STOP using the word 'Third World Countries' ENTIRELY to describe other countries!!!

Economy
1

Because of my travels to 26 countries thus far and my observation of various cultures… I have realized the following about so-called ‘Third world countries’:

  1. they are TEN times happier than us than the west

  2. their food tastes TEN times better than ours because many refuse to use pesticides / GMO crops, places like Sri Lanka / Peru – Peru has said no to GMO crops for another 20 years because they KNOW how harmful they are to the soil and well… everything!

  3. they live much more simply, and so have less stress/anxiety/drug usage/obesity/bad diets / suicides, and so on.

I often would tell people how these countries are NOT ‘third world’ but they are FIRST world because they are much MUCH happier than us and their food tastes ten times better than ours!!! Because they stuck to traditional farming methods and we didn’t… we therefore not only ruined our bodies with harmful food, but also our water supply and soil… :frowning:

I thought that after living in Peru for a year, that THEY were some of the happiest people I ever met… 3,000 types of different potatoes, humongous corn (not GMO and very very tasty), and so on but then I went to Sri Lanka and found that the people there are even MORE happier! Probably because of the warm water… all the fish they could ever eat (NOT FARMED but WILD)… and most of them are running around barefeet on their tuk tuks… almost all of them cook barefeet as well! A beautiful people and very VERY happy.

Yes, they may not have a recycling system or a good waste management system… some of them even throw garbage into the water (I saw this in India, Peru, and Sri Lanka) and of course this makes me sad… but overall the people in these countries are: Happier, Healthier, and their food tastes WAAAAY better than ours!

So… PLEASE REMOVE these labels ‘first world, 2nd world, and 3rd world’.

Instead countries should be rated on the following:

  1. how HAPPY is their civilization? For example for many years Denmark was rated the happiest country in the world…
  2. how HEALTHY is their food supply?
  3. how CLEAN is their water supply?
  4. How many of their people on drugs / pills?
  5. How HEALTHY are they?

We should be also learning from these countries - what are they doing right? What can we learn from them? What can we learn from each other? Why traveling and study abroad programs are sooo important!!!

Thank you for listening but this has been annoying me for years!!!

2

Third world just means the countries were not in the US influence or the Soviet/communist influence after WWII. These countries were often poor countries in South and Central America, Africa, and Asia that were not involved in WWII. Today, the meaning is more about how advanced economically a country is and other terms that indicate the type of market is in the country such as developed, developing, least developing could be used instead. The designation is not about happiness, food and water quality or quantity or the ability for one to acquire necessary medications.

3

I think you are probably confusing “class” with “country association” (ie: third-class citizen).

The term has nothing to do with happiness or food quality. It was coined in cold war era to denote which countries belonged to which block (ie: US and allies = 1st world; Russia and allies = 2nd world; All other countries = 3rd world.)

After using the term for decades in its proper intended use, it would be nearly impossible to “re-imagine” my use of it to not “trigger” someone else into a fit of rage (see: hate speech), so I will try to limit my use of the term around you, on the condition that you never use the word “Progressive” around me – that word goes all through me as well, since this backward cult is actually “regressive” in nature and would have us going back to living in caves and eating bugs off the ground, if they had there way.

Do we have a deal?