Privilege
I keep trying to write a post about it. But I don’t know how to approach it. Read comments on slashdot every once in a while. In the world of tech a lot of people think that we live in a meritocracy. That poor people are poor because they are lazy and stupid. If people just worked harder they too could be successful software engineers.
This is clearly not true, but how do you explain that to someone who’s world view depends on this belief?
September 13th, 2007 23:29
Exhibit lots of counterexamples? 17 should do the trick.
September 14th, 2007 11:11
Simple argument: success tends to happens only in an environment that is socially supportive of success. If people are not surrounded by others who value the skills necessary for success and who do not practice and learn those skills, then the are not going to value or practice those skills themselves. I’d argue that the underlying problem that prevents dickfaces from understanding the fallacy of meritocracy is that they have a view of the Self as an isolated, autonomous individual being. If they would instead decenter the self and see personal identity as constituted through interaction with and recognition by others (because of the gap between subject and individual - cf. Lacan), then they would understand that the self cannot simply pull itself up by the bootstraps into success but rather must interact with others who also value and practice successful habits. I.e., meritocracy ignores the vicious cycles of poverty and poor education/family environment. P.s. people who believe America is meritocratic are dickfaces (i.e., they use their own dicks as a model for their personal identities, and then they jerk themselves off their whole lives.)
September 14th, 2007 13:25
wow, that’s some shit I actually agree with. well, except for the lacan reference.
September 14th, 2007 18:31
heh heh. yeah, i was being ironically pretentious with that lacan reference. somebody just told me that shit yesterday. but i’m also getting that dickface theory from lacan.
September 17th, 2007 04:11
I was going to reply: “could you tell them most people have a hard time ‘working hard’ because they don’t have a place to ‘work’ at all?”, but eli just nailed it.
I shut up and bugger off!