Table of Contents
How to respond politely when someone tells you something useful?
- thanks for letting me know.
- thanks for informing me.
- thanks for reminding me that.
- good to know.
What do we say instead of First World?
The “First World” consisted of the U.S., Western Europe and their allies. The “Second World” was the so-called communist bloc: the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and friends. The remaining nations, which aligned with neither group, were assigned to the “Third World.”
“Thank you for sharing with me.” “I’m glad you told me.” “Thank you for trusting me with this. That really means a lot.”
Why do we say “first world problems”?
For a start, the phrase is an anachronism, since we no longer talk about the “third world”. (The usual phrase is the optimistic “developing world”.) The Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation for “first world problem” is from 1979, though it was then meant seriously, to denote housing problems that were specific to the “first” world.
Is “First World problem” a compassion-free way to describe a problem?
But when “first world problem” is just a mealy mouthed way of saying “shut up”, it sounds distinctly compassion-free. Whoever uses it, though, it’s arguable that the phrase “first world problems” is condescending and dehumanising to literally everyone on the planet.
Are the world’s most urgent problems local or global?
However, back in 2009, we encountered the following series of facts. They led us to think that the most urgent problems are not local, but rather poverty in the world’s poorest countries, especially efforts within health, such as fighting malaria and parasitic worms. Why do we say that?
Is the phrase “first world problems” condescending and dehumanising?
Whoever uses it, though, it’s arguable that the phrase “first world problems” is condescending and dehumanising to literally everyone on the planet. For a start, it patronises those outside the “first world” by implying that hunger, disease and war are not only prevalent among the global poor but in some way the sole conditions of their lives.