We all live on the same planet, but not all of us live in the same world. Some live in a world where the biggest complaints are of low battery life, difficult assignments, lack of free time, and not knowing what to watch on Netflix. You probably just thought of the term “first-world problems” and there’s a reason for that: those concepts are completely isolated in the first world. However, others live in a world where the biggest complaints are of a lack of housing, dying children, inability to obtain resources, and having essentially no say in the grand scope of things. The latter live in a completely different world than the former, but the former so often refuse to acknowledge that, and continue on living in their “perfect” world.
China Miéville, in his piece “The Limits of Utopia”, brings this concept to light toward the end of it, when he exclaims “we live in utopia; it just isn’t ours.” What he means by our utopia, presumably, is the one that benefits everyone equally; however, the one that “we” live in now excludes the majority of the planet in exchange for larger profit for corporations and more government power in the first world. Think about the United States, and set aside your first world Netflix-and-Hulu-style problems for a minute: we live in our own little utopia. “We” have the unlimited power to force smaller nations out of their homes so that we can extract more oil for our energy necessities. “We” can power our homes (for now) with that oil, polluting and destroying the beautiful world that others live in. “We” will continue to be able to act however we want in international affairs, never acknowledging the terrible impact that we have on those around us.
Think about it – in the big picture, we can do whatever we want, whenever we want, with no consequences. But what does this mean for the the rest of the world? Usually, it mean that others suffer so that the US can continue to live “perfectly”. In order for the world to achieve the necessary utopia that Miéville raves about, we are going to have to acknowledge the differences between the utopia that we want and the dystopian-style utopia that we live in now. We can do this by thinking more about the big-picture consequences of our day-to-day actions and raising awareness about how our “ordinary” decisions affect others around the world. Only then will we all live in the same world, rather than merely walk the same earth.