What are you stitching next?

Or maybe she was from a place where you don't share your grief with strangers.

Either way, the plural of anecdote is not "data" and you still have no proof that it's easier to be poor if every one around you is poor.

Elizabeth

Karen you are unbelievable

I remember very well that in former years you were telling elabiarste stories about your health and esp how hard it was for you to convince doctors that you were ill, but you Judge others about their health problems .

But this is nothing comapred to your insistance that some parents some where , in a far away country , people you never met and whose culture you don`t know, might feel Less pain about loosing a child , since it is more common in their culture /place ,,, than to make your point even clearer you tell this

Yes sure!!! YOU needed that hug as much as she did >

You don`t know what she felt how she felt , How can you even write this things ?

If that poor mother was from another culture , maybe she would/ or could not trust you as one resembling the OTHER culture for her ,, see what she feels ,,,

Never assume you what other people felt ,, mirjam

It is harder to be a poor amongst other poor , since that you can`t share leftovers of the richer!!! mirjam

Not necessarily. Think about it within a culture. One person lives in an area which is pretty uniform economically; most people live much the same way. Another is one of the few in an area who is markedly poorer than the rest. That person is in quite a different situation than the first, and could react to it in a number of different ways - acceptance, envy, ambition, or several ways in sequence or in combination. It's a lot easier to be happy without a car, or with a cheap car if you don't see all your friends and neighbours with a luxury car, and if you don't personally believe, or your culture doesn't teach that your personal self-worth is measured by the kind of car you drive. In other words, it's easier to have little if you either don't have neighbours with a lot more (which might inspire envy) or you have the strength or wisdom to avoid becoming envious, and know that your worth doesn't depend on having the financial ability to keep up with the Joneses.

Actually, now that I think about it, this is something that people who are or have been comparatively poor have to wrestle with, because in our very wealthy societies, it's very easy to become bitter and envious of others' good fortune. The wealthy and financially secure probably have different challenges.

As for the children - there is of course the fact that some people from all cultures are more stoic in public than others, and some cultures encourage that characteristic. I think, though, that the real difference is in a sense of entitlement. There's an often unsaid assumption in some western societies that if you do everything right, you won't suffer. So when tragedy hits, people think 'What happened? What did I do wrong? There's got to be something I could have done differently that would have avoided this.' But often there isn't. Bad things happen; that's life. Perhaps if you live in a society (or a social group) in which people die early, you learn that very fast, and like anything else, people often get better at dealing with grief and death when they get more experience. In our society, many of us don't know how to handle tragedy until later in life because tragedy often doesn't hit us until our close friends and relatives start dying of cancer at an comparatively advanced age. And even then, we try to tell ourselves that if only they'd done the 'right' thing they wouldn't have gotten sick, because that's easier than accepting that tragedies can and do hit anyone.

I think that people from very poor and unhealthy situations, ones in which many children do die very early, may well grieve the loss of their children - but they've got experience with mourning that most people from wealthier and healthier backgrounds only get much later in life.

Cheryl P.

Right. That's my point: everyone has different challenges and it's impossible to make sweeping generalizations about what other people feel or about what's easier. You can only say what it easier for you and what challenges you face. It's not at all wise to try to speak for others.

Elizabeth

Finally, someone understands what I was saying!

Not to speak for them, perhaps, but to speak about them - yes! How can you try to learn about humankind outside your own group if you don't observe, think about, and discuss how other humans live?

Cheryl P.

A fine point - although I don't think any of us are anthropologists, or even sociologists _ though I could be wrong. Siding with Elizabeth - as I suspect she and I are having similar feelings about this topic. What a person directly observes - in one situation - is just that. A data point. Not appropriate for drawing a generalized hypothesis. What a person observes in numerous situations can become the basis formulating a hypothesis - which might have some credibility as a carefully phrased generalization. What a person researches - reading, observing multiple sources, events - is how we come to form more solidly founded opinions. Not that we don't as individuals jump to conclusions based on singular events.

OTOH, if the observation is based on hearsay - well - that's a big leap from hearsay - especailly someone's recollections of their travails in a foreign land - to a generalization of life and attitudes in that foreign land. At best, ok, say - well - it seems that in rural villages in lower Slobovia it was expected that fill-in-the-blank.

- it's just a qualified data point.

So, while all of us tell tales, and form opinions about people, actions, material things - it's a big assumption to make general "this is how people act or feel" statements of situations - when a - you're relying for the most part on 2nd or 3rd hand observations, b - the observations have no controlling factors, c - they're singular events .

What Karen presented is her opinion. Based on what different people told her. When counters to the reasons she feels cause the 3rd party to have special treatment are presented - she disagrees. She can disagree. But, the point is - the discussions aren't social experiments. There's no great effort at research behind them. Just one person stating what they think based on what someone else told them. Remember the old game telephone??? Well, personally, I take such things with a big, handful of salt. And honestly, sometimes these kind of discussions are more insight into the discussers than those being discussed.

Ellice - not a sociologist - but, hey, I did take 1 class.....

I usually keep out of these discussions but ...

I am not a scientist, although I worked with many, nor am I an anthropologist although I watched a lot of PBS specials about different cultures including those in the animal kingdom.

When one 'observes' behavior or an event, one must be extremely careful not to let one's own notions and biases lead to interpretations. Only after hundreds or thousands of repetition should one even attempt to postulate a theory on the significance of the behavior or event. Value judgements based on the observer's background is also verboten.

There is a movie I rented from Netflix called, "The Wheel of Time." It is about a large festival in India surrounding an initiation given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It's an interesting documentary as it shows many different types of people who make the pilgrimage. Some come from thousands of miles, some prostrate all the way there, etcc.

I believe it was in this documentary it was theorized by the narrator that, people who are poor are happier. In a way, maybe they are more fortunate because in a way (not concretely) they don't have as much to cleave, grasp or be attached to. They are more free with having less.

I have'nt experienced being poor in this lifetime, but I found that an interesting observation. It's a good film. If you have Netflix I say rent it if for no other reason than to take in a remarkable festival.

Oh, I understood it all along, I just disagree with it, just as I disagree with Cheryl.

Elizabeth

I think that you can observe, think about and discuss how other humans live without presuming to know how other humans FEEL about those lives and without making broad sweeping generalizations. I especially think that you can avoid saying that people who are clearly less materially privileged have anything _easier_ than we do.

Elizabeth

Thank you, Ellice and Anne, for clarifying my point. That's exactly what I was trying to say - saying that "it's easier to be poor when others are poor" is a value judgement unless it is backed up by an enormous level of in-depth research, which I don't think exists.

Elizabeth

Even though it is stated as a theory (hypothesis would be better), it is still couched in the point of view of the observer, who brings to his observation the idea that attachment to material possessions is bad. So, although he thinks people without such attachments might be happier, he has no way of knowing that they actually _are_ happier without doing concrete research, including developing a way to measure happiness. And there, one will run into the problem that "happiness" is a culturally based determination of an emotional state. It would be almost impossible to come up with a single, universally agreed upon, measure of happiness.

Elizabeth

I can agree that it is necessary to be cautious when attributing feelings to other people - look how many people are quick to assume that someone is guilty of assault or murder because the accused doesn't respond in an 'appropriate' way!

I don't agree that you can't discuss the lives of those obviously poorer (or richer!) than yourself. It's not doing any favours to anyone to assume that nothing in their lives provide ease or have value.

Some people who come from very poor backgrounds wouldn't agree that the poor (or less materially privileged, if you prefer!) don't have some things easier than the more wealthy. Some of them look back nostalgically at, for example, at the closeness of their families, the generosity of those who know what it's like to have little or nothing, or the absence of their current job and money worries. Others, of course, have different experiences.

I don't see anything wrong with pointing out such things.

Cheryl P.

I'm merely talking about looking at the world around me - in the broadest sense - and discussing it. I'm not claiming to perform a scientific study.

Cheryl P.

And I'm saying that when we engage in the process of learning about ourselves and the world around us, we don't generally carry out scientific experiments. We do make judgements. We have to. How else can we know what behaviour to adapt and what to avoid; what situations to try to change by political action or alleviate by donations unless we make a judgement about them?

I was also trying to point out in my answer that you don't even need to talk about different cultures or societies to make a statement like "it's easier to be poor when others are poor". A lot of popular western fiction is about the suffering of the poor outsider - not because of actual physical deprivation, but because lovely luxuries are right there, just out of reach. You see it in 'Cinderella', and you see it in all those tales about the poor high school student who can't afford the clothes and entertainment of the wealthier classmates. Humans do seem to have an somewhat easier time of it if they aren't markedly richer or poorer than most of the people in their lives.

Cheryl P.

I didn't say that you can't discuss their lives and I certainly don't assume that nothing in their lives provides ease or has value. I said that we should avoid making sweeping generalizations about them. In general, we should avoid making sweeping generalizations about people other than ourselves or generalizing from our own experience or observations to the entire world.

Neither do I. I do see a huge difference however between "it's easier to be poor when others are poor" and "some poor people would argue that it's easier to be poor." I assume you can see the difference as well, since you were careful to couch your statements in qualifying terms rather than making a sweeping generalization.

Elizabeth

There's a difference between discussing the world and making absolute statements about that world.

Elizabeth