Arguing against anger
Today someone sarcastically complimented me on being white and privileged (without knowing a shred of my, or my family’s, history), presumably based on his previous observations that I’m intelligent and beautiful (which he said to me) and what many people call accomplished (a useless word I could rant on at length). The good news is, it took me less than an hour to stop being outraged at his fucked up thinking, and now I’m thinking how to think through such situations generally. Because with the impetus provided by him, I can make this situation benefit me, thereby making myself even more objectionable in his book. Ha.
It’s hard to see through anger. It’s why I can’t argue with creationists. Or, if I do, I have to select very tiny, achievable battles on my own turf. They are so, so wrong it swamps my brain with incredulity, anger, not knowing where to begin, wanting to set them straight, knowing it’s not my duty to fix them, wanting to let them screw up their own minds and lives (because honestly, are they going to listen to me? NO.), and being pissed that their irrationality (en masse) makes my life unnecessarily more difficult. What to do??
I had two insights regarding the asshole encounter, and it might help me deal with the general problem. First, I realized that he was damning me for the things he initially valued me for - he was damning his own values. If values are things by which to successfully guide your life, and he willingly holds ones he dislikes, he must not - deep down - want to live. Certainly not to thrive. But to creep along apologetically, eyeballs just barely protruding from the muck of his soul.
Second was how he phrased it: "capitalize on all the advantages which white / moneyed privilege has conferred upon you." Passive. Bingo. Privilege, as a noun and in reality, has no ability to do anything. Privilege is something conferred by someone. Presumably he meant my family, which is certainly where I got my whiteness. It’s just that no matter how much money my parents threw at me (or how blindingly white their genes made me), it doesn’t, on its own, produce who and what I am. In fact, money and achievement are inversely related in the history of moi. The more obstacles you put in my way, the better I do. I latch on like a burr on an unshorn sheep. Clear a path for me, and I have no incentive to do anything - because the prize at the end won’t have been achieved by me, so in every way but a technicality, it’s not mine. Why work for nothing??
Obviously, I made me what I am - I did all the thinking, working, trying, persevering, surviving, aiming for something way out of reach, my way or no way at all. Money doesn’t do that, race certainly doesn’t, nor do parents or indeed any other thing besides me.
Thus, his sentance structure gave away his irrationality as well as the real answer to the problem. And by noticing it, hopefully I can dismantle other speedbumps like him even faster in the future.
There’s just so much else to do.
li>
The comment was in part sarcastic — hence the smiley — and partly, yes, to get your goat a bit purely in the name of mischief.
To explain the sarcasm: I do believe, as do you, that one’s motivation to excel can help to propel one out of the darkest dregs of life-circumstances. Thus I was lampooning a typical “pinko” viewpoint, that all advantage is “conferred” by predetermined social status.
I didn’t make the intended irony clearer because at the same time, I was amused by your hyperbolic objectivist lingo about “walking tall and proud.” I’m sure it wasn’t your intention, but it reminded me of National Socialist proselytism. To my perception, it had the arrogance of an “ubermensch” (in the degraded sense) all over it — walking “tall” and standing “above” the untermenschen.
But please understand, I am not calling you a Nazi! I am describing the personal, internal linkages I made with your statement, not attempting any “objective” characterization of you. As you rightly point out, I don’t know you. I just had a reaction to your words which brought out a darker side of my humor. (And of course, whether or not that constituted humor is a matter of individual perception.)
And while what I said in the second paragraph about individual achievement constitutes a part of my beliefs, I also believe we have to acknowledge that some of us come out of the starting gate a bit earlier than others due to our environment and upbringing, over which we have no control. If, for instance, a child is conceived in poverty and happens to live next to a plant dumping reproductive-harm-inducing chemicals into her mother’s drinking water (and these conditions are less often seen in wealthy areas by far), that child is probably at a disadvantage and will achieve less than others in better circumstances, no matter what her internal drive and work ethic may be. If we truly want individuals to achieve to their maximum capability, we have to work to ensure that their social and environmental conditions don’t impede them in a way which no individual could reasonably overcome.
As you can tell by earlier comments, I sympathize with your views to a certain extent. Where the friction comes in is that I reject absolutist doctrines such as objectivism (though of course it’s not an absolute rejection ;) )
Objectivism, according to my admittedly-limited understanding of it, promotes a near-absolute ideal of individualism, self-reliance, and laissez-faire capitalism, which I cannot agree with any more than I can agree with absolutist doctrines of socialism / communism.
I can’t understand the insistence on such a hard line. I see the necessity for two poles of compassion vs. severity, social concern vs. individual freedom and achievement, and a continuum between them which may theoretically contain a harmonizing point somewhere midway between. Insistence on one extreme suggests to me a person whose zeal and love of a pure idea blinds them from recognizing the broader spectrum of approaches to life and differing circumstances.
I would apologize for hurting your feelings in my catty little way, if indeed I did, but obviously such sentiments for a person like you are neither required nor desired. I am glad it has provoked thought in both of us, and if you deem my words not too far beneath your elevated status of discourse, I would enjoy further dialogue with you.
Comment by James — March 1, 2006 @ 10:21 pm
I appreciate your candor and clarification. I know the written word is not always the clearest medium for expressing the individual quirks of complicated humor, and clearly I did not hear you as you intended. I think we’re all prone to instantaneous mental associations of unrelated stimuli, justified or not, and it’s hard to keep such influences out of reactions. Needless to say, I’m not a fan of the Nazi association (to put it very mildly), though I understand how those things happen, and of course I had no idea that you were in part responding to that when you emailed me. Confusion, ad nauseum.
That said, I’m not sure what we have to talk about. I suspect each of us has rather well-formulated and inter-connected views on most subjects, about which we are likely to disagree wildly. I have no agenda to “convert” people, I’m not a spokesman for objectivism, and I find other parlor games more enjoyable than heated political discourse. It seriously detracts from all the other things I’m doing (time, energy, and spirit-wise), and I gain nothing from it. So, I see no ready reason to antagonize you since you already know I disagree with you on many key issues. It’s not a matter of “elevated discourse,” but a question of purpose, point, utility, etc.
Comment by praxical — March 1, 2006 @ 11:12 pm