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I must respectfully disagree with you, sir. Human psychology is based on the fundamental wiring of the human central nervous system, and that is a constant across the species. It's my belief that people in every culture suffer equally stress from sorrow, fear, or loss; the flood that takes a child causes just as much rage, confusion, and stress to the simple, uneducated Bangladeshi woman as it would to a sophisticated, educated New Yorker, and the Bangladeshi is no more likely to move on with her life because of religious beliefs than the American. The difference is that the American has access to grief support groups, antidepressant medication, and psychotherapy that can help assuage her grief while the Third-World inhabitant does not, and must simply bear her pain. There is no recourse for the poor Pakistani woman if her husband beats her or her home is destroyed.

How do I know? I have befriended very humble people from impoverished Third-World nations like Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Ghana, and Liberia. At first there's a tendency to think they're simple of mind and heart because they don't have sophisticated ways to express complex emotions. But get to know them and you'll find that their feelings and reactions are no less, no different from ours.

I do believe that our stresses are far less serious than those of people in the Third World, particularly as we have the security of knowing that we will not be allowed to die of starvation or disease, have access to recreation, have access to justice, and have only to work hard to achieve financial success. Worrying about college loans and career advancement is a pretty trivial stress compared to the question of whether one will live or die, or whether one's children will die before they're three.

At first there's a tendency to think they're simple of mind and heart because they don't have sophisticated ways to express complex emotions. But get to know them and you'll find that their feelings and reactions are no less, no different from ours. ----Capriole.

I do not think they are simple of mind or heart at all. And by the way i am originally from those parts, so it would be kind of ridiculous for me to claim they are simple minded (and infact i think they are far better at dealing with things than most people in other cultures - with the exception of certain Asian cultures). They have different ways of working through stress. For example they have intense faith (and since you said you have befriended people from places like Ghana, the Philippines and so forth you know what i mean). Once something happens they grieve through it, and then they move on. This does not mean at all that they are simple-minded, just that they have a divergent archetype of working through stuff.

Totally agree with you. I even said that in my post. Most Western stress factors are absolutely trivial, especially when compared with what people in the rest of the world go through. And i also said that according to the medical field it is not the magnitude of stress but its constancy. The human body is, as i said before, able to cope with great deals of stress. What it is not made for is coping with perpetual levels of stress.

A person can be intensely stressed for a short-period of time, and even have psychosomatic symptoms as well as true-to-life physical illness. But normally the body rectifies that after a while. However have another person who is always stressed, even if it is over totally insignificant things, and the body soon gets basically overburdened.

People in the third world have big stresses (and again note that i am talkign of typical locales, not places like the Sudan that have constant and heightened levels of oppression/suppression/repression etc). In your typical developing nations there are huge life issues. For example if the rains are late then there is a chance the whole harvest is lost. Or if there is a malaria outbreak. Or some pathogen that blights that seasons crop yield. These are truly HUGE stress factors. But they are not constant. And most of the people from there are actually quite happy ....actually quite joyful (again, since you have met people from overseas you must have noticed remarkable levels of joy. It might not be termed as 'western happiness,' but is is joy beyond description).

In the west many (not all) people in urban areas have many small issues. Totally insignificant (for example many of my workmates always seem to be working under the Sword of Damocles - as if there is always a looming threat). The stresses may not be near that of an Indian facing crop shortage for his 4 kids, but the marking factor is that the stress is chronic. Always present. And that is what makes it dangerous.

But anyways, what do I know! Here is an excerpt on the medical significance of constant stress.

Time magazine's June 6, 1983 cover story called stress "The Epidemic of the Eighties" and referred to it as our leading health problem; there can be little doubt that the situation has progressively worsened since then. Numerous surveys confirm that adult Americans perceive they are under much more stress than a decade or two ago. A 1996 Prevention magazine survey found that almost 75% feel they have "great stress" one day a week with one out of three indicating they feel this way more than twice a week. In the same 1983 survey only 55% said they felt under great stress on a weekly basis. It has been estimated that 75 - 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress related problems. Job Stress is far and away the leading source of stress for adults but stress levels have also escalated in children, teenagers, college students and the elderly for other reasons, including: increased crime, violence and other threats to personal safety; pernicious peer pressures that lead to substance abuse and other unhealthy life style habits; social isolation and loneliness; the erosion of family and religious values and ties; the loss of other strong sources of social support that are powerful stress busters.

Contemporary stress tends to be more pervasive, persistent and insidious because it stems primarily from psychological than physical threats. It is associated with ingrained and immediate reactions over which we have no control that were originally designed to be beneficial such as:

* heart rate and blood pressure soar to increase the flow of blood to the brain to improve decision making,

* blood sugar rises to furnish more fuel for energy as the result of the breakdown of glycogen, fat and protein stores,

* blood is shunted away from the gut, where it not immediately needed for purposes of digestion, to the large muscles of the arms and legs to provide more strength in combat, or greater speed in getting away from a scene of potential peril,

* clotting occurs more quickly to prevent blood loss from lacerations or internal hemorrhage.

These and myriad other immediate and automatic responses have been exquisitely honed over the lengthy course of human evolution as life saving measures to facilitate primitive man's ability to deal with physical challenges. However, the nature of stress for modern man is not an occasional confrontation with a saber-toothed tiger or a hostile warrior but rather a host of emotional threats like getting stuck in traffic and fights with customers, co-workers, or family members, that often occur several times a day.

Unfortunately, our bodies still react with these same, archaic fight or flight responses that are now not only not useful but potentially damaging and deadly. Repeatedly invoked, it is not hard to see how they can contribute to hypertension, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, ulcers, neck or low back pain and other "Diseases of Civilization".