While discussing this article
http://www.lindsredding.com/2012/03/11/a-overdue-lesson-in-perspective/
Yesterday I proposed that there is a symptom of overworking that causes the pace of life to be too fast, which can make you ill. While pulling weeds by hand watering the garden at the community plot, I found the panacea for this. Quite simply is to go slowly while you are not working and allow your thoughts to decompress. Albeit, a first world problem.
But what annoyed me about the discussion on social media about this was it was immediately dismissed as a first world problem. Which leads back to the tokenism of growing a handful of vegetables in an organic plot and the saving grace of pulling weeds out by hand is the solution to the problem, of working too hard. Obviously the success of technology means that food production is automated which would give us more leisure time to pursue other things of interest rather than subsisting on a third world hand to mouth existence of food production and consumption by the simplest means.
But how ironic is it to call out a problem on the Internet as a “first world problem”. In the third world is there a fair trade semiconductor network for your self-righteous thoughts to travel on the internet?
Then I thought more about this issue, without being a hypocrite how can you use the term “first world problem” on the Internet.
Basically you would need to make sure that all of your data packets were travelling on computers/routers/cables/satellites that were made in factories with fair trade agreements. Installed by workers that were union members. Also the materials would need to be mined from lands where respects had been paid to the traditional owners. You would need to make sure that there was no history of tyrants governing the people who mined, refined and manufactured the components of the Internet. You better hope the IT technician that solved the problem with the routing issue, wasn’t getting paid any more than the person working in the mine where the silica for CPU the router that is being used. Otherwise is isn’t really fair trade.
Oh that is right, the Internet is a product of the first world, so the Internet itself IS a first world problem.
So until we get an Internet of trained axolotls that carry messages on the ankles by their own free will. Please don’t use the “first world problem” as a put down without considering that you are massively ironic.