I feel like there's this weird preciousness fetish that comes up around hardship. "Oh, you poor thing! Life must be so difficult and interesting for you. Please, tell me about your struggles, preferably in 15-20 minutes while alternating personal anecdotes with general observations about society." I see this in how we think about disability, but also poorer countries, where the gold standard is the noble African trib…
>poorer countries, where the gold standard is the noble African tribeswoman, carrying water for her family, living in a hut, eating soup made of sticks or whatever. Shame she has a cellphone and wears a t-shirt. It kinda ruins the magic. I've traveled quite a bit in recent years, and there are quite a lot of fellow travelers who express something like this. Oh it's so sad that we can't see the REAL China anymore. Or…
> I see this in how we think about disability, but also poorer countries, where the gold standard is the noble African tribeswoman, carrying water for her family, living in a hut, eating soup made of sticks or whatever. Shame she has a cellphone and wears a t-shirt. It kinda ruins the magic.
I lived in the Philippines for over a year and my first sixth months I lived in a pretty rural area where most people had dirt floors and bamboo/cinder-block houses. I believe some of them had cell phones but not all of them.
The interesting thing about the above quote to me is that though people live in such humble circumstances that doesn’t necessarily make life more miserable for them then for you and I. Some of those people I met in those circumstances were very happy people. They may not have the same things, but the things they have like family they hold dear.
On a tangent, I think the principle behind the article’s solution (basically that we should not pity and should help by building ramps) is the difference between empathy and sympathy. Like it was stated earlier in the comments we need to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and see if they have any problems with their situation. Once you know and they know you know there is a problem then you can go about expressing your concern for them or providing a solution. The problem with just giving pity outright is shown in the article.