contextual rant (old)

Everything is in context. You can't tell a member of the 'first world' that they should feel good about their predicament regarding 'trivial' matters by stating, “others have it worse. Look at the starving Ethiopians or the embattled and shattered populations of Syria. Don't they have it terribly? Don't you feel better about your situation now?”

The whole social contrast of 'at least you're not here' or 'at least you're not him/her' is a completely sadistic and deprecating way to appeal to misfortune in the modern world. The appeal that 'someone else has it worse than you' is only important in the context of realizing what needs to be changed. The fact that someone has it worse than you should NOT be something that makes you sigh in relief. For example.. someone complains the rent is too high, and the traditional retort is, 'well, just be thankful that you aren't homeless and sleeping on a sidewalk.' Whew! Thank God someone is collapsing to their knees from hunger and struggling through a solid 8 hours of slumber amidst the drunken screams of club-goers and late-night adventurers remaining deliberately indifferent and ignorant to their very existence and plight for basic subsistence.

If we were to level the playing field (as it should be- lift the lower classes into the happy medium of comfort + subsistence, knock the upper classes off their high-horse of excess and into the same rational category), we wouldn't have to retain or develop a logical compassion for each individuals plight in the social context provided by their monetary net worth and/or material 'successes' as measured individuals. The fact that we live in a society which harbours the deadbeat and immoral ability to let you starve to death on the street or.. conversely.. accrue irrational and entirely unnecessary amounts of monetary symbolism and luxurious excess is the root of the 'first world problem'.. itself being nothing more than a single symptom of a much greater disease present within our society and within each of us as solitary individuals who become more and more estranged to the world and universe around us as the cancer of capital indifference spreads nearly unchecked.

The whole cultural narrative is to simply demand that each person 'get over it,' whatever 'it' might be... showcasing the underlying zeitgeist of forced apathy which allows the system to proliferate and flourish as-is. 'Get over it.. move past your failed relationship, forget about her. Forget about the collapsing ice-shelves, the endless development of strip malls and economic colonialism the world over.' Should we not, instead, be telling people to give a shit? To wake up and care about things within the vicinity of their own personal lives enough to fix them? How can we expect us, as a species and as a generation, to wake up and work towards a solution in the greater scheme of things if we're telling them to submit to the inconvenient roadblocks presented by life?

“It is above as it is below.” You care for both.. or neither. What you present in your microcosm will be reflected 10 fold in the macrocosm.

“Am I a part of the cure? Or am I part of the disease?”