One of the primary motivating factors in all of human existence has been the desire for ascendancy to privilege. Tribal chiefs, royalty, nighthood, aristocrocy, presidency, stardom, popularity, influence, status, power, better mate selection, higher standards of living, the American dream. And people have worshipped all of these and more as the ideal to attain for as long as humans have existed. Hero worship is in our cultural DNA. So when you accuse someone of having privilege, remember that you are accusing them of attaining everything they have been programmed to believe they should be striving for. If you have money, you have privilege. If you lead a group, you have privilege. If you have knowledge, you have privilege. Power is privilege! What we seem to have forgotten is that with privilege comes responsibility. Privilege without responsibility is just gluttony. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with privilege itself, just the assumption that it is deserved without the responsibility that comes with it. How we define what that responsibility is ought to be where the ethical debate lies. Privilege will always exist, but privilege without burden is a leech, a parasite. Instead of attacking people and using your buzzwords of social justice to gain fallacious moral superiority by tearing another down for doing what is in their nature, look deeper and see that how privilege manifests is the problem, not privilege itself.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 17:50:51 +0000
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