Saturday, December 6, 2008

response to carrot's blog on the privileged/intentionally poor

there is a lot i like about that person carrot's blog...namely her apparent love for being.
but something irked me about this passage:
You are a conduit of the universe, and privilege flows through you. You’ve switched the spigot on the rusted pipe of your being, reversing the flow of privilege from the bottom of the pyramid to the top- it is now going down, in a steady, endless stream- down, back to the people it was taken from in the first place. You can do this, and the brilliant part is, it won’t actually make things any harder for you. You just have so much of it, is why.

1. if it 'won't actually make things any harder for you,' then this privilege-redirection process referred to is a superficial one, not one which truly challenges and ultimately threatens the validity of the system(s)- because by definition the privileged are vested in a maintenance of the status quo (perhaps we are most vested economically-speaking, and maybe her point is that spiritually/otherwise said privileged vessel will be better off, and so 'things wont be any harder'?). so here i disagree, because privilege-inspection and privilege-harnessing isn't as painless/smooth process as she makes it out to be, even IF we will indeed ultimately be rewarded/liberated.

2. is it not somewhat paternalistic? where is the agency of 'the people it was taken from in the first place' in this spigot metaphor? the oppressors do not liberate the oppressed, they (both parties) liberate themselves. power isn't given, power is taken.

am i really a 'conduit of the universe' ?

No comments: