Giving ideas to fanatics is like giving guns to kids. John Faithful Hamer tells us how.
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“The genuine man of words himself can get along without faith in absolutes. He values the search for truth as much as truth itself. He delights in the clash of thought and in the give-and-take of controversy. If he formulates a philosophy and a doctrine, they are more an exhibition of brilliance and an exercise in dialectics than a program of action and the tenets of a faith. His vanity, it is true, often prompts him to defend his speculations with savagery and even venom; but his appeal is usually to reason and not to faith. The fanatics and the faith-hungry masses, however, are likely to invest such speculations with the certitude of holy writ, and make them the fountainhead of a new faith. Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.”—Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951)
A lot of the ugliness we see in Social Media Land is a function of precisely the problem that Eric Hoffer identifies in this passage. Putting dangerous ideas into the hands of faith-hungry fanatics is like giving firearms to schoolchildren. The sociological concept of “privilege” is a case in point. In the hands of a skilled practitioner (like my wife), it can clarify much and pave the way for positive social change. But in the hands of a dimwitted idiot with an internet connection, it can become a deadly weapon, which tears people apart, and discredits the desire for social justice.
There are social justice warriors who would have you believe that only a rich, racist, reactionary rube could refuse to drink the Kool-Aid of their progressive prognosis. But most of us know that there are perfectly decent people—poor, penniless, privileged people—who bristle when they hear preachy puritans and pushy prophets prating on and on piously about Power and Privilege, Patriarchy and Persecution, the Proletariat and the Past. They wonder, sometimes aloud:
- Where’s my prosperity?
- Where’s my prestige?
- Where’s my white male privilege?
And I sympathize with them at times, really I do, but they’re asking the wrong questions. After all, being privileged is, at the end of the day, not unlike getting ten penalty shots at the end of a hockey game: much as it helps, there’s no guarantee that you’re gonna score, no guarantee that you’re gonna win the game. In fact, having all that unfair advantage can make losing that much more humiliating.
Like many of the sociology professors I know, my wife can talk to her students about systemic social problems—like sexism and racism—without making any of them feel like group representatives. She can do this because she’s an intellectual, first and foremost, and intellectuals are adept at dealing—gracefully and effortlessly—with the paradoxical nature of reality; they’re good at binocular thinking, at seeing “the forest” and “the trees” at one and the same time. But alas, professors who aren’t intellectuals aren’t nearly so good at this, especially if they’re ideologues. For instance, a former student of mine who wears the hijab told me that one of her professors—a progressive who, as she put it, “talks about privilege all the time”—often calls upon her in class when they’re discussing things like Islamophobia, I.S.I.S., women in Islam, etc. As you might expect, this makes her extremely uncomfortable. The professor means well, very well actually, but that doesn’t make her pointed questions any less offensive. She has apparently called on black students for “the black perspective” a few times too, and, of course, systematically silenced any young white man who dared to “take up too much space.” She never seems to remember her students’ names. Why does this not surprise me?
Even as we struggle for justice, we should never lose sight of the essentially tragic nature of all human life. No life is devoid of struggle and pain. Death is coming for us all. And it’s coming for everyone we love too. Suffering and loss are inescapable features of the human condition. Life sucks regardless of how much privilege you have. But it usually sucks less if you’re privileged.
—John Faithful Hamer, From Here (2016)
This is what I don’t like about the word « privilege ». It completely dismisses the complexity of individual suffering and experiences for the simplicity of putting people in boxes when it’s explained by people like the hijab-hating professor. Take the example of the white, but not classically “masculine” guy who was bullied in school so much that he’s been contemplating suicide since age eight. The suffering he endured since he was a child seems much more intense than the feminist’s suffering of being asked to make coffee at work (even though that attitude doesn’t belong to the 21st century… Read more »
@ Cynthia I had an interesting discussion with a few people about this rigid concept of privilege supported by feminists. I think it supports your truth. It started with talking to a gay man. He reported that under traditional feminist definition of privilege he should either be privileged or break even (male privilege – gay non-privilege in rough terms). He noted that being a man, he was even less privileged. Lesbians were actually more accepted in society. So being a male (in combination with being gay) was actually a disadvantage. I had another conversation with an MRA who might have… Read more »
Agreed. I used to think that the way privilege is used had a flaw in the firm not being very good at taking individual circumstances into account. But at this point I think people who use privilege use it precisely because it isn’t very good at taking individual circumstances of people they already don’t agree with or have a grudge against or want to silence. The use of the concept of privilege is exactly how you end up with the circumstance of the woman that was expected to make coffee at work being called misogyny and an institutional issue while… Read more »
@ Cynthia The way that privilege is used is like saying “I don’t owe you compassion. You don’t belong to the right category of people”. Very well put. I agree. If this was not the intent of privilege, it’s is how it is used. That calls into question whether the concept should even be kept. I hope the author’s wife would respond. “My solution is…replacing “check your privilege” with “put yourselves in someone else’s shoes” That’s such an “old fashioned” phrase although apt. I don’t know what generation you were born into, but when I grew up we didn’t have… Read more »
A sure sign of mass confusion is a growing number of experts. Education merely means that one is educated, not necessarily an intellectual. Some of the greatest nonsense I’ve ever experienced has come from those bunkered high in their ivy towers, packing a 40 mm agenda cannon, and boxes of hyperbole and conjecture waiting to be fired as the enemy comes into view. Likewise, it has often been the profound musings of the lowliest of professor eeking out a living in some random community college, the brick layer, the old man or woman on a front porch recalling a life… Read more »
” Jesus was not a Christian” At what point did Jesus deny he was the son of God? Isn’t that what makes someone a Christian. “Where’s my white male privilege?” You can’t find it because you don’t have any. White females are the most privileged class in the west. It’e like getting 10 penalty shots, but you have to take your over by your own net while facing the opposite direction and using a wet boodle. They call it privilege, but the deck is so stacked against you that ut essentially puts you at a disadvantage. This way they can… Read more »