"Bubbles of comfort" are not unique to Western countries, that is true. Every country on the planet offers a subset of their population a great life style, the only variable is how much of the country actually gets

a) to partake in that lifestyle

b) has the tools to reach that lifestyle when starting outside of it

Doesn't matter if you are talking about North Korea or the United States. And yes, you can find abject generational poverty in the United States as well.

The fact you could post your comment puts you in the top 40% of the world (roughly 60% don't have internet access).

If you have internet from a mobile phone, you are roughly in the top 50%.

Are you really looking outside your bubble of comfort?

I think you missed what the parent poster might be saying, it's not about "Bubbles of Comfort". I too live in one of those countries like you put it, and while I live in the bubble to some extent, I know people who've never used internet or a smartphone/computer in their entire lives and live a decently happy stress-free life. Their lives are not nasty or brutish, they're not leading less-fulfilling lives as a result. On the contrary, I think most of them are happier, more content and wiser than me.

What you might be doing I think... is making the assumption that technology, 'things' like gadgets or better cars and modern medical health is central to human life. Yes, life would objectively improve if you have those, but if I have to work 60 hours a week doing something I don't really care about, then is that really a good trade-off? I think the answer is not the same as yours for everyone.

If you want to live a nomadic disconnected lifestyle (with limited access to "technocratic" things like health care and education), you can do that almost anywhere, including Western countries.

Again, the central aspect of this topic is agency. Do people choose to live that way, where they live it? And how many would choose a different lifestyle if given the same opportunities as everybody else?

Yes, you can live a happy life as a nomad without any access to technology. That isn't the topic of this conversation.

Not without people to do it with. And the people that the parent poster is talking about aren't nomads.

I similarly think that you are applying a techno-utopian lens to your analysis. My family and I have spent time with many people who did not have internet or other modern amenities (Mongolia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Kazakhstan, and several others), and your statement does not hold. It is not _entirely_ untrue, because a bacterial infection can kill you, however, the dynamics of life are just... different. People are still capable of all the emotion and fulfillment that you and I are, but life is slower, simpler, and more well-defined, so it is often easier to feel happy and fulfilled.

> The fact you could post your comment puts you in the top 40% of the world (roughly 60% don't have internet access).

I have by now traveled pretty much to all the continents and at this point smartphones and internet are ubiquitous. They are litterly now throwing away working second hand ones in developing nations.

Doesn't that still put them within the western bubble of comfort in a sense though? It isn't much of a defense of an alternate way of life if that way of life required westerners to work hard in a different (i.e., consumer-product-based, highly-skilled, high-stress) way of life as a prerequisite.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. My original point is that the OP is wrong about internet access. Most of the world has it by now.

> The fact you could post your comment puts you in the top 40% of the world (roughly 60% don't have internet access).

Interesting: internet-access > no-internet-access

I have no clue where you live, but I live in an eastern european country and I fail to see how can life be better anywhere outside western democracies.

Even living in the poor part of the EU is still a lot worse then living in the good part.

>Life here is beautiful

snort

> the sense of community is so much stronger than it is in the west

the community is precisely why I dislike my country. I can't imagine worse torture then being force to live your life with close-minded ignorant people stuck in the past.

Go and be gay or atheist or just strange in your country then tell me how beautiful your life is.

>overall I'd say that people are less stressed. On the flip side, many things are harder for sure - wages are low and working hours are long, good healthcare is hard come by for many people.

As long as you don't care if you starve or die of illness it's all great. So literally the basics of security.

>life is not "nasty, brutish, and short"

sure, it's just relatively nastier, more brutish and objectively shorter in years of life.

>Perhaps, in future, before making such statements about the lives of people from cultures other than your own, you could take a few moments to try and empathize with them instead?

I don't need empathy when I feel it on my own skin.

Pretty weak all in all.

I think I get where you are coming from. I too live in a non-western third world nation. I relate to the points you make. But it isn’t obvious to me that the commenter meant to belittle life outside western nations. I think this wasn’t meant to be west vs non-west argument IMHO.