It's like we're living in a parallel reality in 1st world countries
I was an exchange student in Ukraine in high school and the town I lived in periodically gets shelled now… we live immensely privileged and comfortable lives.
This is not a bad thing, it’s great, but we should try to make everyone else’s life as good instead of hoarding our privileges.
Living in a warzone affords very little privilege, but likely not none.
If both of my grandfathers fought in WWII and neither of yours did, my parents are likely to have picked up a lot of latent trauma that yours did not.
I believe the lower classes in this country are less “privileged” for their freedom , on average.
Of course, the more time passes, the smaller this effect.
Probably lower class people have a lot more latent trauma passed through generations.
i.e. recognize that you are privileged, since others paid the price on your behalf.
Yes, and benefiting from that -- without having had to fight in those conflicts -- is a privilege.
Why is it not privilege? What is privilege?
Your understanding of the world is warped by the safety and availability of goods. It's incredible when you get in places where the state doesn't function at let's say 50% of what we get in the first world. It's one hell of a learning experience.
> Fly to Brazil, take a cab around Central Sao Paulo.
source: Am Brazilian, would not recommend it.
To be fair, Central São Paulo isn't even what I would consider third world yet, if you really wanna see how good some of us have it go to the northeast of Brazil, or Venezuela (if you manage to get in somehow).
And no, you will only find similar stuff at Rio de Janeiro. Fortaleza and Recife have small areas that come close, but the real bad of urban violence is on the southeast.
What are you referring to, specifically?
The only thing that comes to mind are the homeless population, but then again you could say the same problem (and at arguably larger scale) afflicts San Francisco or New York.
Sao Paulo is not even particularly violent, too
Made me realize there are still big chunks of the world where you can't take basic literacy for granted in 2023, even of people in their 30s.
To me it reads like you didn't know the local language but they're the illiterate ones for not knowing your language? Or did I completely misunderstood your story?
I assume you didn't mean to imply that "basic literacy" == "knowing English", but your post does somewhat come across that way.