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Given that developed countries are so much richer and have such a higher standard of living compared to most of the world, do you think that those of us who live in them are either born with silver spoons in our mouths or live sheltered lives far different from the reality of the great mass of humanity that has ever existed?
Of course. Americans who have negative net worth (owe more in debts than their assets) still consider themselves to be well off, simply because there is a fairly good prospect that they will get a paycheck every Friday through an open-ended future and/or get credit. At the same time, a person in a third-world slum who has positive net worth (he owns the piece of cardboard he sleeps on and has no debts) recognizes how desperately poor he is.
The inhabitants of a nation or a community believe that they possess a share of the GDP of where they live, which will trickle down to them somehow in the normal course of events, regardless of their own personal circumstances within the whole. Human society being largely cooperation-based, that is a fairly realistic picture and justified expectation.
I actually think the developed world thing is to a large degree a capitalist myth. For example, American life expectancy has always been only a few years higher than the world average. Right now the average age to die is about 65-70, in America it's about 75. Average age of an American is 37, average age of an Earthling is about 29.
As far as income, yes Americans have a lot of money on average, but it's largely skewed by people who are very rich. There are millions and millions of Americans who are in absolute terms more poor than your average Chinese person today. Keep in mind things like rent are obscenely expensive in the United States, not to mention the materialism of our society forces us to keep up with the Joneses if we want respect from our peers or even just want to have a f***ing girlfriend.
100 years ago, the majority of people on every continent lived in what we would today consider miserable conditions. Did they find it miserable? Maybe, maybe not. It was all they knew. Today the majority of people on every continent except Africa have the majority of their material needs met. Are they happy? Maybe, maybe not.
The developing world might have less material things than us, but I think their social capital and relationships with other people have not yet been destroyed as thoroughly by corporatism as the peoples of the West.
I would say people in Canada, Australia, and Western Europe are the luckiest people on Earth, but people in the United States have a comparable average quality of life to Eastern Europe, Latin America and East Asia.
I also read somewhere, might have been on this forum, that Africa hasn't had a famine since 1984. Not sure if it's true or not but I do think this idea that the world outside of America is stuck in the Dark Ages is pretty laughable.
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I agree America seems to be at the lower end of the developed world on average, with more of an income gap than in other developed nations. Life there seems to be a bit of a struggle, more similar but still not as bad as the developing nations. Also, nations are economically well-off as Malaysia or even Argentina are sometimes lumped in with the likes of Sierra Leone as 'developing countries', which suggests that everyone not living in the first world is struggling to get by, which is not true. True mass starvation etc tends to be mostly in Africa, and the very poorest parts of Asia. Only a small minority of mostly slum dwellers in Latin America have a similar life. The rich in countries like Malaysia, Russia, Brazil and India have as a good a life as those in the first world in many ways.
I'd say most people in the world actually have no idea how bad it is in a truly poor country unless they've visited. Even then they don't know what it's like to live there. The poorest country I've been to was Thailand/Vietnam/China, and while many live humble lives I didn't see all that much abject poverty. In China rural folk seem worse off, though. I'd say the worst of China is still worse than the worst of America, but the average Chinese has a quality of life similar to a working class American.
The main difference between a person who's only lived in a developed country and one who's lived in a truly poor country is that in a truly poor country you will understand how cheap human life is. If you don't have a good imagination that is very hard to understand if you haven't experienced it.
Ultimately people in most of the world are lucky enough to live some place where innate human dignity exists. If the majority of a populace don't cherish and believe in such a thing it does not exist, and in the truly poor parts of the world today it has often been generations since the majority of the populace have been well off enough to believe in such a thing.
Luckily, there are very few places in the world where that kind of poverty is so widespread as to seem to be the natural state of mankind.
I also read somewhere, might have been on this forum, that Africa hasn't had a famine since 1984. Not sure if it's true or not but I do think this idea that the world outside of America is stuck in the Dark Ages is pretty laughable.
Not true. There are frequent famines in Africa. Droughts cause famines and those are plentiful.
Have you been in a developing country? Mud huts, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, cooking outdoors on coal or wood, no shoes, etc. Can be quite primitive. Funny though that most of the people seem to be very happy.
Ultimately people in most of the world are lucky enough to live some place where innate human dignity exists.
I don't think "dignity" is the correct word to use in this context. I've been to more than 120 countries, and I have never seen one where people do not respect the dignity of each other, and in most countries, they surpass the American concept of dignity for each other, or expected payment for helping.
People in the poorest countries are honest and fair in their dealings with each other. Everyone is always given the correct change, people don't aggressively try to crowd ahead of each other to get on a bus, when somebody tells you something you can take them at their word. If a person is seen to be in need, others are quick to come to their assistance. I've been the recipient dozens of times myself, of the kindness of complete strangers, in circumstances in which Americans would just have walked past me or blown me off.
Everybody in the world pretty well understands the mortality and life expectancy in their country, and everyone knows that death can be walking very close behind you. Death occurs often, and sometimes early, but people know how to deal with that reality, and to get on with their lives. That is not a dignity issue.
always amazes me how most americans appear to believe that poverty is a choice , in reality the vast bulk of people in this world have zero chance of ever being anything but poor by western standards , while in south america , i met a vet who earned 400 dollars ( equivelent of ) per month , in otherwords , an educated professional who quite clearly had not squandered their ability
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