I’ve been thinking about privilege. The term itself is incredibly abused by the lunatic leftists who think you’re privileged for being white or male, and yet they would have kittens if you actually said you feel it’s a privilege to be either. Basically, they are using the concept of privilege the way Marx used the concept of original accumulation of capital – they want to take things from you and the easiest way is to turn things around and say you actually stole something and they are redressing an injustice by robbing you. They’re not the thieves, you are.
There are two forms of privilege that actually exist, in a sense that they can be perceived and they have effects. The first form is the ability to whine and actually get stuff for it. You see, if unprivileged people whine, they are either laughed at, or beaten up. If a privileged person whines, about either being a victim, or breaking a fingernail, they get compassion at the least, and free privileges at the most. Privilege is, essentially, a form of social currency, and today the concept of victimhood seems to be social currency. You say you’re a victim, you get undeserved free stuff. Preferential hiring, preferential treatment in education; you know the drill. If you’re a diversity hire, you can do no wrong, and if anyone even looks at you wrong, they’re fucked. Those people are the new nobility, and the “non-diverse” people are treated basically like serfs in the dark ages. Look at a noble wrong, and you get thrown into a dungeon.
The second form of real privilege is where you’re born. Essentially, the very fact that you’re born in a developed country gives you the amount of wealth and access that’s unimaginable in the undeveloped countries. I’m not just talking about Ikea and Starbucks, I’m talking about in-door plumbing and electricity. I’m talking about being able to pull a lever and your toilet gets flushed. You press a switch, the light is there. Put dishes in the dishwasher, and they are dealt with. Ask a venture capital firm for financing for your IT startup, and not get laughed at. Drink tap water and not get cholera. That kind of privilege.
I must admit I felt injustice as a kid, when I saw how easy some people have it, especially knowing how hard it was for me, and how they apparently did nothing to deserve any of it. Some people just happened to be born to wealthy parents, or parents that are not violent and mentally deranged. Unlike the communists, my reaction wasn’t wishing they had some disaster – it was “wow, I wish I had that”, and, of course, a stab of pain knowing someone “up there” just doesn’t like me that much. I had to learn how to do much with very little, which is why I have a fondness for “democratic technologies”, basically things that perform the same function as much more expensive “luxury items”, but at a fraction of the price. Why do I like them? Because I always imagine myself as a kid, trying to save enough money to buy the cheapest computer, or the cheapest smartphone, the stuff I could buy with very limited pocket money and start learning skills that would eventually help me get out of the pit of doom I got born in, while girls in the most expensive brand clothes sip coffee in a bar, with sunglasses that cost more than everything I own, and scornfully discuss male privilege and climate change, or even more annoyingly, the macrobiotic-homeopathy-meditation kids born to new age parents disapprovingly comment my slouched stance and angry mood, commenting how un-spiritual “some people” are.
Yes, privilege exists, but I keep wondering whether it might be a backwards-firing gun. If you get things by whining, you are never seen as someone deserving respect. Yes, you get things, but you don’t get agency. You are a parasite. You can get preferentially hired, but other employees will know it, and they will know you got there with less qualifications and merit. You can demand respect, and people might pretend to give it to you, but true respect is earned. You can have wealthy parents and that does give you access to money and things, but it also keeps you dependent on someone else’s will. You’re not really an independent person, and you don’t have agency. You can think of yourself as a calm and spiritual person because you’re a pretty flower in a walled-off garden, and you’re allowed to be the way you are because nothing really threatened you, and it’s true that I once looked at people like that with envy and pain, but that has not been the case for a very long time. Now, I see them and smile, thinking they are little more than well-fed cattle. Sure, they were grown to be very pretty flowers, and I was grown to be an ugly-looking poisonous weed, all crooked and nasty, but I learned how to solve problems, simply because I had them. I’m like that mean looking street dog with one ear and one eye that kills and eats nice fluffy bunnies, and rips throats of pretty house dogs that were so pampered by their owners they think they’re alpha and have no problem challenging me. Sure, sometimes I like to think I would have been better off with the life of that girl with Dior sunglasses, or the childhood of that “spiritual” kid with nice parents, who thinks being yelled at, humiliated and beaten up is the end of the world, and not Tuesday. On the other hand, I kind of like being competent and dangerous. I like being the battle-scarred monster that buys girls nice sunglasses and space grey Macbooks, and gives children a nice childhood where being beaten up, yelled at and humiliated is the end of the world, and not Tuesday.
