Speaking as a straight, white, Christian, suburban male, I can say with complete confidence that most of us do not consider ourselves to be oppressors and will immediately reject any discussion that starts with that premise.
Of course people who’ve been oppressed historically can’t be faulted for believing that everyone who isn’t them is an oppressor. but in fact the ladder of oppression has a lot or rungs on it, and just about everyone sees someone above them.
On top of that, I have the sneaking suspicion that if you offered people the chance to be one of “them,” the “elite,” the “one percent,” or “privileged” just about all of us would accept, if only temporarily, just to see what it’s like.
My suburb contains Jews, Catholics, black people, immigrants, gay people and atheists. I’m not sure what “the natives” entails, or if we definitely harbor “the insane”, though that guy who mows his lawn almost daily (even when it’s 11 degrees out) worries me.
I occasionally feel guilty about oppressing raccoons, but if it’s them or my garden, the guilt is tolerable.
That’s not the point. The point is that you’re telling me (us) what we would say, while acting like you’re giving us a free choice. So you end up being condescending to your audience.
Is choosing to live in more fair and equal society out of compassion for others not an option? Right now, under the status quo, I’m living pretty fat right now. I live in a nice-sized house in the burbs, have a fridge full of food, plenty of money, accessible healthcare, etc. Meanwhile, billions of others on the planet struggle to get even a quarter of what I enjoy everyday. If we lived in a fairer society—something more socialist in nature—my taxes would be significantly higher, so my house (if I lived in a house) would be smaller. Less disposable income so maybe instead of 2 cars, we’d only have one (if that). Longer wait time to see a doctor, too. The in-laws might be living with me too, driving me quietly insane.
How would any of this personally benefit me? To even out disadvantage would mean my boat would have to sink so that others could rise. That’s reality, dude. For me, the benefits to living in a equal society come down to ethics and humanitarianism, not personal gain.
If you believe that the privileged class (which should not be conflated with The OppressorTM as you’ve done) would directly benefit from giving up their privilege and living in an equal society, you have to show how you reached this conclusion. Not treat it as a given.
Your thought experiment presents the choices as Oppressor or Live in a really just and equal world, and you believe no one would chose to be the oppressor.
Try reframing it: would you choose to have an advantage? In any situation, or hey, all situations? Still think no one would choose to have an advantage? Lots of students get into school based on legacies, or family contributions to the school. Lots of people inherit wealth. Lots of people get jobs through family. Every one of those people chose - on some level- to use an advantage that was unfairly given.
Oh please. You want cites that getting an education in something useful, not breaking the law, not having children you can’t support, does not lead to a successful life more often than not? :rolleyes:
The problem with your choice is living in a world with no oppression is not going to help me that much, because I am not where I am because I oppressed anyone, and it won’t help the oppressed, because their situation is not because anyone oppressed them.
If you drop out of high school, you are more likely to wind up poor. Nobody graduated high school because they got someone else to drop out. If you have children you can’t support, you are more likely to wind up poor. I didn’t avoid having children I can’t support by making someone else have them.
I out-competed everyone else for my job, that’s true enough. But I didn’t get the job by tearing anyone else down. I did it by picking out a job that I could do, getting prepared to do it, and then applying to enough places that the odds fell in my favor.
I don’t see any reason to fear people, even if they can’t succeed in life because they shot themselves in the foot. Even if they blame me, who cares? They’re limping, so I have that much more chance to get away.
When you choose to do something out of compassion for others, you do so for some reason akin to these approximations:
• You think that being compassionate to other people will make you happier about yourself and how you are in the world.
• You think that being compassionate to other people will make the world in its entirety a better place, and either you figure on directly reaping the benefits of getting to live in that better world or you do it because it makes you feel happier about yourself for having done so
• You think that being compassionate to other people will make other people happier and you like to make other people happier — it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling to bring joy to other people and you like that warm fuzzy feeling, it gives you pleasure
• You think that God will appreciate you being compassionate to other people because God would like all people to be compassionate to each other, and you believe that you will be happier to have done things pleasing to God
• You think that being compassionate to other people is good karma and what goes around comes around; you like to pay it forward and so you cast good deeds upon the water knowing that they come back to you via the good deeds of others, etc
I can’t think if any conceivable scenario in which it is right to do something but where the reason for assessing it as “right” does not bring something good to you. If it did not bring something good to you on some level, at some eventual point, there would not be a basis for assessing it as “right”.
If the available alternative were to live in a world that lacked the adversarial competition of people trying to do each other out of things? If I could have that, why would I want an “advantage”? There’s enough to go around.
If I opted for “advantage”, I would be opting to deprive people, and hence to live in a world where some of the people are deprived. And I’m being offered the option of not having to have that be a factor. No deprived people to worry about, to fear their understandable desperation and violence, to feel guilty about what I, with my advantage, have deprived them of, to have to deal with the social relations of inequality and all that that brings. Why the fuck would I choose “advantage”? It’s worse. The other option is clearly better.
We don’t live in scarcity, we have a surplus. The purpose of “power”, in the sense of “power over other people”, is to create outcomes that favor you and your affiliated group(s) at the expense of others. Calling it “oppression” identifies it as an undesireable state of affairs in a way that calling it “competition for resources” does not, but when the competition is serious and not just for fun, winning is inherently coercive and the conditions of loss are by definition oppressive.
Of course we do (and notice that I include myself there). But that’s within the context of a system in which (like Monopoly) we’re set up to compete as if there were a scarcity of resources. The only thing we do have a shortage of is “jobs” — there isnt enough necessary work to go around, a far cry from the original native justification for the competitive economy (“Ya don’t work, ya don’t eat”).
Unless I missed something, you listed one — and only one —reason to make the choice that, “for the second time,” is “almost so obvious that it’s not interesting”, such that you figure anybody reading this “didn’t choose that anyway”.
And the one reason you list is: doing so means you lose the moral high ground. And what do people around the world give up moral high ground for? Well, the tactical high ground, as it were. Or the literal high ground, if you prefer.
American society shows this quite well. But productivity does not equate to wellness. Not anymore than an alcoholic with all the trappings of middle classdom is an exemplar of wellness. Alcohol is indeed harming him. It just hasn’t wiped out all the money in his bank account yet.
I don’t think Japan, as an economic power, has a very bright prognosis.
I don’t agree with your thesis though. As I said, socioeconomic status is finite because it is relative, and having a strict social hierarchy makes it easier for those at the top to obtain that finite socio-economic status for themselves. If there are a finite amount of high paying, high status, prestigious careers and mates out there, but only white men are allowed to claim these careers and mates (women and non-whites are locked out of the job market, non-whites aren’t allowed to date white women, but white men can date non-white women), that makes it easier for a white man to achieve his goals in life.
I think a big reason why the alt right is happening is a lot of white men are realizing that life isn’t going to be easy for them the way they expected. They figured they’d have good jobs, financial stability and loyal wives handed to them, and none of that is happening. I think most people who aren’t in that demographic realize you have to work for things like a good career, financial security or a quality spouse.
A more apt metaphor is you have 10 people and 100 dollars. Do you want to live in a society where you get 30 and everyone else gets 7-8, or do you want to live in one where everyone gets 10?
There are 10 people, and 10 syphilitic monkeys. Wish genie asks you if you would like everyone to get a monkey, or maybe you can come up with a system where you don’t have a monkey, but that means someone else gets an extra monkey. Maybe someone who deserves that extra monkey, for whatever you define" deserve" as.
Maybe 30% of the state was white men, 30% was white women, 20% was black women, 20% was black men.
Despite white men making up 30% of the state, they made up 99% of the people who had positions of power and influence in the economic, social, political and legal system. Women and non-whites were locked out of power. If you were a man and you wanted a decent position it wasn’t guaranteed you’d get it, but with 70% of the state locked out, it was easier to obtain it for yourself.
Plus black men couldn’t date white women, but white men could date (well, fuck) black women. In fact the white men didn’t even have to seduce the black women or treat them as equals. When a white man wanted a white woman maybe he had to seduce her, win over her parents, etc. With a black woman he could just rape her, or intimidate her.
So like it or not, there are benefits to inequality. That is why inequality exists, because those at the top are doing better. Saddam Hussein would not have been better off under a democracy.
Uday Hussein was an illiterate sociopath with no discernible talents. Despite that he blew through hundreds of millions of dollars (I’ve read stories of him losing a million a night just from gambling) and fucked thousands of women. Inequality exists because the people at the top do better than they do under egalitarian systems.
You guys keep trying to write the terms of the debate in a way I don’t agree with.
A better metaphor is ‘a genie says would you like $100, but in exchange you have to give 10 people who look, act, think and believe differently from you a syphilitic monkey on their backs. This will make their lives harder, but you have the $100’.
Yeah, a culture of oppression creates paranoia and fear for the oppressors. That is why the south is so fucked up, they’re still terrified of black people fighting back and they vote for politicians who make their lives harder and more painful because those same politicians promise to keep the minorities they’ve been mistreating in check. That is also why human rights are so atrocious in dictatorships, the dictator is terrified of the people fighting back. Poor white people in the south would happily vote for a politician who wants to eliminate labor laws and social welfare programs they are dependent on, just so long as that politician dog whistles that they will mistreat and intimidate black people so they won’t rise up.
But the oppressors get to enjoy power, wealth, prestige, mates, influence and immunity from consequences.
As I said, if a white man raped a black woman in 1940s Mississippi, the police weren’t going to care. He didn’t have to compete with black men for the best jobs in town. He didn’t have to compete with white women for a promotion at work.
I think an even more apt metaphor is you have 10 people and 100 dollars. Do you want to live in a society where you get 30, but have to spend 20 to ensure everyone else only gets 8? Or do you want to live in one where everyone gets 10?
The point being, there is a cost placed on individuals to maintain one’s place in the hierarchy. Take away the hierarchy, and suddenly there’s no need to pay for all the literal and figurative gate-keepers, whose sole purpose is to keep the riff-raff “below” you in their place.
What’s missing in this argument, however, is acknowledgment that there are intangibles associated with being on the top that can’t be measured in dollars and cents. People enjoy being at the top (and aspire to be at the top) not simply because the top is associated with the most wealth and comfort and power. People, in general, like being special. A world where everyone has the same 10 dollars means that folks can’t gloat about their superior choices or how specially favored by God they are. Remove the hierarchy and there’s no easy way to separate the wheat from the chaff. And that ain’t no good!
…oppression does inherently benefit the people at the top. Or the guy who got to choose “no monkey for me, thanks. Give that “bad/different” person the monkey i would have gotten in a truly just and equal world.”
I agree with what you’re saying, but if the drawbacks outweighed the benefits then people would abandon the system.
The intangibles would include, but not be limited to, having to live with fear, paranoia, guilt and shame for how you treat people. Constantly having to dehumanize your victims to avoid feeling guilt, constantly being afraid and paranoid your victims will rise up, constantly feeling shame for the cycle of abuse.
I disagree with you guys who are claiming the drawbacks of inequality outweigh the benefits.
The Koch brothers have to spend money to maintain a system where they are rich. But it is a fraction of their wealth.
Poor whites get a lot of psychological fulfillment out of the mentality that 'no matter how bad my life is fucked up, at least I’m better than black people (and immigrants, and jews, and women, and non-christians, etc). Rich people abuse this tribal division to keep the working class divided and fighting itself so they can rob everyone blind.
Maybe the reason the system of inequality exists is because people aren’t self aware enough to realize what the system is. Or maybe they are self aware, but realize they benefit from it. I don’t know.
But if the system didn’t work, people would abandon it. White southern culture has held onto its philosophy of ‘using fascism to protect themselves from scary black people we’ve mistreated’ to this day despite slavery ending 150 years ago and every slave being long dead.
Anyway, I don’t know the nuances of it all. I don’t know why these systems last so long or why people keep subscribing to them.
You’re presuming something not in evidence: that people are rational creatures who always make rational decisions. No, sometimes people unknowingly inflict harm on themselves because they are only able to understand the reality that currently exists, not the reality that could exist if only things were different.
Take Japan, the example you gave earlier. Yes, it is a successful country. But maybe it would be even more successful if its people weren’t so collectively xenophobic and resistant to cultural change. We can posit this from the growth we see in countries that have more open immigration policies.
At any rate, it’s not a trivial thing to abandon a system. Everyone would not only have to make the decision to abandon it together, all at the same time, but they’d also have to have an alternative system ready to go. That cannot happen without a lot of shittiness first. See the American Civil War and the100 years that followed. Hell, see global climate change. We know it’s fucking things up and will only get worse. But people aren’t going to stop eating Big Macs any time soon. We just don’t like change.