You say that “the best response to privilege is to turn it to fixing the situation that led you to having these major advantages over others”. I’m not entirely comfortable with this wording. For example, one way of “fixing the situation” would be removing your advantages without increasing other people’s advantages.
In other words, our goal should be making the world better for everyone, not only and not even primarily making the world equally good for everyone.
The wording there is also more deontological than I’m happy with, but I do want to try to find phrasing that resonates for more justice-oriented people. Any ideas for better ways of phrasing this?
Well, the problem with optimizing for a specific target audience is the risk to put off other audiences. I would say something like:
Being born with advantages isn’t something to feel guilty about. Being born with advantages is something to be glad about: it gives you that much more power to improve life for everyone.
Hi Jeff.
You say that “the best response to privilege is to turn it to fixing the situation that led you to having these major advantages over others”. I’m not entirely comfortable with this wording. For example, one way of “fixing the situation” would be removing your advantages without increasing other people’s advantages.
In other words, our goal should be making the world better for everyone, not only and not even primarily making the world equally good for everyone.
The wording there is also more deontological than I’m happy with, but I do want to try to find phrasing that resonates for more justice-oriented people. Any ideas for better ways of phrasing this?
Well, the problem with optimizing for a specific target audience is the risk to put off other audiences. I would say something like:
Being born with advantages isn’t something to feel guilty about. Being born with advantages is something to be glad about: it gives you that much more power to improve life for everyone.
Yes exactly—the classic reductio is that if you’re concerned about inequality, that would best be solved with genocide and thermonuclear war.