Day 3: First World Problems

All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.

-Ecclesiastes 9:2

It is impossible to properly quantify the mass of disparate reactions to the 2011 London riots. When Mark Duggan was inexplicably shot by the Met Police, a sea of fire engulfed the city, and smaller riots quickly erupted in other major English cities. It revealed an issue in London that is as ubiquitous as it is devastating: inequality. Underprivileged communities took to the streets to battle a power they could not see, and looters and opportunists exploited the tension. As the months and years passed, rioters were interviewed by academics, journalists and law enforcement, and every time the same sentiment appeared: “life is unfair, and things are hard here.” Step outside the gloss and glamour of Trafalgar Square and a society with a dangerously increasing homeless population is impossible to ignore. Impoverished housing estates cower in the shadow of business skyscrapers. Children go to schools with low attainment stats, passing exclusive grammar and private schools on their morning commute. Life is unfair, and things are hard here.

At the same time, pundits from across the political spectrum remained sceptical. These kids don’t know what suffering is, they said. Poverty doesn’t exist in Britain. Children in Africa have no food, and they don’t riot. These are common complaints to most Western issues: no point being a feminist, because in some countries, women can’t even drive; there’s no need for black power movements, this isn’t Apartheid South Africa, and things are way better these days anyway. Again and again, issues are dismissed to avoid the truth: the whole world is full of problems, and every one is relative to its respective context.

Sometimes this dismissal can have a detrimental impact on personal issues. People who suffer from depression and/or anxiety disorders are reminded of their stable jobs, nice house, car and access to clean food and water as ways to “get out” of their illness, which are then condescended to a one-off down day or a self-indulgent phase.  But issues are real, and suffering is no respecter of persons. You could be a billionaire with all the world or a low-wage employee with very little, but neither is immune to suffering, and relative comfort does not preclude crisis.

God too is no respecter of persons, that means that he attends to everyone’s problems equally, and he hears every prayer and every cry for help without prejudice. We would do well to learn from this. Listen, advise when necessary, and help put things into perspective if needs be, but try not to downplay or dismiss the suffering of others. We all respond to trauma differently.