Christian Privilege

[paulpablo]

Privilege is a sociological term that shouldn't be dismissed just because it annoys you. And one doesn't have to be Christian in order to have a bias against the concept of privilege in general.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privilege_(sociology)

Awareness of privilege

Some academics highlight a pattern where those who benefit from a type of privilege are unwilling to acknowledge it. American sociologist Michael Kimmel describes the state of having privilege as being "like running with the wind at your back", unaware of invisible sustenance, support and propulsion. The argument may follow that such a denial constitutes a further injustice against those who do not benefit from the same form of privilege. One writer has referred to such denial as a form of "microaggression" or microinvalidation that negates the experiences of people who don't have privilege and minimizes the impediments they face.

McIntosh wrote that most people are reluctant to acknowledge their privilege, and instead look for ways to justify or minimize the effects of privilege stating that their privilege was fully earned. They justify this by acknowledging the acts of individuals of unearned dominance, but deny that privilege is institutionalized as well as embedded throughout our society. She wrote that those who believe privilege is systemic may nonetheless deny having personally benefited from it, and may oppose efforts to dismantle it. According to researchers, privileged individuals resist acknowledging their privileges because doing so would require them to acknowledge that whatever success they have achieved did not result solely through their own efforts. Instead it was partly due to a system that has developed to support them. The concept of privilege calls into question the idea that society is a meritocracy, which researchers have argued is particularly unsettling for Americans for whom belief that they live in a meritocracy is a deeply held cultural value, and one that researchers commonly characterize as a myth.

In The Gendered Society, Michael Kimmel wrote that when privileged people do not feel personally powerful, arguments that they have benefited from unearned advantages seem unpersuasive.

It's really the opposite case with me.  I believe that unearned advantages are so abundant that it's mostly over simplistic to attach some adjectives to the word privilege and make a phrase up.

The average person you talk to in day to day life didn't earn having a functional brain, their height, attractiveness, lung capacity, healthy bones, a lack of countless terminal diseases and cancers, their parents, their birth place, their race, their hair, their metabolism, eyesight, the time in history they're born, their voice, body proportions, body fat percentage, fast twitch muscles, financial inheritance, the list goes on....

I am very very privileged. Even if I have a terminal illness I'm not aware of or something that will kill me in the next month or so, I still have the privilege of having lived to be 33 and that's a longer lifespan than I imagine the majority of humanity has had so far. In terms of happiness being an advantage I'm probably parts of thousands of groups/demographics you could slot me into who have had an advantage in achieving being happy. Being alive in a western country, with money, in the year 2018 is pretty good. I've had all kinds of sex, all kinds of drugs, and I can watch netflix while sitting at my desk in work.