I don’t like this expression ‘First World problems.’ It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t …disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.

This is the reality of our time. We don’t want pity and we don’t want to assign blame. I take exception to the simplistic view that Generation Y is optimistic because Cosby, Barney and Mr. Rogers taught our parents to make us feel special. We are optimistic because we don’t expect to be given anything easily and we’ve come to terms with that. The event that welcomed us to the adult world taught us that evil is real, justice is complicated and institutions are fallible. However, we aren’t angry and we will stay optimistic, because we’ve been planning on being the ones to clean all this up for years. So let’s please do away with the following seductive assertions: we have no regard for sacred institutions or hard work and we prefer our mother’s basement and the blogosphere to the paying rent and the heading into the office; we are self-absorbed, or rather self-obsessed and we must be treated like adolescents characterized by that self-obsession; our goldfish memories can only remember sound bytes, slogans and Mortal Kombat cheat codes; and finally, that we are slovenly couch-dwellers who idolize Seth Rogan characters and are pulling a fast one on the productive, hard-working adults who keep the world running. We do not shirk responsibility. Our coming of age involved a massive reassessment of the meaning of responsibility. Individualism is often a characteristic of one who has reason to believe he or she is alone responsible for the future, when traditional models have failed.