you will actually resolve the issue.