Between scrolling various news sites and fastidiously checking my twitter feed for updates from Egypt and the Middle East, I've just come across this comment, posted via Facebook from one student now abroad to a friend of mine:


Athens is going great. I love everything about this country. Even though I'm not in Egypt the effects are still here. There was a demonstration a few blocks from my apartment last night. And we could hear the tear gas guns, chanting and see burning torches...... it was really cool


Tear gas, chanting, burning torches - "it was really cool." That last phrase still echoes in my head. I can't help but wonder how Egyptian protesters would react to hearing such a comment, hearing their efforts boiled down to this. Surely, of course, the student did not intend to lessen the significance or gravity of the situation... but we do have to be conscious of the possible connotations of what we say, don't we? Be wary that it doesn't come off as flippant, ignorantly patronizing via belittling, disrespectful. It's fantastic that so much of the world is carefully observing such historical events as they unfold, but just as important as observing is maintaining a sense of reality and, if not some level of understanding, acknowledging the existence of the causes and possible consequences, the significance and the weight it holds for real people battling real injustice, fighting for real freedoms. 


Being so seemingly distanced from that which we watch on tv while comfortably sitting at home half a world a way... the surreality risks a certain lack of understanding and flippancy, doesn't it? A similar thought ran through my mind yesterday as two visiting students discussed their difficulties flying back from the UK this past winter in the midst of snow and innumerable delays: "The snow really brought out the Third World country in England," complained one. Granted, I've only spent any significant amount of time in one developing (note: not "Third World") country and I've never been to England, but I think it's safe to say that the comparison is not an apt one. Sure, her intention was merely to continue their jesting at the expense of the British (and the whole of Europe at times- rather set on the superiority of the US, these girls), but I couldn't help but feel she'd simultaneously and drastically misrepresented and belittled the situation of developing countries. I immediately wanted to posit a (rather rude and rhetorical) "Have you ever been to a developing country?" Had the answer been yes, I doubt she would have been so ready to compare the state of English snow delays to that of a developing country.


Of course, there's that risk that I'm reading too much into this, too easily perturbed by these rather thoughtless side comments. At the same time, though, the very fact that they're said so naturally, so flippantly and easily concocted and accepted... well, it's a bit troublesome, isn't it, or is it just me? Perhaps I'm carrying this too far, but it seems almost as though it's become rather too easy and acceptable to belittle the experiences (read, perhaps, hardships) of others for lack of our having experienced them ourselves. There are many things I'll never understand (though I'll try as much as possible), having been spared those experiences myself, but I'd hate to risk belittling or dismissing them, feigning a greater understanding, simply because I'm unacquainted with the reality of the situation.