"Others have it worse than you do"

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I've had people say this to me. When you have depression, you can't think or be positive.

Exactly.

She was crafty and said it in 1964, when nurses didn't strike. And in those days, when the Big People ran out of arguments before I did, they usually just resorted to force. I got force fed, and slapped for being noncompliant about swallowing a (completely unnecessary) stomach tube......they got it down me and then I threw up (surprise, surprise!) so they took it back out and I didn't die for want of the bloody thing. What is it with them and these stomach tubes anyway? Seems everybody gets one these days.

The reason I didn't want to hear people say "it could be much worse," is, at the time, it didn't matter that certain others were experiencing difficulties that, in the opinion of some, were worse than mine. It might matter when I am not upset, but being upset inspires tunnel vision and all I can think about is being upset and what has made me that way. When I am upset, it's the absolute worst feeling in the world at that moment. My situation is perceived as extreme to me.

My mother says such things to me all the time, almost every time we have a conversation. She even does this when I haven't told her of any negative or challenging situation happening to me (which is the case in most conversations). I think it's intended as a test of my empathy levels. But such conversations do help me to get things in perspective about my own life, although I look at the sort of replies we've had in this thread and wonder if I'm being brainwashed as with so many things in my life.

The "no complaining" philosophy was ingrained in my mind at an early age.
Even now, I always remind myself that there are starving and homeless people, which is probably the reason I feel guilty whenever I purchase an album, book or other non-essential item (which, in turn, is one of the reasons I rarely make such purchases).

Also, before anyone beats me to it, I am aware of the paradigm here: If people do not purchase goods/services, the economy suffers, which leads to more homeless/starving people...

I've seen a variant of the technique. Somebody brought this machine into my workplace......I asked if it was going to make a lot of noise......the answer was, "it's not as noisy as some of the other machines we were looking at." [sarcasm]Oh well, that's allright then.[/sarcasm]

But I don't know how far to take my rejection of such a form of argument. Surely it's sometimes valid to remind somebody that there's a bigger picture to consider? If a rich man whinges about his salary being cut to £1M per annum, I feel justified in saying, "leave it out - I'd be dancing in the street if I had your salary for just one month." A woman who lost the use of her car for a while said that it was like having her legs cut off. My friend replied, "if you extend the analogy, I've been crippled since birth." It seems there are some circumstances in which it's appropriate to highlight the relative nature of an assertion, if they're only seeing their own inconveniences and refusing to take the social context into account. So what's the difference? I guess some big pictures are less relevent than others. The nurse was out of line because the starving masses were irrelevent to whether or not my tummy ache was stopping me from eating. The noise of other rejected machines was irrelevent to whether or not the chosen machine was going to harm my focus.

Maybe the best way to deal with it, then, is to always ask, "how is that relevent?" I rather think that would stop disingenuous as*holes in their tracks, while inviting sincere people to simply explain their point more clearly so that their genuine concerns can be met.

Yes, it is a stupid and completely unhelpful thing to say. BUT I have sometimes felt better when I realised my problems were small compared to some other people's. I think the reason for this apparent discrepancy is that people feel bad (or good) as a reaction to a change in their situation, but comparing your situation to other people's prompts you to consider instead how good or bad the current situation is, disregarding the past. Using the salary example, if my salary was cut from $2M/year to $1M/year I would feel bad - because it's a bad change, there is no getting around that. If I stopped focusing on the change and focused on my current situation instead ($1M/year salary) I'd then feel better.

Now, telling someone to eat because there are starving children in Africa - well, that one is just stupid full stop. I really can't find anything useful in that.

I think that's akin to the Broken Window Fallacy. You're only exchanging your money for commodities, not giving it away directly to the people who need it. The purchase tax is only a few percent, and not all tax money is used in a progressive, redistributive way. So it's only comparable to the amount of money you would otherwise be returning to the pool by saving it and letting inflation reduce its spending power (i.e. forgery in reverse).

In my view, people should feel uncomfortable about being richer than the average human. But it makes little practical sense for the individual to unilaterally try to redistribute their own income. Better to work towards a more egalitarian society as a whole, and lobby for universal redistribution, decent essential services free at point of use, bottom-line shelter and food security for all, high taxes for the rich, more spending on the needy. Meanwhile I don't feel much guilt. I'm not exactly living among saintly socialists here in the UK. Don't see why I should behave any more altruistically than my fellow countrymen.

I never say that to anyone. If they have a problem, I sit down and listen to them and try to be there for them, not just brush off whatever's bothering them with some unhelpful, condescending, cliche phrase.

I can talk, I can drive, I can walk and I look normal. I consider it more of a difference. I'm not sure how wealth came into this conversation but I honor people who made their wealth honestly and with good moral principles. And by honestly, I mean that you would be perfectly willing to show anyone the work you did; you are proud of it. Wealth divide does not bother me; it is the education divide that is really the issue. This also results in a wealth divide. Before we address wealth, we need to address giving people an ample opportunity to learn.

If everyone decided to stop purchasing goods/services, businesses would cease to exist, thus adding to unemployment. Those persons would no longer be able to pay bills, leading to homelessness. Unless people decided to live as ancient man did (small-scale agriculture, hunting/gathering, constructing one's own dwelling), there would be wide-spread starvation and homelessness. Afterall, the rich need the people to keep consuming in order to stay rich.

As for the bit about wealth and the personal redistribution thereof, I do not advocate one redistributing their wealth or not. It's that individual's money; they may do whatever they choose to do with it. I simply left a reply about a personal issue I deal with when purchasing items not necessary for existence and where that issue stemmed from. I did not mean anything political by it.

I remember an incident last year, I had just moved into my apartment and I was talking to a relative about the things that bothered me about it, (we were having a discussion, and they had asked me how I liked it) but somehow after I finished "complaining" they said my problems were first-world and I guess they must have added something about third-world difficulties (others have it worse...). I was so upset about this that I wrote a poem:

November 29th, 2011

First-world problems
they said
as if that made me feel
less
or imagine that my
difficulties
are not real
because they are not
great
no, I am not starving
or homeless
but my world
is not about that!
They wonder how I am doing
or how I like this life
and then discount
my perspective
Is no view right
unless it is positive?
Then everything I feel
is for naught!
All of my preferences
my needs
my disabilities
invisible
compared
to the Third-world!
I am not in that one!
I am me
here now
expressing myself
and once again
I am nothing
and nothing to myself
I fight
yet hopelessly
for almost everyone
is like this
and I should just
SHUT UP
apparently
so they cannot deny me
and I can bear
my silent agony.
Alone.

Nothing we go through or face in this world is any less painful or difficult because someone else has it worse.

My response to the problems of others is directly related to how they handle said problems.

I don't mind people who are depressed, sad, angry, lonely, whiny, ect. about whatever problems they happen to have, no matter if it's being crippled in a car wreck, or their pizza was delivered late; HOWEVER, I have no tolerance for people who use their "problems" as an excuse to be nasty, abusive, manipulative, racist, sexist, greedy, ect. THAT'S where I draw the line between someone who has a "problem," and someone who is being a spoiled brat

For example, when I worked at McDonald's, sometimes orders would get messed-up. Couldn't be helped. Most people were cool and just pointed out the error and I fixed it on the spot, but there were some individuals who used their missing fries as an opportunity to scream, yell, and throw temper tantrums. Now, THOSE people were just w*kers with First World problems.

Sorry, but people who use their pain as an excuse to hurt others will only ever receive my disdain.

I hate that, too. It just depresses me.

My particular style of empathy doesn't require seeing someone suffering to feel pain myself. I don't copy people's emotions; therefore, it's just the knowledge that someone else is suffering that's enough to cause me to react in a way very similar to the way I react to having a routine broken or seeing a pattern that's just not quite right. Acquiring said knowledge from people's faces is harder for me than for other people, but if somebody straight-out tells me... yeah. That feeling of wrongness is not pleasant.

So when somebody says "Other people have it worse" I can only help but think... "Man. This sucks for me, and other people have it worse? This is a sucky, messed-up world, and it's not fair." Makes me want to have an all-out tantrum, three-year-old style, sometimes.

It does help to take some action, to try to make things suck less for people--both me and others--but it doesn't help my mood at all to be reminded that others have worse problems than I do.

I definitely agree that perception is relative, that changes can be noticed more than absolute levels. I used to say that if somebody feeds a wild animal regularly, they take on a moral responsibility not to stop too suddenly, because of the dependency they've created.


Yes it's got a lot to do with what the millionaire's been used to, from his own perspective. But there's a difference between losing a few expensive toys and losing a few meals.


Presumably designed to make me feel remorse for selfishly wasting their food. Seemed to think I was faking. It was intense abdominal pain, simple as that, but that was unusual and awkward, and invisible (apart form the cries of pain from the child shuffling doubled up along the corridor). A case of "they only do it to annoy, because they're homesick or something." They did finally realise it was real.