Perspective

[BlueCross]

It's easy to forget how hard it it can be to live in other countries when we in our country (or countries) take so much for granted.

I've been corresponding with a new acquaintance who is Russian and in his latest email he stated:

"In our country some people have pension less than 300 USD, so some peoples are really hungry often. I know one grandmother who save up money for 3 month to buy gift for her granddouther cost about 10 $."

Seriously... this hit me like a hammer.  I've just blown $30 on games for my iPhone, and now it seems ridiculously selfish and extravagant.  I'm not looking for justification or absolution for buying frivolous games but somehow, I felt as if awareness should be raised about how much 'we' have and how little others have.

Yet, in these harsh conditions, we have a grandmother sacrificing food and certainly other necessities for three months to buy a gift for a granddaughter.  It makes me weep. 

[KMD]

Wealth inequality across the world is really a shock, but I try not to let it bother me too much. Theres always someone at the bottom, and compared to them, everybody looks rich. I like to remember this, but not to feel guilty every time I indulge myself.

After all, money doesn't buy happiness. Whos happier?; The child whoes sole gift was from their loving grandmother, or a spoiled child who gets lots of gifts every year but doesn't appreciate them.

[TK]

I catch myself in the first world problems trap all the time; "it's the day before payday and my day sucks because I can't afford a third cup of coffee and a deli sandwich, better use my marginally inferior iPhone 5c that at least has 4g to see if I have enough for a cheap coffee and a meal deal, man I suck just having a 5c, if I had a 5s people would love me more."

The scary thing is that it becomes the norm, I have to try hard to remember how it felt to genuinely worry about how I'd find the cash to get to my minimum wage job so I could try to feed my young family at the same time as keeping the debtors creditors, it's very late, away from the door. 

The even more scary thing is that my income is just sufficient enough to ensure that we keep within our allowed credit limits while having enough to feed vanities but never quite managing to put anything aside to clear that mountainous credit limit.  One slip or bad month and we'd spiral down into that maelstrom of wondering how to get me to work and put food on the table while the man with the clipboard becomes a present danger.

I believe that a majority of us live like this; suspended in tenuous false superiority over a financial under class that has no moral or practical reason to live in such squalid misery.

The thing that money or relative wealth does tend to buy is the sense of clear water between you and the financial sharks, in a capitalist society this clear water tends to be the place where a fragile sense of happiness grows. In a non materialistic society the personal gift, time spent with family or bountiful harvest must be the purest form of happiness, I would love to experience that simplicity of existence but I fear self centric capitalism has too strong a grip on my psyche.

[The Hanged Man]

This thread really reminds me of my recent trip to India.

My college and I got a big gulp of this as it was amazing seeing how people lived there. It was almost like being in a Fallout game, if I was to compare it to anything. I had never left western Europe before and the furthest I'd ever travelled was Sicily and that wasn't much of a change in culture.

We got to visit one of the slums, walking through its 'streets' and seeing what kind of environment people lived in. There was a school there, that was roughly four times the size of your average closet and it had little by way of equipment and virtually no facilities. The whole school was just this one room and the class held about thirty-forty pupils.

The title of the thread actually reminds me of the last day as we got to stay in a five star hotel for the last two days of the trip (as a sort of  reward). The thing was built like a palace, with a large marble forum, that immediately greeted you as soon as you walked through the front door. It was a beautifully built business hotel, which was built to accommodate for travelling business people.

Anyway, my room overlooked a slum, which was a nice way of guilt tripping me, every morning.

So, I decided to watch the little village as I found myself bored out of my skull (we weren't allowed to leave the building and swimming pools are a snore fest) and I noticed that most of the children had gathered on this wasteland, which was just a pile of rubble, that backed onto the village. They spent and entire afternoon throwing plastic bottles into the air and hitting them with sticks before they touched the ground, making me feel somewhat guilty for ever wanting anything as a kid...

[Desolo]

Material wealth is worth exactly what you and everyone else decides its worth. Your dollar could buy you a cup of coffee tommorrow morning(unlikely these days, but you know what I mean) or it could be completely worthless.

As it is most people don't even use cash anymore, so if you think about it, most "money" is simply ones, zeroes, and happy thoughts anyway... I don't have much really and try to stay away from any debt I can. I don't even have a credit card, nor will I ever do so if I can help it.but what little I do have to be proud of is mine and atleast it has value to me. Ill never be a rich man, but I have family, friends and I'm alive. I'm doing better then many even if I'm doing "worse" then "most".

[TK]

It's actually the electronic money thing that devalues a currency, there aren't enough corresponding material goods to justify the level of currency in circulation. People in General have no control over monetary value, of course business owners can set prices but this lives outside of the actual mechanism for money generation and isn't actually tied to a consideration of the true value if the goods used in construction anyway.

Another area of false superiority that we allow ourselves to indulge in is linguistic natzi-ism; then and than aren't interchangeable and it twists my bones to see them used as if they are. Of course that just feeds a misplaced sense of superiority over those who do abuse and confuse the words. :p

[Desolo]

My Brother is an english major, and teaches it so anything you do to me has already been done to me by him

'sides never said I was good at this whole language thing, I'm just a country boy from the swamps of north carolina.... 

[BlueCross]

I'm just a country boy from the swamps of north carolina....

That sounds Dismal...

[Desolo]

Why does it sound dismal? I still miss that swamp, great fishing, and it was fun exploring. A lot of stuff you would never see anywhere else. I've seen cypress trees so wide that you couldnt have had six people hold hands around it, and in places so far in that it is deathy silent...something I still miss to this day.

My family Never would have left had the storms not ruined everything. Twice. I still go and see the place where our home was every few years. Its been all but reclaimed now, but its nice to remember

[BlueCross]

*cough*

[Desolo]

  whoops, missed that one....... I'm a bit farther south though, should have caught the refrence