Privilege is killing everything, including us. If our definition of progress only involves economic growth then violence and degradation will continue.
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Unfortunately what will bring about the end of our species is the inability of those us who live a life of privilege to make real connections concerning our privilege. We tend to compartmentalize the world. We are unable to see how a movement like Black Lives Matter is a direct response to the white supremacist, patriarchal system that provides our privilege. Further, we are unable to connect Black Lives Matter to abrupt climate change
Abrupt Climate Change is here and ultimately Near Term Human Extinction. Allow me to explain.
I was born a white male. In a country with the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, it’s clear to see how my world views may be well represented. After all, our history is a white male version of that narrative. Our government, military, banks, and corporations have been and continue to be dominated by the leadership of white males. Louis C.K. once said that white people are not better, but being white is clearly better. Being white is the norm and anything else is looked upon as different and in many cases a threat to the status quo. I don’t say this to place guilt upon my fellow white males, but merely to point out the reality of the the culture we live in. I point it out to demonstrate that privilege comes with the responsibility to challenge it and ultimately ally with those who aim to dismantle it.
Privilege has a huge blind spot. The narrative we live by ignores our inherited benefits and replaces reality with the narrative of meritocracy.
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Privilege has a huge blind spot. The narrative we live by ignores our inherited benefits and replaces reality with the narrative of meritocracy. Hard work goes a long way but it is clearly not a solution. There are plenty people worldwide who work harder than you and I could ever imagine but the circumstances they were born into are something we will never experience. We sure do like to give advice though. We also like to ignore the consequences of perpetuating a false narrative.
Black Lives Matter is movement that was forged from the fire of centuries filled with oppression, denial and genocide. We are not a post racial society but instead a nation that has not recognized our path as being a land grabbing genocidal history. Our present is filled with denial and negotiating with what has never been negotiable. Abrupt climate change is happening. We have an opportunity to make a connection if we can just get out of the way of our false narrative. The reality is abrupt climate change is non-negotiable and black lives truly matter. Our living arrangement has never thought all lives matter. Other species continue to go extinct because of our living arrangement. Members of not only our own species but all species continue to pay the price with their own lives to maintain our privileged living arrangement. This way of life requires oppression so there can be privilege and privilege is killing everything, including us. If our definition of progress only involves economic growth then violence and degradation will continue.
We live in the industrial civilized model. It requires massive institutions, which create massive systems, which require massive hierarchies. Hierarchies need a bottom so there can be a top. The result is a living arrangement where the privilege never have to experience the consequences of such madness. Instead we fall back on our old tiresome narrative that folks just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and a continued belief that this planet was created for our pleasure and use.
Social justice and environmental justice are not separate. They both address injustice.
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If we fail to see the oppression required to fund our privileged existence then we will never recognize the environmental consequences of such a life. Instead we will follow our pattern of blaming the oppressed. Social justice and environmental justice are not separate. They both address injustice. This becomes crystal clear once we drop our false narrative and move away from an existence driven by dysfunctional loyalty. A loyalty to circumstances we were simply born into by chance. Loyalty to our privilege and the current living arrangement is our dysfunction.
We will not solve these issues because we fail to see the root of them is the very living arrangement we continue to confuse with living.
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This is a time of great upheaval. Societal unrest, wars, massive migrations of people, climate change, species loss and overpopulation are the predicaments we face. We will not solve these issues because we fail to see the root of them is the very living arrangement we continue to confuse with living. This is a path with no future. Making a living is not living. Our predicament is that we believe we have problems that can be solved via our version of progress. When in fact our version of progress is our predicament.
Black Lives Matter because clearly all lives do not. We think they do but our perpetuation of an oppressive and destructive living arrangement says otherwise. Until black lives matter all life is in danger of being wiped off the planet by the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. This of course, isn’t news to those who have been under the heel of such an arrangement. For the privileged like myself, challenging this narrative is the actual hard work which we pride ourselves on, and that’s ultimately what matters most.
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Your article is so much racist nonsense . Black Lives Matter is a radical racist group that focuses on police violence rather than face the truth that 98% of all black violence is black on black violence . Chicago alone has more black deaths last year than 12 years of war in Afghanistan .