a short philosophy on privilege - having, building, sharing

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perspectives on privilege

i think the conversation on privilege must go way beyond where it often currently goes. not to blame, judge, or drown in desperation, but to make visible what actually sustains each of us in each of our contexts of possibilities and limitations in life - and how we might make better use of them, for ourselves and for the sake of all others.

by recognizing the breadth and depth of our privileges - and where we're actually not privileged at all - we can honor it and create spaces that give us more conditions to grow, meet our needs and help us deal with whatever we're going through, considering more accurately where we are when it comes to our developmental journeys.

let me share a few examples.

a(n) (emerging) useful taxonomy of privilege (in the works)

level 1: acknowledging basic conditions about growing up in the context you did

like everyone else - each with their own distinct set - growing up, i had several privileges:

under my parents' control:

interestingly, we could notice many of these things are double-edged swords.

i listed them under privileges because i feel they were mostly positive for my formation. but some of them (like access to electronics for example) have had deep effects on my attention span, neuronal/reward systems, to the degree that up to today i don't know how much of an impact this had on my brain formation, neurological pathways, and even some influence on a possible degree of neurodiversity.

like much of the youth today, i feel that these deep attunements and attachments with/to technological systems were very ingrained in me and a source of very challenging of my mental health in the process of "adulting".

yet i'm also glad by it and i'd add an element to the list that helps shift it towards the "positive" side:

(outside of their control, about the time i grew up in:)

outside of the in-person social settings which were often awkward for me, i had the opportunity to engage, learn and transform by interacting with strangers behind the screens.

i remember exactly a handful moments that were transformative for me in this digital context, that had no possibility of being acted out in my physical, local, known surroundings.

at the same time, reflecting back, i see a lot of things i felt lacked/hindered my development as a person:

we could go on and on. the goal here isn't to become a martyr, but to evidence the learnings, the pains that come and ask to be integrated as part of our entangled lives, as part of our set of beautiful and challenging gifts we receive from intergenerational transmission.

level 2: true wealth building/privileges sharing/reparation/reciprocity game:

an initial, simplified taxonomy of privilege - i.e. the conditions that allow us to grow/unfold.

ecostructure:

social structure:

superstructure:

infrastructure:

(ps: this is a partial, initial list based on my own explorations. in the next stage, this will integrate other elements from: bucky fuller's world game, GTDF's house of modernity's floors - north of north/south of south & other social cartographies, COLLAPSE game)

my point is: if we can actually get a sense of how much of these is available to each person in their own world,

  1. it will already give us a lot more understanding and empathy towards them, but
  2. it can tell us a lot about how might we be able to support each other, not only in terms of immediate mutual aid, philanthropy or social/climate justice, but actual deep, long-term trust-based collaboration and coordination towards the conditions for the flourishing of each particular individual, place and/or communities.

it should be noted that our objective with this isn't simply reparation for the sake of enabling the dignity of a person's life. yes to that! definitely! everyone should live in dignity.

and, we need to not only give people (or help them develop) the conditions for their flourishing, but we have to entrust people with ever-more power and resources to extend these conditions to everyone else.

i.e. we don't want to simply give people "better/dignified work conditions", if that work is still causing harm to other beings in some invisibilized part of the supply chain, or as part of an extractive system. that's unfortunately the problem with a lot of action in social change sectors.

we need to support people to grow - and to clarify the directionality - and the degree of their commitment/vows. we need their actions to align with greater value - not just for themselves, but for all life.

a short philosophy on privilege:

  1. on sharing/extending privilege

if it's obvious, easy, low (or no) cost, why not do it?

that's what a facilitator often does. tries to bring in tools/frameworks/resources to enable others. and this should be more of our base mode of existing/relating.

a few examples:

  1. on honoring/concentrating/distributing privilege

to the degree that each of us has:

a) one (or multiple) social class(es) that we inevitably grow up in and are born into, and
b) natural, holistic hierarchies/degrees of attainment (in different domains),

we have to consider how to best extend that - the positive impact/influence we're able to cause, as result of our whole developmental process and conditions we're embedded in - by putting it in service of the unique potential/flourishing of each being.

  1. the more complicated one: on raising people's aspirations and ethical commitments/ambition

https://www.moralambition.org/

bodhicitta / bodhisattva vow

GTDF's:
settler responsibilities, climate justice & 4Rs: regeneration, reparation, restitution, redistribution.

DSS:
reconciliation, restoration, resilience, regeneration, re-enchantment

more thoughts on it:

sharing privilege -> mapping privileges, clarifying shareability (anti-rivalrous, no cost to break/extend glass ceilings)

hanzi's wellbeing/state framework vs high/low-intensity struggle + hedonic engineering protocol

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