Aral Sea, 1973 to 2009 (NASA)
• First, I was shocked to learn that the Aral Sea, once a prominent feature on maps of the Soviet Union, is now spoken of in the past tense. In my schoolboy years, the Aral Sea was far larger than Lake Huron, but today it is nearly dry, as seen in this series of photos (right) that document its disappearance over a mere forty-year span.
• I was shocked to learn that there are 86,000 diabetes-related amputations every year in the United States. I no longer scoff at efforts to regulate school snacks and big-gulp soft drinks.
• I was shocked to learn that “87% of all children age 0 to 14 worldwide killed by firearms are children living in the US, despite the fact that less than 5% of the world’s children live in the US.” Pause for a moment to let that sink in.
• A bit lower on the scale of shock, I was shocked to learn that insurance agents “earn” commissions ranging from 15% (for auto) to 50% (term life) to 100% (whole life) of your first-year premium. I am okay with insurance agents making a living but I am against commission-based sales in any form. Commissions and sales incentives invite upselling, an adversarial practice that paints consumers as targets, not as equals in a transaction. The point of commission-based sales is to transfer the risk of doing business from the business-owner to non-salaried salespeople and ultimately to consumers. Ask yourself, why should your family’s need for health insurance help your agent win a incentive trip to Cancun, Mexico? Follow that link to see where your premium dollars are really going.
• Finally, I was shocked and dismayed to learn that there is no official consensus on what constitutes domestic abuse according to Islam. The Wikipedia article Islam and Domestic Violence has two sections that provide Quranic guidance on this topic: the first section is titled Interpretations that support discipline and the second section is Interpretation that does not support hitting. I have to stop right here and insist that a man who needs this kind of “interpretation” is not a religious man but a brute.
Christian, Hindi, Shinto men, you’re not off the hook. If you need cultural or religious excuses to dominate your partner and justify your manhood, you’re not much of a man.
OFFICIAL FIRST-WORLDER QUIZ
1. I (do / do not) eat the bruised parts of a banana.
2. I (have / have not) purchased undergarments to alter the size or shape of my butt.
3. I (do / do not) have an IRA or 401k or 403b.
4. I (do / do not) complain about how often I need to water our lawn or garden.
5. I (do / do not) judge a restaurant by its wine-by-the-glass or craft beer offerings.
6. I (would / would not) compare the chance event of an hour-long electrical power failure on consecutive summer nights as akin to living in Baghdad.
7. (True / False) There are certain colors of M&Ms and/or LifeSavers that I throw away.
8. I (have / have not) wondered about repercussions of unfriending a person on Facebook.
9. I (have / have not) checked Amazon reviews of the best espresso machine.
10. I (do / do not) think my world depends on who is elected President.
11. I (do / do not) answer internet quizzes.
ANSWERS and SCORES
1. Score 6 first-world points if you don’t eat the bruised parts of a banana. Score 3 points if you do. Either way, you have a banana!
2. Score 3 first-world points if you ever wondered how your butt looks in various clothes. Score 3 more points if you decided to do something about it.
3. Score 6 points if you have an IRA, 401k or 403b. Score 3 more first-world points if you hastily decided to cash out during the 2008 financial crisis.
4. Score 4 first-world points if you complain about watering your garden and your garden does not feed you. Score 4 more points if you planted your garden to provide a haven for bees, butterflies and other pollinators.
6. Score 1 first-world point for every one-point rise in your blood pressure when you discover you have no internet access.
7. Score 2 points for every color or flavor of M&Ms and/or LifeSavers you throw away.
8. Score 5 first-world points for every Twitter feed you follow. Score 1 first-world point for every Facebook friend you have in excess of one hundred. Score 5 points for every blog you stopped reading because it was too political, or too wordy, or the person who wrote it was too… I don’t know, it just took too much time and there were not enough emojis.
9. Score 2 first-world points for every Amazon product review you read in the past month.
10. Score 10 first-world points if you think it doesn’t matter whether Donald Trump knows what he is talking about as long as you agree with him. This is America, after all, and we are free to think what we want or not think at all. Bonus: Score 2 points for every time you talked back to the television in the past week.
11. Score 6 first-world points for having read this first-world blog to the very end.
RESULTS
• If you scored 0-5 points: You obviously cheated. Add 20 points to your first-world score.
• If you scored 6-15 points: You must be one of my Canadian readers! As a citizen of America’s 51st state, you should visit more often to fully absorb our first-world culture.
• If you scored 16-35 points: You either have too few Facebook friends or you take meds to regulate your blood pressure. To increase your first-world score, you need to submit a Facebook friend request every day until you reach 1000. And consider buying a backup power supply for your laptop so you will never experience the trauma of being offline.
• If you scored 36-85 points: Congratulations for having been born in the First World! Drink a Bud Lite, watch a Dallas Cowboys game, and bask in the happy circumstance of having been born in the greatest nation on earth, though you had nothing to do with it.
• If you scored 86-3675 points: Come on. You didn’t really add up all those points. But it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know how to add. Someone else can do all the adding, maybe someone in Bangladesh. If there isn’t an app for it, who needs it?