Human Privilege

[ER]

There is talk about black privilege, white privilege, male privilege, female privilege, western privilege, Fourth World privilege, gay privilege, child privilege, drug addict privilege, blue collar privilege, coastal privilege, Protestant privilege, birth order privilege, private school privilege, financial privilege, Jewish privilege, and even leper privilege (less chance of STDs if your gonads have fallen off), but why not cut to the heart of it and focus on the common denominator there: human privilege. We live on a planet with no less than nine million species, yet we alone harness electricity, read the printed word, encircle the globe with satellites, and use mouthwash. We with our opposable thumbs and shoes, we with our hair products and pornography, our God-given gift of firearms, who are we to feel better than any other animal who shares this planet with us, whose ancestors never got the same chance to evolve as we did? Every time you use a toilet, think, no other life form on the planet gets to do that! What can you do about your privilege? First, be aware of it! Secondly, share the privilege, take in a jellyfish, a lemur, or maybe, on a budget, roaches or slime molds. Lastly, you owe it to the rest of the Earth’s life forms to feel really, really, really, really, really bad all your life about your privilege, so hang your head, feel awkward, and make lots of excuses for species that, unlike you, have never gotten to see cat videos on the internet, or hear the mellifluous strains of hip-hop on satellite radio. Humans everywhere, embrace your hate crimes! Thank you.

[Allhallowsday]

... our God-given gift of firearms ...

God gave man guns as much as He gave man crucifixion. 

[ER]

Thank you for clearing that up, John. Good karma coming your way.

[kakihara]

Whoa......ka pooom! ( sound of mind being blown).

[Pacman000]

I'm fairly sure ER's post was meant as a joke, but it is similar to a real idea, Speciesism. (Yes, Firefox, that's a real word.)

https://www.care2.com/causes/speciesism-and-veganism-transcending-politics-and-religion.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/papq.12192/full

[Alex]

As much as it might have been meant as a joke we are doing a pretty damn good job of f**king things up royally. Some years ago I did decide f**k it, might as well join in and ride the apocalypse train, its one hell of a ride. :)

PS I have been drinking tonight.

[ER]

I think we're living through one of the most interesting times since the Renaissance, that being the probable fall of western civilization, possibly with human extinction added at no extra cost,  complete with 24-hour news and cheesecake brought to your door.

[ER]

As much as it might have been meant as a joke we are doing a pretty damn good job of f**king things up royally. Some years ago I did decide f**k it, might as well join in and ride the apocalypse train, its one hell of a ride. :)

PS I have been drinking tonight.

Enjoy drinking while you can. Two AM cry-fests and loads of soiled diapers await. But before you get to that point in your future you're also having a baby.

[Allhallowsday]

... our God-given gift of firearms ...

God gave man guns as much as He gave man crucifixion. 

Thank you for clearing that up, John. Good karma coming your way.

Are you sure you understand what I meant?  Or rather, what I wrote?

[dean]

I think we're living through one of the most interesting times since the Renaissance, that being the probable fall of western civilization, possibly with human extinction added at no extra cost,  complete with 24-hour news and cheesecake brought to your door.

I'd agree with you on the interesting. Sadly it's probably coming at the cost of United States political dominance which is probably reflected in the widening wage gap and the pain I see some of you folks going through here in the off topic threads.

Gotta say though, if we don't stuff up the environment so much that we all die, things are looking up (for the rest of us at least)!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/11/30/why-the-world-is-getting-better-why-hardly-anyone-knows-it/#2b02d1d97826

[ER]

We slum in isolation in the twelfth richest place in the United States, and it's beautiful and terrible at the same time. It’s beautiful for its silence and virgin forests and high-ground views of a national scenic river that reflects moonlight like a mirror, for its English-style lawns and its Tudor and Georgian manor houses and its collected Arabian horses that add fiery grace to scenery that includes ancient Adena mounds and half-millennium-old oaks. And it’s terrible in a strictly human way for its soul-less horrors of the spirit.

There is nothing immoral in wealth or noble in poverty, yet there is something here much too often that draws my disgust like a Goya canvas.

Not everyone among my fellow residents here fits a stereotype, but many do, and I don’t regret keeping to myself, choosing, as I have so often in my past, self-selected isolation over involuntary exclusion. For what matters here is not whether you’re nice, or intelligent, or wise, or heroic, or brave, or whether you love, but only that you are wealthy, which, comparatively, we are not. If I sold this land I could be rich, but I won't. We couldn't afford it here except my grandpa left this house to us. It drains us quarter by quarter, but we stay intractably, unapologetically, each divergent season because it’s home.

Lots of outwardly successful people dwell here, athletes, celebrities, CEOs, CFOs, old money, new money, media moguls, all too often passing their days amid complacent bewilderment and genteel drug addiction, citing cocaine as the trusted morning pick-me-up, even among the white-haired, feeling they've one-upped the old guard alcoholics who sample for their fix the finest scotches and most vintage wines, their doctor-prescribed pills for all moods and psychological complications not always carefully referenced for contraindications, so that drug overdoses among Baby Boomers of means are increasing at an alarming rate and ambulance sirens cry out perhaps one morning out of five scurrying some moneyed scion off to Jewish Hospital where he'll be saved (or not) and live to speak at the country club about how he had no idea he wasn't supposed to get drunk while taking that.

Then conversations will morph, and among spent-air describing the hosting of the Archbishop’s fundraiser or what colleges their offspring chose and how much they shelled out in political donations, the venue for the therapeutic post-overdose vacation will be talked over, whether it’s to be Dubai this year or Monte Carlo, or perhaps just Costa Rica again. And all this is spoken without the faintest hint of irony because rich or poor life becomes mundane to you, a hundred million in bonds or a hundred dollars in a savings account, sooner or later it is just what it is.

Sure women succeed here, run companies, anchor newscasts, admirably invest themselves in their children around their discreet touch-ups at the surgeons, but so many men still possess old school stay at home wives, "Ladies who Lunch," who take up distant social activism and oft have looks in their eyes like their heads should be mounted on a wall, their souls bought and paid for, and their 3 AM terrors flit around whether they'll one day be traded in for a newer model: sometimes literally a model. The mystery of their bitterness rapidly finds its way to the prescription counter, “Doctor I am just not happy….”

I’ll say again, drug addiction is endemic here.

Policy-making goes on behind thick oak doors in this town, talks that touch every life in the world (you’re naïve if you don’t think it affects you too), and there is despite the privilege as much familial discord and domestic abuse as anywhere, just nicely covered with makeup and cosmetic surgery, by pricy counseling sessions, all mollified by polite affairs with pool boys and kept women.

"Have you seen my trophy mistress this year?" Okay no one quite comes out and says that but nearly, for make no mistake, women are still “kept” in the 2010s by men who live in my community, their favors paid for, their bodies clad in designer attire, their penthouses or trendy bungalows in the hills showpieces in their own right, their temporary residents compensated for somehow feigning arousal before men whose days of wetting women, if ever they existed at all, are long gone, and in the end the only mystery is who is using whom, for a smart mistress can come out of the transaction set for life. Just business. If it hurts wives, sons, granddaughters, leaving them to clean up after you twenty years after you’re dead, well, that’s how it’s always been and always will. If you had the means would you truly be any different?

The latest flavor among the set here seems to be having at least one gay child, like it's the new badge of honor, and conversations that start, "Did you know my daughter came out last summer?" don't possess the same hint of debutants they did in decades past.

I ignore most of the goings on here and keep to myself because I don't fit in and don't want to. My fellow residents, not overt snobs it must be admitted, wave to even the poorest among their neighbors, of course, and we wave back and match smile for smile.

Most everyone among the established sorts seems to dwell within a slight paranoia and are quick to call on the help of their privately-chartered police force. (Literally a private police force.) But of course everyone is welcome here, and at the library one overhears gossip about my goodness a Bangladeshi-born heart surgeon just moved into the old Folger place, darker than a Negro, him, and his red-haired wife is so lovely, and we must have them over! So you see, everyone with money is welcome, NFL players of color are here in plentitude, WASPs, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, no bigotry at all, no bigotry at all. If you’re rich, you’re welcome.

Ah, yes, I do keep to myself.

Politicians come here kissing ass, hands out, making the community feel like a brothel sometimes, whoring for money, contempt on both sides, the bought and the buyer, though which is which? The who's-who of those who used to come to this house alone reads like a list of yesteryear's has-beens, those whose stars shone and dimmed as all halos do.  

That’s my hometown and I thought I'd describe it over here under human privilege. There you are.

[Alex]

You should meet the women around here. They tend to be quite snobby with each other based on their husbands rank and some will try to boss the wife's of lower ranking husbands around, and sometimes the guy and gals in uniform. Although I can't go into the causes I did have a woman screeching at me "DO YOU KNOW WHO MY HUSBAND IS, I DEMAND YOU LET ME IN!". She didn't get in, and although I didn't know who her husband was I did make sure I found out and he had to explain to his boss what had happened and apologise for his wife's behaviour.

Did you know there is a web site where young women can go put there details in and get themselves a sugar daddy (or more if they wish). I think they put in details of how much they want spent on them in gifts and so on and then the men can decide which ones they like. What the women are expected to provide in return for having this money spent on them isn't explicitly stated, but I'd imagine it involves going upstairs for a game of Monopoly.

[316zombie]

We slum in isolation in the twelfth richest place in the United States, and it's beautiful and terrible at the same time. It’s beautiful for its silence and virgin forests and high-ground views of a national scenic river that reflects moonlight like a mirror, for its English-style lawns and its Tudor and Georgian manor houses and its collected Arabian horses that add fiery grace to scenery that includes ancient Adena mounds and half-millennium-old oaks. And it’s terrible in a strictly human way for its soul-less horrors of the spirit.

There is nothing immoral in wealth or noble in poverty, yet there is something here much too often that draws my disgust like a Goya canvas.

Not everyone among my fellow residents here fits a stereotype, but many do, and I don’t regret keeping to myself, choosing, as I have so often in my past, self-selected isolation over involuntary exclusion. For what matters here is not whether you’re nice, or intelligent, or wise, or heroic, or brave, or whether you love, but only that you are wealthy, which, comparatively, we are not. If I sold this land I could be rich, but I won't. We couldn't afford it here except my grandpa left this house to us. It drains us quarter by quarter, but we stay intractably, unapologetically, each divergent season because it’s home.

Lots of outwardly successful people dwell here, athletes, celebrities, CEOs, CFOs, old money, new money, media moguls, all too often passing their days amid complacent bewilderment and genteel drug addiction, citing cocaine as the trusted morning pick-me-up, even among the white-haired, feeling they've one-upped the old guard alcoholics who sample for their fix the finest scotches and most vintage wines, their doctor-prescribed pills for all moods and psychological complications not always carefully referenced for contraindications, so that drug overdoses among Baby Boomers of means are increasing at an alarming rate and ambulance sirens cry out perhaps one morning out of five scurrying some moneyed scion off to Jewish Hospital where he'll be saved (or not) and live to speak at the country club about how he had no idea he wasn't supposed to get drunk while taking that.

Then conversations will morph, and among spent-air describing the hosting of the Archbishop’s fundraiser or what colleges their offspring chose and how much they shelled out in political donations, the venue for the therapeutic post-overdose vacation will be talked over, whether it’s to be Dubai this year or Monte Carlo, or perhaps just Costa Rica again. And all this is spoken without the faintest hint of irony because rich or poor life becomes mundane to you, a hundred million in bonds or a hundred dollars in a savings account, sooner or later it is just what it is.

Sure women succeed here, run companies, anchor newscasts, admirably invest themselves in their children around their discreet touch-ups at the surgeons, but so many men still possess old school stay at home wives, "Ladies who Lunch," who take up distant social activism and oft have looks in their eyes like their heads should be mounted on a wall, their souls bought and paid for, and their 3 AM terrors flit around whether they'll one day be traded in for a newer model: sometimes literally a model. The mystery of their bitterness rapidly finds its way to the prescription counter, “Doctor I am just not happy….”

I’ll say again, drug addiction is endemic here.

Policy-making goes on behind thick oak doors in this town, talks that touch every life in the world (you’re naïve if you don’t think it affects you too), and there is despite the privilege as much familial discord and domestic abuse as anywhere, just nicely covered with makeup and cosmetic surgery, by pricy counseling sessions, all mollified by polite affairs with pool boys and kept women.

"Have you seen my trophy mistress this year?" Okay no one quite comes out and says that but nearly, for make no mistake, women are still “kept” in the 2010s by men who live in my community, their favors paid for, their bodies clad in designer attire, their penthouses or trendy bungalows in the hills showpieces in their own right, their temporary residents compensated for somehow feigning arousal before men whose days of wetting women, if ever they existed at all, are long gone, and in the end the only mystery is who is using whom, for a smart mistress can come out of the transaction set for life. Just business. If it hurts wives, sons, granddaughters, leaving them to clean up after you twenty years after you’re dead, well, that’s how it’s always been and always will. If you had the means would you truly be any different?

The latest flavor among the set here seems to be having at least one gay child, like it's the new badge of honor, and conversations that start, "Did you know my daughter came out last summer?" don't possess the same hint of debutants they did in decades past.

I ignore most of the goings on here and keep to myself because I don't fit in and don't want to. My fellow residents, not overt snobs it must be admitted, wave to even the poorest among their neighbors, of course, and we wave back and match smile for smile.

Most everyone among the established sorts seems to dwell within a slight paranoia and are quick to call on the help of their privately-chartered police force. (Literally a private police force.) But of course everyone is welcome here, and at the library one overhears gossip about my goodness a Bangladeshi-born heart surgeon just moved into the old Folger place, darker than a Negro, him, and his red-haired wife is so lovely, and we must have them over! So you see, everyone with money is welcome, NFL players of color are here in plentitude, WASPs, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, no bigotry at all, no bigotry at all. If you’re rich, you’re welcome.

Ah, yes, I do keep to myself.

Politicians come here kissing ass, hands out, making the community feel like a brothel sometimes, whoring for money, contempt on both sides, the bought and the buyer, though which is which? The who's-who of those who used to come to this house alone reads like a list of yesteryear's has-beens, those whose stars shone and dimmed as all halos do.  

That’s my hometown and I thought I'd describe it over here under human privilege. There you are.

 and yet, you choose to raise your children in what you seem to be describing as an incredibly toxic atmosphere . you say you keep to yourself, can they?

[ER]

Thanks for the question, zombie. I know how much you care about children. To put your mind to rest, that was mainly satire. We live in a great community.

[316zombie]

fine ER. i promise to never take anything you say seriously again.