Privilege

How are we to best help people who are fundamentally different than us. They can be fundamentally different from us on all sorts of levels, including race, gender, age or orientation. Is there really a way to reach out to people whose experiences are so different from ours, without invalidating their own personal experience. I feel this particularly acutely as a white, likely soon to be midd-class, Christian, English speaking male. In other words, I sit at a place of privilege unknown to all of human history. Just that I can sit here typing on this amazing machine, with free time, money in the bank and food in my cabinets, and having no distinct possibility of losing all those things, puts me at a place of security that most people would have done anything to arrive at.

The cost that this position seems to bring, however, is that even if I were to want to reach out to people who are not in as privileged of a position, it seems to be almost impossible not to do it in a condescending manner. So much of post-colonial thought seems to be a pushback against this idea that my position of privilege makes me any better suited to solve the worlds problems than any other person on earth. Sometimes, it even seems that my position of privilege actively inhibits my ability to help, rather than enhance it.

The most obvious solution seems to be working to gain an inner recognition that I am not any better than anyone else, even if my position of privilege would cause me to want to think so. The fundamental principle of that would seem to be the recognition that material success does not equal emotional, spiritual or in any way meaningful success. If I can seek to learn from others, than I can learn to be a part of their solution, rather than imposing my own.

But how far can this really be taken? Is empathy the only real goal, and do I have a greater responsibility to cultivate it than others? Does great power come with great responsibility attached. Right there I think I slip into it again. Is material wealth really power in any meaningful sense. I've read the idea in several different places that money can't by happiness, but that poverty can inhibit it. So do I really have in my power the ability to alleviate inhibitions to unhappiness? Or, as so often seems to be the case, the fact that money comes from someone thinking they are helping someone lower than them to reach a higher level end up doing more harm than good?

And moving on from money. How much does my empathy really matter? If I were to do all I could to study the culture, history and societal factors that go into, say, the life of a rural Indian woman, am I any better suited to helping her, or working with her, or whatever, than I would be otherwise. Is any help, compassion or empathy that I work to develop hopelessly tainted with the privilege that I have done so little to earn.

My one hope is that I can work to eliminate the idea of myself as a privileged being, simply because I am privileged in material ways, and look to redefine that concept in my mind. But the corresponding fear is that I would simply use that redefinition to abjure myself of any responsibility towards my fellow human.