You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Getting unstuck
I honestly don’t think you should see your passes as being what imprisons others. It’s all what you do with it.
This is exactly why I don’t like the term “white priveledge” it’s not a privilege that’s been given to some, it’s a right that has been stripped from others. And we should use it to rempower them without any feeling that we need to disempower ourselves or feel guilty.
You have great ideas, It’d be nice to brainstorm with you. I personally find that I become unstuck when I “give up”. It’s not really me giving up, it’s my ego. The more it pushes for freedom, the more captive it feels. So it’s really just about changing my perspective into one that’s deeper than my ego.
Yeah, interestingly enough the wrestling with stuckness always leads to letting go and then you remember that is the answer lol
Also, although you are a pinapple I assume you are white because your kind meaning senitiment on privilage. Looking at it as you say is not wrong but it still steals the perspective away from POC. Trying to word it correctly because its nuanced and a very emotional subject. The description is indictive of a perspective, and from the perspective of somebody who is the victim of predjudice it IS a privilage. By saying no, its a right, just some have had it stripped, you are now explaining it from YOUR view, which is sort of like mansplaining , you are correcting someones perspective and telling them to replace it with yours. Which is, of course, the very thing that whites and males are said to do. It doesn't make you a bad or thoughtless person, it just shows how much work we have to do, even when we are kind and sympathetic, to allow others to speak and to accept their voice as valid <3
Your sentiment that we need to empower not disempower is the more positive view, but it would be like if as a group who had a king and we all wanted to become a democracy : the majority would say we need to remove the kings power and create an equal sharing and the king would feel like that was a negative thing and say " we can make us all kings" but the very word king implies a power relationship, which would be gone so the semantics arguement is just the king not wanting to feel predjudiced against . Normal aand understandable, but not particularly empathetic, which is what is needed if solutions ae to be found.
From over here, mansplaining and white privledge are all pop culture terms being forced upon us by the dominant culture, regardless of whether we are white or black or orange or man or woman or potato. I’m not forcing anyone to see it my way, I’m just sharing my truth in the way everyone else tries to, and doing my best to make it soft and open to discussions.
Not as this or that but as someone who stays away from television, Hollywood, social media controversy, and memes, I feel like these words basically seek to achieve equality through disempowering whites and males. If this is someone’s method of achieving equality and it doesn’t change at some point, they can expect an endless struggle, and at best women and non-whites will be the tyrants of the future. Yay for equality.
I see others as equals. If others do not see themselves as equals because they have had some kind of struggle that I was notnforced to endure, I don’t see any benefit in lowering my own self value in order to help them. I DO see value in listening and showing compassion.
I recognize our experiences create different challenges for us and I’m empathetic, but these buzzwords words imply that I deserve less than i have and that My opinions are somehow less valid if I’m a white male. One reason I chose to be s pineapple is precisely because I don’t want my gender or skin color or nationality to define me any more than the world has forced it to. If it still does for some people, it will be hard to spend much time discussing things with them because they are seeing what they have identified me as rather than seeing the actual me.
I want to spread abundance mentality. That doesn’t ever come from perpetually identifying yourself as a victim, even when such a viewpoint is justified. I’m happy to listen to other people’s stories and needs and dreams and do what I can to help them. But I’m not really interested in any kind of popular sentiment that says that anyone else should disempower themselves in order to make others feel better. Pop culture has us working against each other with these subtle nuances of non-inclusiveness and perpetuating victimhood.
If you want to talk about YOU and think I’d benefit from hearing YOUR story (especially your experience as a female, or a potato), or how I say something that makes YOU feel uncomfortable, I’m happy to chat about it. But now so many people are trying to represent an entire demographic and in a way that is against some other demographic. So much of it is fed from the top by people and organizations which benefit from keeping us separated, I find it extremely counterproductive to engage in it, and my social circle is able to grow harmoniously and diverse without being too swayed by these sentiments, so like, come join the party if you want.
What it really comes down to is, the people who talk about white priveledge are trying to fix the system, while we would like to move outside of it with and help anyone else who is interested.
I 100% agree that the idea that with the dominant mentality of 'fighting' for equality creates constant struggle, and that it will just end in new tyrants in the future. My personal experience that I guess brought me to that comment was that I have seen that some of even though i am being my extremely thoughtful loving self, that I wasn't really internalizing what other people were saying. I went to Standing Rock and had a few pretty humbling moments when we were hanging with our mixed group odiscussing the pipeline, and the reservations etc. One of the Sioux guys said "If you want to help us, go and tell your goverment to take down that condescending grafitti in our backyard" meaning Mt Rushmoore. I never thought of that, and honestly haven't thought much about Mt Rushmoore except to think it was a pretty cool feat of art/engineering. Not that it was a sign of dominace in the backyards of people the governemnt had made treaties with to imply mutal respect. I'm already with you, on building the kind of inclusive abundance mentality, and in my daily life that's what I've participated in also, with whoever was on that page with no thoughts about any other factor within my social circles besides the ones that make good friends and cocreative partners. I also agree that most 'kings' in the examples of 'white privilage' are just paupers and slaves, just like many of the victims are kings in comparison to th evast majority of the people in the world. I grew up in a trailer park, both sides of my family are blue collar with only a few cousins and my siblings who went to college. I'm completely suffocated in student laon debt that I can't even pay the interest, I see my aunts losiing their teeth because they don't have the money for root canals or decent dental work, and my uncles getting throat cancer from working in a paper mill filled with chemicals. I don't mind the word white privilage because i know that all factors being equal- intelligent, looks, charisma- there are at least three jobs I can say I know I wouldn't have gotten if I wasn't white, and I've only been slighted a couple of times for being white. I also have experienced so so much weird sexual shit being a woman in male dominanted spaces, but can also say that for most of my life, a majority of my closest friends and work partners have been men and don't see anything inherently different between the kindness of men and women, and have seen people all over the world act like entitled assholes and mistreat others, so i don't think there is anything inherently noble about any descripitive factor. And for the future, I'm glad to know we both know aren't attacking eachothers ideas- just working through them logically. My favorite thing about social media has been the ability to draw all of my most intelligent friends and work through ideas. I do have several good friends on facebook that I've never met, but for the most part I have. Obviously Steemit is different because almost none of us know eachother outside of our writings, but it also gives us an opportunity to really branch out and find more minds. Cheers ;) Also, I'm glad you slowed down the direction the no bid bot thing was going- something also rubbed me the wrong way with what was happening, even though I only came on saw your idea and then saw a little bit of what was happening.
I want to reply to this but I need some free time first.
And what if the king stopped calling himself a king and shared everything he had, at least sharing his so-called privilege? And the Kings you refer to are generally not actually Kings but just other peasants who have it just a little bit easier.
Not trying to attack your viewpoint, just trying to share another perspective on it.
Soooo, I didn't hear back the last couple of comments and it dawned on me that you might have been offended by this conversation, or felt that I was attacking you or being rude. I sometimes say things in a somewhat rude sounding tone that's not meant and I ususally engage completely honestly with people i respect intellectually. So i hope that isn't that case, but if it is I'm sorry, I didn't think you were being a jerk, i was just trying to walk through the changes in language that perspective brings (peace emoji ;)
No no no, I’ve spread myself a bit thin at steemit and I miss about 10% of comments on posts, I’ve got to do a long check of my replies page and check to make sure I don’t miss any more!
I’ll go read your comments! Sorry about that.
Oh no worries haha. It just wouldnt be the first time i accidently offened someone so I always assume that's what I did lol
Also, I use steem world since it shows all comments replies votes etc in a single timeline, since I also never would click on the 'replies' part. i'm not that organized ....