It could always be worse!
Another common response to complaining is to delegitimise misery by portraying it as a competition. “You’re privileged, you have an education,” they tell the white-collar unemployed. “You’re privileged, you live in America,” they tell the poor. “You’re privileged, you got out,” they tell the exile. “You’re privileged, you have food and shelter,” they tell the subject of the dictator.
It could always be worse, they say. They don’t like to say that it could always be better, because that would require redress.
– http://m.aljazeera.com/story/2013615143512361164
You can always compare yourself with the better or worse – generally, none is wrong. When things are bad, comparing with the better will push you to strife on while comparing with the worse will make you appreciate more. Just make sure you don’t practice self-pity.
However, those who are on the “high ground” are more likely (not all of course) to tell those under them to compare with the worse. Hence, you can commonly hear people compare Singapore to less developed countries like Indonesia. Subconsciously, these people are likely afraid of “improvements” because improvements will create changes and improvements for someone may be the opposite for another person.
There’s a difference between thinking positively and believing blindly on every piece of “good” news.
People need to start acknowledging that by complaining, flaws can be shown. Of course, it takes some intelligence and experience to “complain” about the right thing. Nevertheless, complaining is crucial to improvement.
“Complaining” is, often, used as a term to degrade the speaker.
If people keep thinking “if you don’t have a solution, don’t say anything”, life will never progress. Then there won’t even be something called “democracy”, while everyone is likely to be slogging hard for some emperors/dictators now. Supporters of every government use this excuse whenever the government screws things up.
Most human beings also prefer hearing good things. Count yourself lucky that many people have sacrificed themselves physically and mentally to voice out things that have gone wrong.
No one is perfect in this world. Everyone should stop living in denial and, instead, keep improving.