Some people – disaster response personnel and Peace Corps volunteers in particular – come home to the US and can’t re-adjust. Fat, sedentary Americans and their trivial concerns strike them as ridiculous. Those people bug me. They bug me a lot. They stand around airports looking superior and worldly and they can’t buy a damn sandwich without talking about the decadence of choosing between so many kinds of meat.
I understand how you can get that way. The contrast in lifestyle between the US and the developing world is heartbreaking and stunning. No thinking person can live through that contrast and emerge unscathed. It leaves a mark on you, and it should.
The thing is, though – pudgy happy Americans, drunken Brits, and overfed Germans are living the life that everyone on this planet wants. Those Darfurian refugees who shattered your heart would give both arms for the chance at a place to live, a gas-hogging car, and as much McDonalds as they can eat. The actual purpose of development work is to help the whole world reach a point where they can live in blissful ignorance of poverty.
There is nothing noble about suffering. People don’t do it on purpose, and a difficult life does not automatically make you stronger, wiser, or morally superior. Mostly, it makes you hungry and miserable. And having met and cared about people who do suffer does not require you to despise those who don’t.
I am guilty of being that way sometimes, usually without meaning to be. And I agree its annoying for everyone (including me in that state). Great point, Alanna, I fully appreciate what you are saying!
I agree that people need to not glamorize suffering or find superiority in it. But I also just need to stick up for people going through reverse culture-shock. It’s not necessarily about putting on airs or despising happy people. It can be genuinely difficult to come home to a place full of things, ideas, and norms you’d never noticed before but were always there.
Yes, some people are arrogant jerks who think way too much of themselves and their own worldliness. But many people just need some time and patience while they confusedly, clumsily readjust. I think it’s worth trying to tell the two groups apart.
Interesting. I wrote of this before, but in a different way: http://vasco-pyjama.livejournal.com/213602.html
I wrote: “To me, Australia is a blissful privileged utopia full of innocent people who don’t know how the majority of the world lives. To most, their biggest worries are boredom and wealth accumulation. And my friend hates it because he sees this as wilful ignorance and conspicuous consumption.”
I suppose it depends on the individual.
I think that reverse culture shock is one thing that of course is expected. I have been through it before. Wallowing in culture shock is not okay and frankly demeaning to the very people you purport to show your righteous indignation for. If you really want to raise awareness of the poverty that you have seen, then DOING something about it substantive is infinitely better than lecturing ad infinitim.
Wow, this one hit a nerve.
@pragzz – Thank you!
@notexactlyroughingit I agree completely about reverse culture shock, and I have come back to the US more than once and basically hidden in my mother’s living room for a week until I can regain my America-skills. (my friends have learned to accept I will not call them if I am on a brief visit) I was writing here about people who seem to cultivate this kind of attitude.
@vasco-pyjama I just went and read that entry, and we are definitely touching on the same thing. My own feeling has always been that the purpose of development work is to help the whole world reach a point where they can live in blissful ignorance of poverty.
@vanessamason – I like your use of the word wallowing. That’s exactly the sense I get.
when I saw the title of your post, I thought you were referring to McCain suffering in the Vietnam war… .
Anyway, interesting post. A friend just came in from Germany, and she observed how America has too many choices.. she was too overwhelmed. It only gets overbearing when these kinds of observations are made to make it look like ‘suffering” or a lack of resources makes for a better life. Also, they should know not having so many choices is not necessarily a sign of suffering.
Zorah, that’s a great point about fewer choices not meaning a lesser life.
i love your blog! i’m so glad i found you on twitter.
Something tells me if you were in their shoes for even a day you would be the same way. There are things people from developed countries will never realise unless they experience it personally. Something tells me you haven’t. You can trust me on this because I am myself from a third world country, living in North America. I know both, people in severe need and also people living in blissful ignorance.
There is so much to say against what you’ve said, I don’t even know where to start.
I’ll say one thing though. No, those Darfurian refugees will not want to live the pudgy happy American life for what it really is. They would choose it over their current condition though, because then they can eat and survive. But for the most part, they would feel disgusted at the shockingly wasteful nature of western life.
I’ve met and still know poor people who are just well off enough to have the luxury to think about and notice things not related to starvation. From the little knowledge they gathered about the things Americans take for granted, they talk about how they would never want to be so out of touch with reality and live such a spoiled life.
Seeing and experiencing suffering of the kind you are talking about shocks people into realising how wasteful and surprisingly trivial western lifestyle is. Upon returning home to America from places like Darfur can make people feel disgust at themselves and everybody around.
It comes from experiencing what true nature of life is, and how things that concern us here everyday can become so puzzlingly unimportant when you are in such a condition as they are in. No one can ever write anything for you to truly understand the difference just by reading it.
Sam,
If you are going to make this personal, then I will claim my cred. I have lived in the Middle East and Central Asia for ten years.
I honestly don’t even know what this means “Something tells me if you were in their shoes for even a day you would be the same way. There are things people from developed countries will never realise unless they experience it personally. Something tells me you haven’t.”
My dad grew up poor in Karachi, and I know my family there. I can tell you none of them would turn down an American middle class lifestyle.
Yes, American life is wasteful. I am in full agreement. But I think it’s human to want to have enough to be able to waste. I think greed and lust and gluttony are all human, and being poor, or having been poor, does not keep you from feeling those things or from being human in that way.
I think you are romanticizing poor people.
I like being disagree with. I do not like being condescended to.
My biggest issue isnt just their attitudes but rather that the conversation ends there. America certainly wastes a lot, but what impact is our waste having on those developing countries? What will happen if all nations on earth suddenly have the opportunity to produce enormous amounts of waste? How can we help these countries move along further in terms of development? These questions are very rarely answered demonstrating a more reactionary approach to inequality.
As a side: When I lived in South Africa in 2006, many of the people I encountered (both at University and in a township where I taught journalism to teens) were shocked that I was there. Why leave America? What could possibly be here?
Part of the problem stems from a global glorification of the American middle class, with little attention paid to its discontents (although, given the economy that may be changing!) It extends beyond having enough to survive to wanting to acquire a mindset/attitude towards life in general.
For example there are plenty of people who come to America and, while appreciative of the opportunities, are shocked and dismayed by the amount of gluttony and a variety of other problematic cultural behaviors. There is a movie (and I forget the name, I apologize) about boys from Sudan who are moved to America. Going to school was a huge deal for them yet the emphasis they encountered was on getting an education to buy a house and a car. Not getting an education to uplift and support one’s community.
In defence of Sam, I think there is a little more in what s/he says than Alanna gives him/her credit for.
The attitude of the poor to the rich is not simply envy – it’s more complex than that. You often see the tension between generations in families where a country has become a great deal richer over time.
Even in the UK, the second world war generation, who lived through 5 years of conflict and a decade of rationing, can be quite ambivalent about the excesses of consumer society. That’s not to say they didn’t want the country to grow richer – but that some things were lost in the process.
David – that’s a good point. I may have gotten defensive there and stopped listening.
It is not often I run across such thoughtful dialogue on a blog. I appreciate all the viewpoints here and the standard you set for truly hearing one another, rather than merely reacting. You lead by example. Thank you.
This is an interesting post.
Reverse culture-shock can be … truly, um, shocking. (I lived in Kitgum, Uganda, for only four months — I know, it was a really short stay — last fall & literally cried for a week straight when I got back to DC.)
Self-righteous people are horrifically frustrating. But they also exist in droves amongst the “pudgy Americans” who have never traveled. I’m not sure it’s connected to people who’ve traveled. I think maybe it’s just a general character flaw — related to intolerance.
When I got home to NZ after two years in Afghanistan I was struggling to fully enjoy the beauty, safety, comfort of summer in NZ because of my sense of guilt that my friends and colleagues in Afghanistan continued to live with violence, hunger, fear and freezing cold.
I was talking to a friend in Afghanistan one day and he said to me, “Marianne, it is not wrong for you to enjoy the chance to walk in safety and comfort along a paved road to a cafe where you can drink fresh orange juice and read the paper without worrying about a rocket propelled grenade. What is wrong is that I can’t also do that. When there is goodness to be enjoyed we must enjoy it. I would do the same in your place.”
What he taught me was the difference for me between guilt, which was destructive, and gratitude, which I found I could do a lot more with.
Marianne, that’s a beautiful way of looking at things.