The phrase “first world problem” used to be something thrown at westerners to shame them into understanding that their problems aren’t actual problems. It wasn’t done to make people humble and grateful, but to make them ashamed of having so much while others have so little, making them obedient to any class war suggestion.
But despite the fact that it was initially used to shame people into compliance with left-leaning suggestions, there is an underlying truth to it. We, here in America, are incredibly well off compared to many other people worldwide. For instance, while we’re debating on whether having internet access should be a basic commodity provided by the government, people consider it a luxury to have running water in destitute countries.
We’re so wealthy and prosperous that our poor people are fat. In fact, in relation to the rest of the world, our poor are still considered wealthy. Owning pets was once a sign of affluence, signaling that you’re wealthy enough to feed another mouth and it’s not even a human one. In today’s America, every 1.46 households own at least one dog.
It’s a real testament to the free market capitalism America has practiced from its inception.
But all this wealth has come with a price.
There’s another saying that is proving increasingly true. “Tough times create tough men, tough men create good times, good times create soft men, soft men create tough times.”
We are currently experiencing the “soft men” part of the cycle. My colleague Kira Davis wrote a very interesting article about whether or not depression was a western luxury. She came to the conclusion that while depression is real and a very serious issue, it seems to be a symptom of too much comfort:
Does that Haitian mother who can’t nurse her baby because of her own malnutrition and can’t afford formula lay in bed all day and contemplate her failures? Probably not. She has pressing life matters to attend to that cannot be ignored. Did my slave ancestors ever say, “I just can’t get out to the fields today. I am sick with depression”? I do not believe so. Some certainly had situational depression (for obvious reasons) but chronic depression doesn’t even seem like a concept in populations that struggle with survival basics daily.
To be sure, I can remember the devastation of my island home of Galveston after Ike. For days we cleaned up our home with no running water, no air conditioning, and a general lack of modern luxuries. Yet, I can remember not feeling too much in the way of sadness. In fact, those who had returned to the island to clean up their homes and help their neighbors all seemed in high spirits. For years, that confused me until I realized, later in life, that the reason we weren’t depressed and distraught was that we all had a purpose and had felt more togetherness as a community than we had in years. We didn’t have time to sit and be depressed. We were too busy for that.
I think in this line of thinking, we can identify why our society has become so depressed or in extreme cases, embrace falsehoods willingly and embrace them to the point where we believe them to be true.
The young are particularly susceptible to this. They live in a world where first world comforts have never been so prevalent. Communication, the delivery of food, and the receipt of endorphins and oxytocine can all be done from a little thin device from a hand. No need to cook anything; someone will cook it for you. No need to get out of bed and make plans to visit with your friends; you can use a number of social media apps to assist with that where you are. No need to generate a relationship that will lead to sexual intercourse. With a few presses of a button, you can watch other people do it in gratuitious fashion, all day long, and never see the same video twice.
It’s a rather hollow existence but it’s one we find outselves in–and it was one younger generations were born into.
So, they try to find something to believe in to keep them busy and give them a purpose. Some of them fall into socio-political activism. They embrace falsehoods such as the transgender movement or, as Konstantin Kisin made a superb argument against, climate activism.
"We need to believe young people are persuadable."
Me on Tucker last night. pic.twitter.com/HVJ1sxmpDr
— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) January 19, 2023
And why wouldn’t they embrace it? They have no real introduction into the world outside of this very comfortable and catered-to bubble. They believe with all their heart and soul that this is a fight for their lives when, in truth, they don’t know what it is to truly struggle. These are invented struggles for people to embrace in order to convince themselves that they have a purpose of some kind.
Deep down, in their heart of hearts, they know it’s not. They can’t fend off the depression.
It’s a sad state of affairs, but if we can teach children that activity, not activism, is the key to warding off the sadness of staleness, then perhaps we’d have a much happier society.
