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Posts Tagged ‘philosophy’

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How To Tell If You’re Privileged In America

In PeaceAble on July 4, 2015 at 4:09 pm

(This may be the most uncomfortable thing I have written to date, and if it makes you uncomfortable as well, I apologize for that; but I hope you will stay to the end, regardless.)

There has been quite a bit of talk lately about privilege; and a lot of folks who have been privileged don’t necessarily understand what it means to say they’re privileged, so they don’t understand how other people can say that they are. Now, first of all, it’s important to understand that the privilege being talked about isn’t about any particular individual, it’s about classes of individuals who benefit in sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious ways from privilege they may not even recognize they have. So here is a list of basic rules you can refer to in order to decide if you are a member of a privileged class in America.

  1. You began to feel outraged and attacked as soon as you read the headline to this article, because you were sure it was going to be about you.

The truth is that most people who are privileged (as well as those who are prejudiced, though the two don’t necessarily go together) know at some level that they are privileged; but they are uncomfortable with the idea and don’t want it pointed out to them. The kind of privilege I’m talking about here isn’t earned, it’s inherited by those whose parents have it. We know how lucky we are not to have been born “the other,” but want it to be a good thing, not something for which we are criticized and attacked. But all this does is put us unnecessarily on the defensive and make it even more likely that we will be seen as uncaring, self-important, prejudiced and undeserving of the privileges we have.

  1. You have never needed to hyphenate your citizenship and no one else has ever done it for you.

In other words, you have a choice about your own identity. You can be simply an American; or you can choose to identify some other aspect to include, such as Irish or Italian or Polish. But you won’t have that identity superimposed over your American-ness by other people in order to classify you as somehow a different kind of American. You are the standard by which “the other” is measured and to which it is compared.

  1. If you accomplish something no one feels the need to qualify what you did by some unrelated detail.

You are the CEO of your company, not the female CEO or the African-American CEO; and no one even notices that there is anything missing. While it is true that if you do something others have done before you, you don’t get the chance to be the first, but at the same time there is no apparent surprise that you did it at all. And the barriers to your doing it are fewer and less systemic than those encountered by other people who don’t have your privilege.

4. You think that things you consider a right when you do them are a privilege if other people are allowed to do them.

Until the Supreme Court’s recent ruling about same-sex marriages, every straight person in America knew that they had a right to marry whomever they chose, based on whatever reasons they wished to use. They married to have children, or to get security, or to establish a social or even an economic bond. They married so as not to be lonely, or because it was expected of them. And they often married because they had a bond of love and sexual attraction with their intended spouse. But when same-sex couples asked for the same right, they were told that they were creating a “special privilege” to which they weren’t entitled.

  1. You think that “tradition” is an unassailable argument for continuing to do something.

This is actually a specific and very common logical fallacy. It is the argument that because something has always been, it is supposed to be and should continue. But that simply argues against all change and all progress. Tradition is always the argument of the status quo and the status quo is the creation of the privileged. Our culture is defined by norms that are defined by those with the most power and the most privilege, and when those norms begin to change, the powerful and privileged feel threatened. “Tradition” is a way of saying that regardless of the objective merit of a change it is outweighed by the need to keep doing it the old way. This also keeps us from simply no longer doing something that doesn’t work simply because “we need to do something” and this is what it’s always been.

6. You think that “privilege” means “never have any problems,” so you resent someone saying that you’re privileged.

Let’s face it, even within the privileged classes there are problems and not everyone is treated equally. Often this is because privilege is multi-layered. The very wealthy have access to privilege that others don’t have, for example; but poverty is more likely to be a problem, or a much greater problem, for those who also lack other privilege, especially as part of a class that they cannot choose to enter. It is possible to get rich through hard work or luck, but if you’re Asian-American (note the hyphenization mentioned above) you can’t stop being that. For some people it might be possible to hide an “otherness” for a while, but it exacts an enormous psychological toll and the risks involved when your “other” identity is discovered can be enormous.

  1. You think that “privilege,” means “always get your own way,” and you don’t; and when you don’t get your own way you don’t understand why not.

If you are a Christian in America today, you get to have the name of the god you believe in included in public life from the national motto to the nation’s money to the Pledge of Allegiance; and you can simultaneously claim that the term refers to some generic god while knowing that virtually everyone is imagining your god when they see it. As a result, it is easy to imagine that the god you worship is the nation’s god or ought to be, and when others stand up and say “no” to that, you feel attacked and disempowered; which is exactly the way non-Christians feel every time they are required to use the name of your god in a public way. One of the unintended consequences of Affirmative Action was that white people became convinced that every time they lost out on a job or a college placement to a non-white it was because of color alone, not other qualifications. But this assumed two things that weren’t true. The first was that the white applicant must be more qualified than the non-white, a claim that was made even by objectively less qualified people. The second was that they were only competing against the non-white. I once had someone tell me that he had failed to get into college because the system favored non-white applicants, even though the percentages of non-white applicants and acceptances werestill far below their representation among all applicants and the general population.

  1. You still don’t really understand why you can’t discriminate against others, but think it’s reverse discrimination when you’re told you have to stop doing it.

I once joked that it took white men hundreds of years to come to the conclusion that discrimination against others was wrong, but no time at all to agree that no one should ever do it to them. Affirmative action is not an assault on the rights of white people, but it is definitely an assault on their unquestioned privilege. If we say that a long history of discrimination has been a bad thing and we aren’t going to allow it to continue, we cannot just say that we will begin today and everything will be fine. What has gone before has created conditions that continue to create problems unless we correct for them. There is no reset button that erases the systemic effects of prejudice and the disempowerment, disenfranchisement, discrimination, violence and abuse that it caused. There were always consequences for those who were discriminated against, and the consequences of correcting for that are not anywhere near as terrible. Nothing that the privileged are being asked to suffer in order to give all people access to that privilege and those rights will ever amount to anything close to the suffering that the others endured.

  1. You have ever used the phrase “those people,” or something like it when an individual does something you don’t like, but when someone like you does something bad you rush in to proclaim that #notall(peoplelikeme) do it.

This is the confusion of the general with the personal. Most rapists are male and most victims are female. Stating this is not a condemnation of all males, but a recognition that women, in general, have to deal with something that men, in general, do not. It is also a recognition that the problem is one that all men have to confront if the situation is going to change. It is not enough to say that I, personally, am not a rapist; I also have to look at how I, as a male, in a male-dominant culture, have some responsibility for changing that culture. My maleness gives me privilege, and that privilege gives me power. I can use that power either as an ally or an impediment for change.

  1. You are a straight white male.

This is the toughest one for a lot of people, especially straight white males, and a lot of the other rules perhaps help to explain this one, but I’ll begin with some basics. Straight white male is the cultural norm in America. Everything is ultimately about you, both for good and for ill. Whatever anyone else does, it is compared to you. In spite of the fact that there are more people in this country who are not straight white males than are, most positions of power, wealth and influence are held by people like you. The laws reflect your needs more than the needs of others. Because people like you wrote the Constitution, it has had to be revised, amended and reinterpreted over the past 200+ years in order to specifically include and meet the needs of those who are not like you.

Plus: You get to be a hero for doing very little.

Are you a straight white American male? Want people to praise you and hold you up as a model of progressive thought? It’s simple. Write something self-deprecating in praise of women. Put on a rainbow-flag shirt and attend a Pride parade. Vote for a woman for congress or the presidency and tell everyone else to do the same. Proclaim yourself an ally and correct people who express prejudicial opinions. Or do what I’ve just done and explain just how self-aware you are about your privilege. It’s easy. The truth is that I am writing from the same privilege that I am describing and there’s nothing I can do about it except to acknowledge it. The privileged don’t actually deserve a lot of praise for doing things to extend that privilege to others. It’s really just the simple, decent, moral thing to do, and only the privileged can do it. The heroes are those who have fought for decades and centuries and longer to reach the point where the privileged can now have the additional privilege of being praised for simply offering to share that privilege. Don’t hate me for being a straight white male, but don’t make me a hero for it, either.

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You’re an Un-American, Knuckle-Dragging Nut-Job If You Don’t Agree With This! Why We Need to Cool the Rhetoric.

In PeaceAble on April 22, 2015 at 9:23 am

Facts exist independent of us. Truth does not. We discover facts, but we construct truth. Truth is what we find where the facts and our perceptions intersect.

Thus, in any situation, there may be many truths; and since the facts are often harder to determine than our separate truths, it is those that will most often prevail, for we would sooner reject the facts than change our truth.

When we become polarized over issues that might seem easily resolved if everyone just knew the facts, it is important to remember this simple principle. When you attack my truth, when you force me to defend that which is so important a part of me, then you have just lost the battle to teach me the facts which might lead me to alter that truth on my own, in my own time and my own way.

Ask yourself a simple question. How often have you been convinced to change your mind about something because someone with an opposing point of view called you names, ridiculed you, impugned your honesty, your morality and your intelligence, and in various ways dismissed and dehumanized you? In the face of this kind of onslaught did you suddenly have a revelation that, my god, they’re right and I am wrong? Or did exactly the opposite happen and you became even more adamant about rejecting everything they might have to say on the issue and more convinced than ever that you were right?

This is the state of public discourse in America today. And it’s dangerous.

A democratic society relies on the ability of its citizens to engage in active, free, informed, and reasoned debate about issues. And the more critical the issue, the more passionate the advocacy on opposing sides, the more pressing the need for a solution, and the more important it is for both citizens and their representatives to engage in rational, productive discourse. When even the most minor differences of perception or belief become scandals and crises fueled by unrestrained outrage and immoderate rhetoric, then our ability to function as a democracy is undermined; and compromises, workable solutions, and even the routine functions of government become impossible.

As a progressive, I believe that there is a better way, and I think that progressives have a responsibility to set the tone for a future that is more democratic and less confrontational.

First, let’s stop the use of pointless name-calling and characterization of those whose ideas we oppose. Let’s eliminate from our own language terms such as “repugs” or “rethuglicans.” Let’s not make up “funny” names for our opponents, or stoop to characterizations such as “America’s Dumbest Congressman.” And we can stop creating broad classifications of people based on their position on a single issue. A reasonable person can disagree with the scientific conclusions in one area, without being “anti-science” or a “science denier.” We can speak our truth directly, forthrightly and clearly without resorting to fallacious arguments and dehumanizing tactics. If we can’t stand what Rush Limbaugh is doing, then let’s not imitate him. If actual comedians and satirists who identify with the left want to make fun of right-wing ideas and those who espouse them, fine; but let’s not let it become the go-to strategy for every discussion we get into about important issues.

One other consequence of making these kinds of polarizing and unproductive knee-jerk responses our fallback argument is that we make enemies of ourselves. I recently saw a comment on a post about the issues surrounding childhood vaccines in which the writer lumped “anti-vaxxers,” “right-wing nut jobs,” “science-deniers,” and two or three other things all together in a single rant. That isn’t just unproductive, it is flat out wrong. Only the most fundamental extremists are purely one thing or another. When we start to lump all the things we personally don’t like into these kinds of hybrid evil-doers, we forget that people who are just as passionate as we are about some things disagree with us about others. If we make enemies of them over one issue, how can we expect to work with them on others? This happens at both ends of the spectrum, of course. A writer for a sports magazine suggested reasonable restrictions on firearms and received death threats from people he mostly agrees with about guns. If progressives want to create a genuine coalition around our issues, we need to be willing to accept the kind of diversity of opinions about those issues (and the positive discussions those differences can create), we can’t go into attack mode every time someone strays from what we consider the “correct” position.

Secondly, and I’ve said this before, let’s stop talking about every disagreement as a war on something. We cannot, to paraphrase Einstein, both speak like war and work for peace. And this is true about both the things we have characterized as wars and those characterized that way by our opponents. So let’s stop getting into arguments about a “War on Christianity.” Let’s just say there is no such war, and move on. Let’s stop calling it a “War on Women.” It is a systemic cultural problem that limits women’s free exercise of their rights as citizens and denies them equal access with men to full participation in the privileges, opportunities and responsibilities of our society; but who is the enemy except the culture itself? Cultures change slowly, and we can’t speed it up if we start thinking of major portions of that shared culture as enemies. All that does is reinforce their perception that they are under attack. In wars of rhetoric, just as in wars of military engagement, what would happen if someone like Bill O’Reilly called a war and we simply refused to show up for it?

Let’s get in the habit of taking a breath before we jump into an unproductive argument. Let’s just say no to reposting memes or restating simplistic “bumper sticker” arguments without at least checking them out first to be sure we know the full story, the context, whether the facts are accurately and fairly portrayed, and whether we would, on our own, arrive at the same conclusions. We are entitled to have our own experts on controversial arguments, of course, but we should choose them carefully, expect them to be wrong sometimes, be careful of creating confirmation bias, and be willing to change our minds as our knowledge and understanding changes.

Finally, let’s stop calling for extreme consequences for every insensitive word, every distasteful attitude, or every prejudiced or unenlightened action.   If a clerk in a diner somewhere makes the mistake of posting a rant that goes viral, we don’t need to destroy him, his job, his family and his whole life. That will simply convince him of the rightness of his opinions, If someone lives her life in a way that is different from ours, we won’t change that by “shaming” her publically on social media. All that accomplishes is to drive people into opposing camps and increase polarization, which quickly gets unproductive and completely irrelevant to the real issues. Instead, let’s criticize and say what we believe is wrong about a person’s ideas or actions, not turn those whose minds we would change into martyrs for the extremists we stand against.

And let’s encourage those who disagree with us to do the same things. People, generally, are getting tired of a constant state of high alert over everything. They are worn down by the polarization, the vitriol, the self-righteous outrage, and the intolerance that they are inundated with every day in the twenty-four hour news cycle and the ubiquitous and incessant cacophony of social media. They are dropping out. A democracy functions best when its citizens participate. But that participation is most effective when the culture itself encourages reasoned discussion by an accurately and fairly informed citizenry. Every citizen is not just entitled to a voice, but to have that voice listened to and respected. We can help achieve that by making a greater effort, each of us, to listen to and respect those voices with which we most disagree, even as we act in advocacy for our ideals and in committed opposition to what we see as wrong.

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The Question of Evil — Part 2

In A God of Infinite Possibility on October 12, 2012 at 5:20 pm

If everything that is, is God, then what is evil?  Is it part of God?  Did God create it?  What is the purpose of evil?

What if there were no “evil” in the world?  What if everything was equally “good?”  No matter what you chose, the consequences would be equally happy, equally beneficial.  How would you choose?  Even simple choices would have no meaning, no significance, no basis for evaluation.  Should I have coffee or tea?  Should I wear the blue shirt or the red?  Should I turn left or right?  What do I prefer?  And on what basis do I prefer it?  When all is good, judgment becomes impossible.  Now the same would be true if there were only evil, of course.  If we could not perceive both good and evil, then choice would be arbitrary and meaningless.

It is interesting to note that the thing that is forbidden in the Garden of Eden is knowledge; specifically, the knowledge of good and evil.  This makes sense only if Adam and Eve are ignorant of both.  They cannot know evil without knowing good, or good without evil, because one is necessary to the other.  Something is good to the extent that it is not evil and vice-versa.  Something is better to the extent that it is less evil and more good; it is worse to the extent that it is less good and more evil.  Now, if it seems I am using evil almost synonymously with “bad,” it’s because I am.  If we believe that there are degrees of evil , or if we simply believe that an evil thing is extremely bad, then we can talk about good and evil as directions rather than places.  And we can see that our ability to understand great good requires us to imagine great evil to compare it with.  Our ability to believe in the Devil as perfect evil requires us to believe in God as perfect good.  Otherwise, what does any of it mean?

As an analogy, consider the idea that if everyone were rich, then no one would be.  An understanding of great wealth requires a contrasting understanding of great poverty.  But when does one become perfectly wealthy?  We have no agreement as to when someone would be so wealthy that no more wealth would be possible or necessary, because we have no contrasting image of someone so poor that greater poverty would be impossible.  Would ownership of literally everything make someone perfectly wealthy?  What if he owned everything and was owed an equal amount? Or twice as much?  Would that make everyone else perfectly poor?  Or would some owe more than others?  Would we have to adjust our understanding of wealth to mean “less in debt?”  At that point would it make any difference?  Perhaps we could even argue that at some point being even more in debt might be a form of wealth, because those who owed the most would be worth the most.  But what if we were to consider wealth and poverty not as places, but as directions?  We would be wealthy to the extent that our choices around wealth moved in a “wealthy” direction; poor to the extent that our wealth choices moved in the direction of “poverty.”

Consider also a bar magnet.  One end is “north,” and the other is “south.”  Or we might call one end “positive” and the other “negative.”  But these distinctions are arbitrary.  If the ends aren’t labeled, how do we know which is which?  And the “positive” and “negative” qualities are not just at the ends.  If we cut the magnet in half, we get two new magnets, each of which has the same qualities of positive and negative.  Cut the two magnets into four, or eight, or sixteen, or however many you want, and you will never reach a point where any piece is all one or the other.

This is the nature of good and evil in our choices.  All choices are actions, and all actions contain the possibility of both good and evil.  Large choices have greater possibilities for good or evil, smaller choices have smaller possibility, but no matter how you slice it, every choice has the potential for either.  In choosing, as in magnets, positive and negative aren’t ends, they are directions.  We can determine the “north” and “south” ends of the magnet if we can make it into a compass, which would allow us to position the magnet according to known, fixed points – one north and one south.  In the same way, we can know the directions our choices might lead us in if we can make magnets of them, orient them to some sort of fixed moral points labeled good and evil.

Morality is our compass.  Our particular standards of morality are the fixed points against which we can orient the positive and negative directions of our actions.  Morality is a set of judgments based on our perceptions of good and evil, of benefit or harm.  Something is evil to the extent that it causes harm, good to the extent that it creates benefit.  But these are arbitrary and human determinations.  That which benefits me might harm you, for instance.  That which I think is good, you might find to be evil.  Each of us has her or his own compass, and they do not all point to the same fixed pole.  And so we gather into communities of various kinds, both spiritual and secular, where we can be with others who have similar compasses to our own.  This doesn’t make the compasses any less arbitrary or human, but it does give us support for our moral judgments.

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The Eden Dilemma and the Question of Evil — Part 1

In A God of Infinite Possibility on October 12, 2012 at 5:16 pm

THE EDEN DILEMMA

                If we try to imagine life in the Biblical Garden of Eden, we run into a major problem.  Adam and Eve are depicted as living in a paradise of Godly perfection.  Until the appearance of the serpent, there is no evil: no violence, no corruption, neither illness nor death.  The inhabitants can look forward to an eternity of constant goodness.  But they are also both ignorant and naïve, and purposeless.  Adam is apparently given the task of naming everything in the garden, but why?  Is it just busy-work?  He is incapable of failing at the task, because there are no standards against which to judge his efforts.  Making a mistake is impossible, because a mistake would suggest that there are ”better” or “worse” choices; but this is Eden where there is only good.  But what does “good” mean without anything else to compare it to?  And what of Eve?  Except to provide companionship for Adam, she has no purpose at all.  And what sort of companionship can she provide?  What will they talk about?  There is no point in discussing the names Adam is giving the animals, because there is no basis for discussing them.  After Adam says that this animal is a “sheep,” for instance, and Eve acknowledges the name, what more is there to discuss?  It is impossible to ask whether it is a good name, because it must be.  She can’t even ask “why,” because there is no particular reason for any of it.  And if there were reasons they would all be good reasons.  It is an endless, eternal cycle of unrelenting “goodness.”

Except for three important details.  There is forbidden fruit, there is the ability to make a choice, and there is a possibility of desire.

Without knowledge of good and evil, choice becomes meaningless; and without choice there is no point in knowing about good and evil.  So Adam and Eve must have been given the ability to choose.  They must have had free will.  Otherwise, there would have been no reason for God to deny them access to the Tree of Knowledge, because they could not have chosen to eat from it anyway.  But the ability to choose requires that there be a choice to make.  What choices did Adam and Eve actually have?  They could choose to go to this place or that within Eden, but all places were equally perfect.  They could choose to eat any of the fruit from any tree in the garden, but all fruits were equally perfect.  They could interact with any of the animals in the garden, but all animals and all interactions were equally perfect.  Without the forbidden fruit, without a choice, free will had no meaning.  So how could they choose?

In the absence of reason as a basis for choice, we have to have desire.  If it is equally good to eat a peach or a fig, then perhaps we simply need to desire one or the other.  “I think I would like a peach today,” doesn’t require us to denigrate the choice of a fig, only to recognize a momentary preference.  If we do not think about our preferences, but simply respond to them, act on them, then knowledge of good and evil is only necessary if there is the possibility of evil in a choice we might desire.  This is the real meaning of the serpent.  The serpent doesn’t make Eve aware of the choice – she already knows that the fruit is forbidden – the serpent’s role is to convince Eve that she desires the fruit, so that she has a reason to choose it.  And the fact that the fruit is forbidden is an argument in favor of desire, because unless the thing is desirable, there is no reason to choose it, and consequently no reason to forbid the choice.

But there is still a problem.  The forbidden fruit gives Adam and Eve the knowledge that there is both good and evil in the world, but it doesn’t give them clear knowledge of which is which.  This they have to figure out as they go along.  They quickly understand that things have changed; but they have no solid basis for judging those changes.  They find that they are naked, and become ashamed by the knowledge.  Why?  They have been naked all along in Eden, and Eden is perfect, so why should nakedness be shameful?  Apparently, it is the knowledge of their nakedness that is shameful, not the nakedness itself.  Things get topsy-turvy pretty quickly after that.  In Eden, there is no death.  The lion and the lamb lie down together and both eat grass.  Adam and Eve eat only fruit.  But after they eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and know that they are naked, Got clothes them in animal skins.  They learn that not only are the animals now killing each other for survival, but that they must also kill in order to survive.  Before the fall, God had created a world in which killing was not possible; after the fall, the descendants of Adam and Eve kill each other – beginning with Adam and Eve’s first born sons – in order to have the things they need and desire;  and even more than that, they kill other animals, make sacrifices, to honor God.  So is killing evil, or good?

Before the fall, Adam and Eve are ignorant of sex.  There is no need for sex, because there is no need for procreation.  In fact, procreation would be a problem, because there is no death.  There is no desire for sex, because there is no knowledge of sex.  Knowledge of sex would be a problem in Eden unless procreation was impossible, because if sexual activity is a choice, then desire may lead us to choose it, and in the absence of pregnancy prevention, choosing it would inevitably lead to procreation.  But is sex, therefore, evil?  Is procreation?  Is everything that did not exist in Eden before the fall evil by definition?  Note that eating the forbidden fruit doesn’t creategood and evil, it simply allows Adam and Eve to know that they exist.  It allows them to see the possibilities for good and evil in the choices they might make, and to consider those possibilities as they choose.

Thus, the lesson of the Garden of Eden becomes not the emergence of evil, or original sin, but the attainment of knowledge, and with it full humanity.  It is, after all, our ability to choose and to give meaning to our choices that makes us human.  Why would God set it up that way?  Perhaps because if good is the direction of God, then maybe God wants us to choose it; to go toward God consciously; to know what it is we are doing.  And we cannot always know which choice is the “good” one because life is more complex than that, and because the experience of life is, itself, essential to understanding the choices.  If it were easier, it wouldn’t mean so much.

An old folk song praises the day that Eve got Adam to eat the apple, because without that we wouldn’t be here at all.  The fruit of the tree of knowledge, in Eden, was the only fruit (other than eternal life) that was not to be eaten.  Now it is the only fruit we must eat.  We must not go ignorantly or accidently toward God (except of course in the case of children or other innocents), but must eat daily of the fruit of knowledge and then choose.