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Having lived for some time in a third world country that has real poverty and real day to day security worries, situations like this spring to mind when people

Having lived for some time in a third world country that has real poverty and real day to day security worries, situations like this spring to mind when people completely without optics compare their situations to those in developing nations. Yes, as insanely ignorant as that sounds it happens. People here on HN last week, as one example, were trying to compare their experiences recently protesting to the Arab Spring. People in the Arab Spring were lighting themselves on fire and protesting everyday longer than most of us have been locked down from COVID. Not the same, not even in the same universe. The same absurd comparisons also come up when entitled people people try to talk about poverty when it’s clear they have never seen poverty in the US, much less in an economy where people earn less than $5 per day working 5x harder.

Aloha 6y ago
I've always looked at it this way "things must be pretty bad if lighting yourself on fire sounds like a better alternative then living" I dont need to understand the particulars beyond that.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I honestly think that there are people in the US who feel distraught enough to do so, but they know that it wouldn't do any good for anyone else -- they would be ignored, or labeled as "crazy". No doubt life in the US is still much better than many other places, but we have to remember that protest itself has been systematically marginalized and penalized as a form of expression, and adjust our evaluation of the state of the US accordingly.
  - DevKoala 6y ago
    So they suffer enough to want to burn themselves, but won’t because they fear being labeled crazy? I feel that comparing the suffering of such an individual to the suffering of people who actually burned themselves to protest the oppression they experienced is insulting to the sacrifice of the later. I agree with the sentiment of the protests in the USA, but there is no need to invent fictional martyrs who “could have been”.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      insulting to the sacrifice of the later. I think it's insulting to all that we even feel the need to compare. This perhaps counterintuitively amplifies divisions, when we want to unite.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    Are you saying that burning yourself during Arab Spring has better hope for success than in the US?
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      We have clear evidence that it did.
  - emilsedgh 6y ago
    I have a theory that distribution of power in democracies leads to "distribution of blame". Living in a third world country means you probably are dealing with a (semi) dictatorship. That means there's only a few entities (eg regime, government, whatever) that you can assign the blame to. Therefore, you can light yourself on fire in protest to them. In the U.S. who would you light yourself to protest to? Elected congress? Elected government? Wall Street? Supreme Court? Unfortunately when system gets rigged and gamed in a democracy it's really difficult to untangle the mess. This also has a secondary effect: In these countries people are not so divided. They have a common enemy: The dictator [0]. Source: Anecdotal experience based in years of life in a third world country and the U.S. [0] This is an oversimplification as even the dictators have support of a big chunk of the population to rely on.
    - kiliancs 6y ago
      > I have a theory that distribution of power in democracies leads to "distribution of blame". I think there's some truth to this, but I think this eventually results in widespread cynicism, skepticism and loss of trust towards any sort of institution (aka "the system") in general --including science and religion--, which is a perfect environment for fake news and conspiracy theories. Long term it leads to chaos and unrest too.
      - Avicebron 6y ago
        I think that you are correct that in the long term it leads to chaos and unrest, but I think it also has a slow burn problem that ultimately leads to deep ennui, cynicism, and a feeling of powerlessness that can last many generations. This has the effect of further concentrating power in those who have rigged the system and leads to such an unbalance that maybe when the chaos comes, it won't lead to anything better. Conversely I think in more volatile arenas, the power dynamics while large, are less so (logically this makes sense because a revolution that can win is closer in power to the system they are fighting). While this volatility may be worse overall in that society, it is less systematically oppressive than say a rigged democracy deeply meshed into a non-democratic economic system. The more I think about it the more my nihilism takes hold and I find that very disheartening.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  I think there are two ways to approach thinking about dramatic acts like self-immolation, rioting, looting, stealing, etc. One way is to think "wow, those people have had very different experiences from me, to drive them to do that." I'd put your reply in that category and I prefer this. It recognizes shared commonality among people, which is a good place to start for constructive change. The other way is to think "wow, those people are nothing like me, to want to do something like that." This treats differences as inherent and implies there are different "types" of people. It creates a sense of "us vs them," which makes it harder to build the empathy necessary for constructive change.
  - nickff 6y ago
    I think you've hit on a very interesting way of framing the issue. Perhaps it can be explained with (slightly) statistical language: - Taking the self-immolator's experiences and actions as sample sets, they are different from the 'stereotypical American' by a statistically significant margin. - This does not mean that the cause is that the self-immolator is categorically different from the 'stereotypical American' (because correlation does not necessarily imply causation), in fact, it suggests that the experiences and actions may be related.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nate_meurer 6y ago
    I really agree with you here, except for your inclusion of looters in that group. You're goddamn right opportunistic looters are nothing like me. Those fuckers care nothing about the fight of the protests, and are willing to tarnish the whole movement for some free shit. Fuck them. Otherwise, right on. I can't tell you how often I come to dead ends in arguments regarding poverty and crime, where folks who've never been poor or desperate give themselves 100% of the credit for their good fortune. Like they picked their fucking parents before birth.
    - jimmydorry 6y ago
      In this post alone, there are people saying that looting is justified... For every person saying that the looters are unrelated, there is another person or two that either condones that behaviour or justifies it. Either we have looters in this thread, or the movement is a big umbrella that encompasses the unsavourable elements too.
catalogia 6y ago
No matter what issue you examine, you can doubtlessly find that somebody somewhere at sometime had it even worse. I think these kind of observations are usually unproductive though; taking this attitude to it's logical absurd conclusion would have you telling people to stop complaining because at least they're not in death camps.
- trevyn 6y ago
  Another logical conclusion is “I will minimize my contribution to a system that actively causes substantial, unnecessary harm to other humans.”
- austincheney 6y ago
  It’s not about who has it worse. That completely misses the point. It’s about accurately reflecting on your personal situation and not drawing absurd conclusions to justify a personal opinion. Let’s call this Dunning-Kruger for sympathy. If you are trying to qualify who has it worse you aren’t focused on a materially objective outcome. For example many of the people protesting in the US in the past few weeks are trying to raise awareness of systemic racism and for police accountability (different issues, by the way). Most of those people aren’t asking for your sympathy because they are looking for impactful change which isn’t found in sympathy.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    I think there may be a miscommunication here. I read "The same absurd comparisons also come up when entitled people people try to talk about poverty when it’s clear they have never seen poverty in the US, much less in an economy where people earn less than $5 per day working 5x harder." as meaning you have no sympathy for the plight of poor people in America because people in other countries experience even more severe poverty. Seeing poverty in America is as easy as going outside and opening your eyes.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      > Seeing poverty in America is as easy as going outside and opening your eyes. That so completely depends upon where you live. My big city of 900,000 people reported their highest measured homeless population ever in 2018 with a sizable jump to about 2000 people. That is tiny compared with many other similar sized cities. Seeing homeless people, like stepping over a drunkard spilled out over a sidewalk, isn’t the same as diving into the research or getting into some of the personal stories.
StupidPeople 6y ago
Maybe they are poor because they are insane. Would you ever hire someone who participated in a riot?
cecja 6y ago
Gatekeeping poverty, even for hackernews that's a new low.

Aloha 6y ago

I've always looked at it this way "things must be pretty bad if lighting yourself on fire sounds like a better alternative then living" I dont need to understand the particulars beyond that.

nitrogen 6y ago
I honestly think that there are people in the US who feel distraught enough to do so, but they know that it wouldn't do any good for anyone else -- they would be ignored, or labeled as "crazy". No doubt life in the US is still much better than many other places, but we have to remember that protest itself has been systematically marginalized and penalized as a form of expression, and adjust our evaluation of the state of the US accordingly.
- DevKoala 6y ago
  So they suffer enough to want to burn themselves, but won’t because they fear being labeled crazy? I feel that comparing the suffering of such an individual to the suffering of people who actually burned themselves to protest the oppression they experienced is insulting to the sacrifice of the later. I agree with the sentiment of the protests in the USA, but there is no need to invent fictional martyrs who “could have been”.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    insulting to the sacrifice of the later. I think it's insulting to all that we even feel the need to compare. This perhaps counterintuitively amplifies divisions, when we want to unite.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  Are you saying that burning yourself during Arab Spring has better hope for success than in the US?
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    We have clear evidence that it did.
- emilsedgh 6y ago
  I have a theory that distribution of power in democracies leads to "distribution of blame". Living in a third world country means you probably are dealing with a (semi) dictatorship. That means there's only a few entities (eg regime, government, whatever) that you can assign the blame to. Therefore, you can light yourself on fire in protest to them. In the U.S. who would you light yourself to protest to? Elected congress? Elected government? Wall Street? Supreme Court? Unfortunately when system gets rigged and gamed in a democracy it's really difficult to untangle the mess. This also has a secondary effect: In these countries people are not so divided. They have a common enemy: The dictator [0]. Source: Anecdotal experience based in years of life in a third world country and the U.S. [0] This is an oversimplification as even the dictators have support of a big chunk of the population to rely on.
  - kiliancs 6y ago
    > I have a theory that distribution of power in democracies leads to "distribution of blame". I think there's some truth to this, but I think this eventually results in widespread cynicism, skepticism and loss of trust towards any sort of institution (aka "the system") in general --including science and religion--, which is a perfect environment for fake news and conspiracy theories. Long term it leads to chaos and unrest too.
    - Avicebron 6y ago
      I think that you are correct that in the long term it leads to chaos and unrest, but I think it also has a slow burn problem that ultimately leads to deep ennui, cynicism, and a feeling of powerlessness that can last many generations. This has the effect of further concentrating power in those who have rigged the system and leads to such an unbalance that maybe when the chaos comes, it won't lead to anything better. Conversely I think in more volatile arenas, the power dynamics while large, are less so (logically this makes sense because a revolution that can win is closer in power to the system they are fighting). While this volatility may be worse overall in that society, it is less systematically oppressive than say a rigged democracy deeply meshed into a non-democratic economic system. The more I think about it the more my nihilism takes hold and I find that very disheartening.
snowwrestler 6y ago
I think there are two ways to approach thinking about dramatic acts like self-immolation, rioting, looting, stealing, etc. One way is to think "wow, those people have had very different experiences from me, to drive them to do that." I'd put your reply in that category and I prefer this. It recognizes shared commonality among people, which is a good place to start for constructive change. The other way is to think "wow, those people are nothing like me, to want to do something like that." This treats differences as inherent and implies there are different "types" of people. It creates a sense of "us vs them," which makes it harder to build the empathy necessary for constructive change.
- nickff 6y ago
  I think you've hit on a very interesting way of framing the issue. Perhaps it can be explained with (slightly) statistical language: - Taking the self-immolator's experiences and actions as sample sets, they are different from the 'stereotypical American' by a statistically significant margin. - This does not mean that the cause is that the self-immolator is categorically different from the 'stereotypical American' (because correlation does not necessarily imply causation), in fact, it suggests that the experiences and actions may be related.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nate_meurer 6y ago
  I really agree with you here, except for your inclusion of looters in that group. You're goddamn right opportunistic looters are nothing like me. Those fuckers care nothing about the fight of the protests, and are willing to tarnish the whole movement for some free shit. Fuck them. Otherwise, right on. I can't tell you how often I come to dead ends in arguments regarding poverty and crime, where folks who've never been poor or desperate give themselves 100% of the credit for their good fortune. Like they picked their fucking parents before birth.
  - jimmydorry 6y ago
    In this post alone, there are people saying that looting is justified... For every person saying that the looters are unrelated, there is another person or two that either condones that behaviour or justifies it. Either we have looters in this thread, or the movement is a big umbrella that encompasses the unsavourable elements too.

catalogia 6y ago

No matter what issue you examine, you can doubtlessly find that somebody somewhere at sometime had it even worse. I think these kind of observations are usually unproductive though; taking this attitude to it's logical absurd conclusion would have you telling people to stop complaining because at least they're not in death camps.

trevyn 6y ago
Another logical conclusion is “I will minimize my contribution to a system that actively causes substantial, unnecessary harm to other humans.”
austincheney 6y ago
It’s not about who has it worse. That completely misses the point. It’s about accurately reflecting on your personal situation and not drawing absurd conclusions to justify a personal opinion. Let’s call this Dunning-Kruger for sympathy. If you are trying to qualify who has it worse you aren’t focused on a materially objective outcome. For example many of the people protesting in the US in the past few weeks are trying to raise awareness of systemic racism and for police accountability (different issues, by the way). Most of those people aren’t asking for your sympathy because they are looking for impactful change which isn’t found in sympathy.
- catalogia 6y ago
  I think there may be a miscommunication here. I read "The same absurd comparisons also come up when entitled people people try to talk about poverty when it’s clear they have never seen poverty in the US, much less in an economy where people earn less than $5 per day working 5x harder." as meaning you have no sympathy for the plight of poor people in America because people in other countries experience even more severe poverty. Seeing poverty in America is as easy as going outside and opening your eyes.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    > Seeing poverty in America is as easy as going outside and opening your eyes. That so completely depends upon where you live. My big city of 900,000 people reported their highest measured homeless population ever in 2018 with a sizable jump to about 2000 people. That is tiny compared with many other similar sized cities. Seeing homeless people, like stepping over a drunkard spilled out over a sidewalk, isn’t the same as diving into the research or getting into some of the personal stories.

StupidPeople 6y ago

Maybe they are poor because they are insane. Would you ever hire someone who participated in a riot?

cecja 6y ago

Gatekeeping poverty, even for hackernews that's a new low.