First World Problems
City Journal's Katherine Ernst visits Zucotti Park:
As much as the Zuccotti kids like to compare themselves with the “Arab Street,” they’re really much closer, I think, to their cousins across the pond. A Q&A with some of those rioters on the BBC swiftly became infamous. What are you all raising hell for, asked the Beeb, after two young girls giggled over their “free alcohol!” “It’s the government’s fault. I don’t know,” admitted one. “Conservatives,” chirped her friend. “Yeah, I forget who it is. I don’t know.” They eventually settled on an answer: “It’s the rich people, the people that got businesses, and that’s why all of this is happening, because of rich people. So we’re just showing the rich people we can do what we want.”
There’s this running gag on the Internet where, whenever someone makes a mountain out of a molehill—“GRRR! Glee sucking this season!!! FML!!!—someone retorts, “#FirstWorldProblems.” Three simple words, but they illustrate one’s lack of proportion with comparative ease. When life is exponentially easier for you than it was for most of the world throughout most of human history— right up until the mid-twentieth century—boredom creates a vacuum. To be a hero, you have to create your own dragon to slay. But fighting real oppression, the kind ayatollahs dispense daily? Too brutal, too gauche. Mastering the intricacies of credit-default swaps so as to articulate an effective reform of the broken financial system? Way too tough. Better to create a dragon that can only be slayed with performance-art zombie metaphors.
Meanwhile, in Turkey:
University students have the democratic right to demand a free education but are being silenced by a politicized judiciary that has invoked anti-terror laws against them, the Progressive Lawyers Association (ÇHD) said yesterday in a press statement, adding that some 500 students are currently under arrest in Turkey, with 87 students under arrest in Istanbul alone.
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Dec '10
Re: First World Problems
You see an important difference; I do not.
I worry - know- that my nieces will join this "Occupy____" nonsense. They are empty, after so many years of conflicting messages.
Turkey's students think education is a right. So do America's.
I think parents, Turkish and American alike, have failed their children.
I think I have failed my children by allowing them to think that education is an option, but I don't inflict my failure upon a nation.
I wish our boyz considered education a duty, but I am glad that they don't consider it a right.
My failure is not your duty. Eldest boy has now enlisted and, I hope, will learn a self discipline there that I could never cement in a broken home, that gave him conflicting advice.
Most children, whether in Turkey or America, did not have our own parents.
Re: First World Problems
The difference is that Americans don't lock these kids up on terror charges. I'm still enough of an American to be proud of that.
Dec '10
Re: First World Problems
You are on target 100% Claire. Childish hero worship of form over substance leads to the extreme intellectual laziness that you are describing. Because someone has just died it is difficult for me to comment in a way that would be seen as insensitive. However, I will simply say that Mr. Edison, Mr. Ford, and Mr. Disney wound up with huge market share. Without going into detail I would say that Microsoft saved Apple many more times then just the one talked about in the nineties. Mr. Gates is the grand strategist of the digital revolution. Computers have three major parts not two. Apple thought in terms of hardware and software only. Apple relentlessly persued "closed system architecture" where the hardware and the operating system (the third component of a computer) were owned and totally controlled by Apple. Microsoft championed "open systems architecture" where the operating system was controlled by one company but both the hardware and the software were left wide open. You might compare an operating system to the constitution and bill of rights. Some people make physical goods and some intellectual goods. The constitution referees the interface between the two. Does this suggest anything to you?
Edited on Oct 6, 2011 at 5:50pmAug '11
Re: First World Problems
There is even a significant part of the 'indignados', over here in Spain, who wear their name-brand jeans, and use their iPhones and Blackberries to complain about their first-world-problems.
Has it been as muted as it has, to not embarrass the Socialist Party (currently running things here?) We'll see if there's still any holding back, and we'll see if police efforts are really that much different over here, west of the Bosphorus, when the political leadership is replaced with the opposition. Same for the U.S. with a Republican president, and my guess is that they'll step up protesting violently, before there's a chance to turn unemployment numbers back around.
TEA partiers looked and said, "Hey! the glass is half full," but we'll happily fill it back up, if government will just take a step back.
So far, the Occupy__blank'ers are more, "like, hey man! the glass is half empty" But they will be the only ones surprised to find out they're just being used by the ones who will say, "screw half-full or half-empty, the glass wasn't built to the right specifications... Smash the glass!"
Oct '10
Re: First World Problems
midnightgolfer: There is even a significant part of the 'indignados', over here in Spain, who wear their name-brand jeans, and use their iPhones and Blackberries to complain about their first-world-problems.
So far, the Occupy__blank'ers are more, "like, hey man! the glass is half empty" But they will be the only ones surprised to find out they're just being used by the ones who will say, "screw half-full or half-empty, the glass wasn't built to the right specifications... Smash the glass!" · Oct 7 at 4:56am
'Indignados' -- nice moniker!. Is that original or is it in common use over there?
Aug '11
Re: First World Problems
Good Berean
midnightgolfer: There is even a significant part of the 'indignados', over here in Spain, who wear their name-brand jeans, and use their iPhones and Blackberries to complain about their first-world-problems.
So far, the Occupy__blank'ers are more, "like, hey man! the glass is half empty" But they will be the only ones surprised to find out they're just being used by the ones who will say, "screw half-full or half-empty, the glass wasn't built to the right specifications... Smash the glass!" · Oct 7 at 4:56am
'Indignados' -- nice moniker!. Is that original or is it in common use over there? · Oct 7 at 11:35am
It's what they call themselves, and it appears to mean that they feel they have been wronged, and are indignant. The fact that it also sounds like they have no dignity is apparently only funny to me.