Defeat goes deeper into the human soul than victory. To be in someone else’s power is a conscious experience which induces doubts about the ordering of the universe, while those who have power can forget it, or can assume that it is part of the natural order of things and adopt ideas which justify their possession of it.
“Those who have power can forget it.”
I hear (and have heard) it a lot, privileged people complaining about the suffering of others. I have been white and male for 51 years. You would not believe the disappointment expressed by white men about “those people.”
The point of this essay is not to focus on white men’s shortcomings—which would be like a friend of mine used to say: “hitting a buffalo in the ass with a canoe paddle.” The point is to isolate a mindset. It just so happens that white men exhibit this mindset to a breathtaking degree. However, that is not the issue here.
When one is not in an unfortunate situation, one can easily just forget it or pay it no mind—or outright ridicule it. So, if you have plenty of money, poverty is abstract. It’s stuff you see in movies. The grinding, humiliating reality of poverty is not part of your reality. It’s simply foreign to you. When you have a Porsche and an in-ground swimming pool and the fridge is bursting with food, why think about poverty? Why think about the poor? It’s also very easy to assume it’s their fault: if they were quality people, they’d have a Porsche, too! Does Porsche sell cars to another kind of person?
This is tantamount to the divine right of kings. God wanted me to be rich, what more evidence do you need?
Yet, the wealthy are just one example of what I am talking about. There’s a lot more. Guns. People who love guns. They commonly argue against increased gun-control legislation. “That’s my right! You ain’t gonna tread on my liberties!” Does this person have a child who was sent to the morgue in the last ten years? Gun violence does not affect most gun owners. And gun ownership has become a cult. Sure, the rich really like money and what it buys, but there isn’t a quasi-religious component to it. They just really like their Porsches and pools and vacations in Italy. But there is not a borderline religious devotion to those things. “Um, kids are dying … at school!” “That’s my right! You ain’t gonna tread on my liberties!” Good talk. Did I mention the dead kids? “Yeah, that’s a shame. We’ll pray for them.” Oh, good.
I have money, so I can put the poor out of my mind. I have my cherished and beloved firearms, so I can put the victims out of my mind.
Same thing with the LGBTQ community. Now there is a group of people who have been harassed, beaten, arrested, and discriminated against for how long? Forever? Not just cops with batons breaking up gay bars decades ago, but culturally, in the home. Families visited psychological abuse—and sometimes physical abuse—upon gay family members. “Coming out” was a huge deal, one that involved tremendous fear.
Now, if you don’t have to deal with such things, “those people” must want special treatment. For that matter, any group that feels put upon, abused, neglected, or discriminated against must be up to no good. “I’m fine, what are THOSE PEOPLE carrying on about?” Those who have power can forget it. Those who have privilege can forget it. And not just forget it, they even deny they have it. “We’re not rich!” “I’m not privileged!” “I worked hard to get where I am!” Dear reader, the second someone tells you how hard they worked to get where they are, brace yourself for a blue streak of the worst kind of bullshit. Take it from a white male with half a century of experience.
In general, we all might give some thought to people who are suffering things we do not suffer. Can’t hurt. And what are the privileged afraid of? They fear defending the vulnerable and the less fortunate? Does this cause physical discomfort? Does showing a modicum of sympathy cause disease? People of this mindset look at this as weakness. It’s dismissed as “liberal”—a synonym for weakness. “Liberal” means bleeding heart. It means tree-hugger. It means taking the needs of “those people” into consideration.
And why does this translate into weakness exactly? Does caring threaten one’s masculinity? (It’s usually men who display this behavior.) This is a cultural failure. It takes strength of character to be virtuous. Maybe we should read our Plato and Aristotle more closely.
Perhaps junior high and high school students could learn that instead of being shot at. Pardon me while I go hug a tree.
