First World

Seemingly an archaic term today, classifying countries into the first, second, and third world was a ranking that developed during the Cold War. Of course the United States and western, developed, capitalist countries deemed themselves to be of the first world, and well, everyone else was considered to be lower status, especially communist countries and those aligned with the Soviets.

Characteristics of first world countries include political and economic stability, which support a strong democracy. This means that first world countries have a stable currency, the rule of law prevails, and citizens of these countries enjoy a high standard of living as measured by GDP and HDI values.

Narrowly pegging countries into one of three categories based upon political and economic values that align with the United States was a way to generate support for political hegemony masked as heroic actions to stop Soviet powers from taking countries into a lower classification if they were not allowed to pursue democracy and capitalism. While one might justify that communism created economic hardship for its people, and kept countries from developing into first world countries, such as North Korea, there are also those who argue that the United States, which has moved into lower rankings in the HDI categories, is no longer a first world country.

Academics have moved away from this first, second, and third world classification system. Countries are extremely complex, and this simplistic way of looking at the world has moved to assessing countries on a development spectrum instead. A lot of this seems to fall in line with self-actualization movements and how people view themselves.

Our nomination: Mars as Fourth World.