The hard feelings of White Privilege
Okay, today I’m going to talk about matters that are very new to me, things that are still processing. I’m going to reflect on why it would feel so shameful for me to go out there in the world, with my dear friends, with a social justice warriors attitude. Why, why indeed. The reason I’m bringing it up is because I’m doing this workshop this week, a workshop on the mysterious and heavy subject of equity. The workshop has actually really stirred things in me. I did not really expect that. Some matters that was only on the theoretical level for me, questions that was just detached thought-games on a discussion on Joe Rogan Experience maybe, have became very real. Matters of my own white privilege, of the whole social constructionist ideas of seeing the world as a seesaw between oppressed and oppressors have finally caught up with me in real life and it does not feel like the podcast gurus warned about. It feels more complex, more real and worthy of reflection Let us see how I do.
The workshop
Don't worry, I wont go into the workshop in all its meaty details. It's a very exciting thing though, it's called SEED and they have a website you can check out here. I think the biggest discrepancy for me were all the different life stories that have been shared these days. It’s life stories from beyond the border, with people with different ethnic background that I never get in touch with otherwise. Their stories reminds me constantly of how human these problems are. You can feel the pent up frustrations in a lot of these, a kind of frustration that I are in fact pretty new to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve a lot of pent up frustrations (it might be this age’s most common character-neurosis after all) but not in this way. I do not have a lot of frustrations towards the system with a big S, I’m not feeling injustice this deeply and I’m a stranger to that feeling of hopelessness. My frustration does not unfold in the very broad way. That's not where I'm at but there’s where my new friends are.
Where I am is a little different. As I talked about last week I’ve been a strong proponent of Jordan Peterson’s teachings the nearest 8 months, and god fucking damnit his words have echoed in me through this whole workshop. They echo subconsciously, makes me lash on to particular phrases. If the teacher is talking about equality of outcome, white privilege and creating safe spaces then you take those students out of that classroom, is the harsh judgment of clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson. SEED is nearly everything that he detest, a post modern Marxist invention. Especially during the first day I felt a little like I was a wolf in sheep clothing, infiltrating the enemy to gather information. Not that it was my actual intention, I still have the shame that you get from hiding a secret. Pretty icky shit. But as I’ve already explained in my last post Jordan Peterson had in my eyes fallen from grace in his overly dogmatic ways, so I was always very prepared to change. I was open to some different kind of energies.
I don’t want to share every possible change that is going through me, because I’m still processing a lot and to actually pin point stuff would probably turn it into a lie. There was one thing that struck me today though, and struck me pretty hard. It really found the pulse on what is so irritating with the appeal of Jordan Peterson’s hate toward this Social Justice Warriors style of thinking. It also found the pulse on why I’m not a social activist, yet.
Fucking YouTube
We saw a YouTube clip today. I’m going to try to find it, but I can try to explain the important parts even though I will totally butcher this story. The video were about this social scientist who were telling a story about a lady-cop that for some sexist reason were about to loose her job. The social scientist actually meet one of the other cops involved in this story and asked him why he didn’t intervene, help this lady-cop out. He said something about how he didn’t want to risk his job, something like that. She kept pushing him about his feelings, what did he feel when all this unfolded. He felt scared. Then she asked him, what did he loose by not doing anything. That’s when the shift of psychological framework happened. The cop cried and said “I lost my ability to be kind”.
My whole recent path of life I have chosen, that I now and for four years more will study to become a psychologist is haunted by this question. Am I kind? And if I am, and if systematic oppression is real, then why do I not care about it? Why do I not fight against it? Why have I been carrying this feeling that social activism is just for losers? Maybe because my media has so strongly depicted them as losers. Maybe that actually is the case. And I am not talking about some general vague stereotypical depiction of the media out there in the clouds, I’m talking about the actual media that I consume which YouTube and podcasts. It’s very concrete and very simple, I get a lot of my building blocks for my world view from these two sources. Especially YouTube in this case has been so extremely anti-Social Justice Warriors these last years it’s almost insane. Cult Dusty have made this great video about this very subject. The transformation of the glorious skeptical community. They went from a widespread, very American, war on Christianity and a call for rational atheism to a flat out warfare toward a much more niche group: some nit picked maniacs on the left. Like Cult Dusty says, people just fucking love to shit on others.
I’m not saying that a lot of these leftist demonstrations, on Evergreen or Toronto, and some weirdo Social Justice Warriors have went too far, I’m just saying that when you scroll through channels like the Amazing Atheist, Shoe0nHead and No Bullshit you can see clearly how a lot of the “intellectual” push back against the rise of the new Soviet is fueled by click bait. It’s trendy hate. Now the reason why the mania became so trendy has as many reasons as there are Skeptical videos about it. For me there have been especially one that I want to share.
The skeptical in me
I’m a pretty thinky kind of guy. I sit in my apartment, alone and single, and try to be smartest person in the world. Otherwise I feel that I might loose my purpose. The world will just shrug me off as a useless accident of evolution. I am also into psychedelic drugs so it’s just like my destiny has always been to find myself to the intellectuals of the dark web. Now when I’m studying psychology Jordan Peterson’s message really hit me in my heart. But what all these skeptical political videos do is that they really pander to an audience that really want to sit in a room alone and feel politically superior then the activist fight out there on the street. And it's not just an excuse to get lazy, they are also really good at making young men feel like they are being mistreated by the lefts blind love for minorities. So you really get a mix of everything that feels really good, you feel morally superior, political superior and superior in your own martyrdom.
Now, I’m not saying that everything that Sam Harris is nagging on about is bigotry and fascism. I think a very few people out there in the YouTube verse are just that. If all my experience of actually talking to people in real life have taught me anything is that extremism is a very rare condition in this world. But what I am actually is saying is that this cocktail of superiority for lonely thinkers is making a lot of young people out there loose touch with some real feelings of kindness. People that are activists are pictured as total losers, fat ugly “snowflakes”. The “post modern Marxist” propaganda is pictured as completely brain dead. When it really is not. Or at least it is not as impossibly brainless as Jordan Peterson want them to look like. I mean… They are not fucking Moaists. I admit that I have not read the Capital by Karl Marx but mother fucking god, you have to be certain about some stuff in this life.
Reality is complex, and the horror of internet is as we all know it can create these echo chambers. But beside that, there is still another mental blockade I have when it comes to letting the White Privilege narrative in my heart. That is that I do not simply have the emotional predisposition to care about this sort of things. At least I used to not have that. I haven't cared enough to actually feel about the arguments that people were putting out there. I mean, I had nothing to loose and everything to gain. That is why it was so important for people like myself to get out there and meet all these struggling oppressed minorities. To get a sense of what I was demonizing from the comfort of my laptop and kitchen chair was not just all fun and games. That systematic oppression is real and that in extension white privilege is real. It’s a privilege to feel as comfortable that I have done with my dear skeptical community. Now to what extent the systematic oppression is real I can not say. But what the privilege does is that you do not have a real emotional inventive to actually care about the less privileged. Because people would just think you are fake. At least that is what I have feared. That people would think that was a condescending superhero. The emotional understanding have to somehow come first, the emotional weight of this line of thinking have to come first for the honest pursue.
I think I will lift my pen there, even if I feel like this post is just half done. But I think that the most honestly reflect my position in these questions right now. And you know what more reflect my position. This amazing Everything Everything song! Have a good summer everybody!