Comment on Some people have it worse
kibiz0r@midwest.social 2 days ago
I’ve never understood the argument that you shouldn’t complain about the environment you interact with because other people interact with worse environments.
Like, okay, that’s good to keep in mind with respect to privilege and assumptions and such, but like…
I can’t deliver a first-hand account of someone else’s life, and I can’t identify the possible solutions to their problems as well as I can for my own — let alone access their world as well as my own, to try to fix some of the problems.
I think on some level the people who say “focus on those other people’s problems” know that those other problems are less accessible.
It’s not that they want you to do better activism. It’s that they want you to do none.
I’ve never understood the argument that you shouldn’t complain about the environment you interact with because other people interact with worse environments.
I call this the “children of Africa” -argument. Basically, it’s an argument that you can never complain about anything or do anything to better something, because “some kids are starving in Africa”; someone always has it worse. It’s purpose is to belittle and brush aside either the problem worded out or the person saying it (or both).
i think the joke here is that a lot of people who come across this do live in America and it implies we all pity them
The argument that we shouldn’t worry about things because there are worse circumstances out there essentially implies a race to the bottom.
It implies we can’t fix anything about anything except the worst thing, so everything else will naturally degrade and decline.
We won’t fix the worst thing either because it’s too remote.
camelbeard@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s basically whataboutism
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