"Privilege": Its Meaning and Application

 Greetings,

The subject of "privilege" is one that I am loathe to talk about because everyone has a certain amount of privilege depending on how you look at the terms and the definition which is applied to it. However in the context of the socio-cultural and socio-political context which has been placed upon the term, the definition is more specific, indeed it will have a definition which appears something like below:

"If you talk about privilege, you are talking about the power and advantage that only a small group of people have, usually because of their wealth or their high social class."

This definition is one which was taken from the Collins English Dictionary. This is one of those words which people have added special meaning, indeed it is not actually the word "privilege" they are talking about they are talking about "social privilege". It is likely that for convenience the first word "social" was dropped because it was understood in context, and then the new one was picked up and used so the definition of privilege was changed to have this new definition.

A privilege is simply something that another person or group does not possess, and this can vary over many different things. It was previously stated that everyone is privileged and this is true. Here are some simple statements: 

Everyone is privileged to have been born and survived that event, there are those who do not. So, People are privileged to be alive. 

People are privileged if they do not have a disability. 

People are privileged if they do not have some sort of illness, chronic or acute. 

People are privileged to have regular meals each day, or even to eat once a day. 

People are privileged to have clothes to wear, more so if those clothes are clean. 

There are those who have homes and those who do not, those who do are privileged. The more privileged people own the homes that they live in.

Social Privilege is something else which goes on top of these privileges. These privileges focus on the  social differences between individuals and also highlight some of the differences between individuals which may differ in the privileges which have already been highlighted. The purpose of this concept is to show which group of people stands above or below, and more often than not below, another group of people. Most often this is so the people who are above can be denigrated for their lack of empathy for those below, however often there are circumstances that are unknown and this is used as a simple tool for some social advantage, for the purposes of virtue signalling more than showing some actual social injustice being present. Simply put, everyone has their story, and it is not completely known to everyone.

The concept is supposed to highlight social injustice for the purposes of correcting the injustice, bringing things so there is more equality. Instead the concept is now used as a convenient stick to beat any person who has a disagreement, or who has a different point of view. Most often it is used as a convenient stick when a social issue seems to have been being ignored, even if the individual has no opinion or is unaffected by it, and most often by individuals who do not reflect upon their "privilege".

Cheers,

Henry.

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