"Eat your broccoli, son/daughter. Kids are starving in Africa."
"You don't get to compare yourself to me! You haven't gone through [insert traumatic and/or devastating situation here] so just shut up!"
"Stop crying! You think you're sad already? I'll give you something to cry about!"
We hear these sorts of phrases all the time. Whether it's parents lecturing a child, two people in a relationship playing misery poker with their abusive pasts, or simply someone trying to stifle an opposing argument, we all seem to love throwing out the eternal reminder that there's some poor sod out there in the world who's even more miserable than we are. This can range from starving children, homeless people in cardboard boxes, a crushed finger vs. a broken leg, missing someone who moved away compared to missing someone who outright died, and a whole bunch of other things.
So why do we use this argument? And what is its significance?
Well basically, it was the "check your privilege" argument before checking privilege was a thing. If there's someone out there worse off than you are, it serves to put your problem into a skewed form of perspective. Suddenly your own problems seem a lot less significant compared to someone else's, even if it's someone you've never actually met. It's a way for the person making the argument to act condescendingly to the person receiving it by achieving a perceived moral high ground without actually doing anything to deserve it. Since they have suffered to a greater extent than someone else, their bad experiences now become emotional leverage to be held up over anyone deemed inferior in this Olympics of Oppression. It also ties into what I said earlier about victimhood mentalities and the constant demand for compensation. "I've been hurt more than you have, so I'm better than you and you owe me." The receiver, on the other hand, gets cowed into silence after having his/her own insignificance in the face of true suffering thrust into their face. Who are they to be upset about [insignificant topic] when real pain and misery surround them every day? And since the problem is no longer significant, it doesn't need to be addressed and fixed either. So they keep going on keeping their problems to themselves since they're not important enough to be brought up.
The problem with this?
It's bullshit. You heard me. BULL-SHIT.
If you wouldn't want someone to go through what you've been through, you shouldn't hold it over someone else. Because at the end of the day, you can't feel anyone's pain but your own.
For one thing, people have different pain tolerances and different weaknesses. One person might be able to brush off a throwaway insult, but another person might have it linger for days. Getting yelled at in front of other people might devastate some but barely register to others. etc. So trying to streamline every experience based only on how it effects you is an exercise in futility and will simply breed resentment if you try. Plus, you come off as holier-than-thou in the process. Just because a problem doesn't seem as bad to you doesn't mean it's not as bad for the person whose actually suffering through it at the moment.
For another thing, knowing that there's someone out there worse than you are doesn't make you feel any better. So what there's someone in more pain than I am, that doesn't help the pain go away. People on the receiving end of this argument end up thinking that their problems aren't important and that they shouldn't burden other people with them. But this in turn leads to the emotions being bottled up and left to fester like a shaken-up soda can. And by the time the whole thing boils over, the "small insignificant" problem has now become a lot bigger and more devastating than it would have been if addressed at the start. Whether they're big or small, problems need to be addressed and resolved or they grow like weeds.
Ultimately, just like how one black person or woman doesn't have the authority to demand how the rest of their race/gender should act, one person doesn't have the authority to determine what's more or less painful for anyone but themselves.
So what do we do?
Show a little empathy and compassion. Get to know someone and understand how they're different from you. Understand how their strengths and weaknesses separate them from you and work to remember them. And instead of appealing to worse problems, work to address their problems.
P.S. If we're not allowed to feel sad because someone out there is worse if than we are, does that mean we can't feel happy either? I mean, surely there's someone out there happier than you are too. The argument goes both ways.
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