10 ms·
It's like we're living in a parallel reality in 1st world countries
by rareitem 3y ago
It's like we're living in a parallel reality in 1st world countries
- kranke155 3y agoFly to Brazil, take a cab around Central Sao Paulo. Your understanding of the world is warped by the safety and availability of goods. It's incredible when you get in places where the state doesn't function at let's say 50% of what we get in the first world. It's one hell of a learning experience.
- doodlesdev 3y ago> Fly to Brazil, take a cab around Central Sao Paulo. Better yet, don't. source: Am Brazilian, would not recommend it. To be fair, Central São Paulo isn't even what I would consider third world yet, if you really wanna see how good some of us have it go to the northeast of Brazil, or Venezuela (if you manage to get in somehow).
- sbierwagen 3y agoGetting into Venezuela is easy, getting back out again is the hard part.
- zubiaur 3y agoIn the grand scheme of things, even rural-ish northeast Brazil is not thaaat bad. Venezuela though... oh boy.
- kranke155 3y agoThe northeast is amazing. I wanted to give a simple example.
- marcosdumay 3y agoCentral São Paulo isn't all that bad. It's slightly off-center that is really bad. And no, you will only find similar stuff at Rio de Janeiro. Fortaleza and Recife have small areas that come close, but the real bad of urban violence is on the southeast.
- bsimpson 3y agoI was recently in northern Vietnam. You could spend an hour having a simple conversation via Google Translate. Made me realize there are still big chunks of the world where you can't take basic literacy for granted in 2023, even of people in their 30s.
- mrguyorama 3y ago50% of Americans cannot read at a highschool level.
- KMnO4 3y agoStill a lot, but 22% of Americans are children
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dsfyu404ed 3y agoAre they measuring "reading ability for the real world" or are we talking "analyze any interpret fiction literature" type reading skills? Serious question. Because I feel like "real world reading" stopped after about 8th, maybe 9th grade and everything else was just fluff.
- marc_abonce 3y agoSorry but I don't understand how does the first sentence in your post relates to the second one. To me it reads like you didn't know the local language but they're the illiterate ones for not knowing your language? Or did I completely misunderstood your story?
- jhugo 3y agoGoogle Translate is really, really, really bad for Vietnamese, so they were probably having trouble understanding the mutilated Vietnamese it was spitting out, more than anything. I assume you didn't mean to imply that "basic literacy" == "knowing English", but your post does somewhat come across that way.
- gota 3y agoI don't understand this. Sao Paulo is mostly indistinguishable from any large city in the US. Big concrete-and-glass buildings city centre, lots of traffic-related infrastructure, large swaths of residential areas including richer suburbs and poorer ghettos ('favelas', in Brazil). Are there any large cities that do not conform to this formula? What are you referring to, specifically? The only thing that comes to mind are the homeless population, but then again you could say the same problem (and at arguably larger scale) afflicts San Francisco or New York. Sao Paulo is not even particularly violent, too
- elzbardico 3y agoDowntown São Paulo, or the central zone is a decadent part of the city (think Bronx in 70s). It is overrun with Cracolândia (big gathering of crack addict homeless people). Most foreign people or even Brazilians that go to São Paulo stay only at the nice zones.
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- ricardobayes 3y agoI definitely feel like that sometimes. I'm so grateful my "problems" are choosing between polarized and regular sunglasses.
- piloto_ciego 3y agoWe are. I was an exchange student in Ukraine in high school and the town I lived in periodically gets shelled now… we live immensely privileged and comfortable lives. This is not a bad thing, it’s great, but we should try to make everyone else’s life as good instead of hoarding our privileges.
- mrguyorama 3y agoIt's not privilege, millions of people have died defending the right to not be invaded by an asshole neighbor. Don't forget the price people have paid. Some places seem to be less interested in that, because they want to invade their neighbor, and we should be aggressively hostile to that very concept, and anyone who espouses the belief.
- borski 3y agoUnless you or your family were the ones that fought, it is privilege. Privilege isn’t a “bad word,” either - it’s okay to have privilege. But acknowledging it’s existence goes a long way toward building humility and understanding the situation of others who don’t have it.
- majou 3y agoIs it not "be privileged" or to "have privileges"? It's not as though it were quantifiable—"privilege checks" (the decade old boogeymeme) notwithstanding.
- borski 3y agoNot sure I understand what you mean. I am saying it is good to acknowledge the privileges you have, and/or the fact that you are privileged. Not everybody has privileges, or is privileged, or however you’d like to describe it.
- seizethecheese 3y agoDefine family. Because most Americans are descendants of war veterans.
- hinkley 3y agoSee also Baudrillard.