Something more

I need a challenge. More than anything I am tired of the blithe and empty nihilism of interests and occupations. I am not interested in debate. Interest implies attention but not passion. It is concern without caring, without compassion. Interests cannot speak to what drives you, interests concern what occupies time. Interests are the choices that fill an inevitable progression of time towards something else. The idea of an interest presumes that there is an immutable force that structures our lives beyond the immediately accessible, and that we require something to fill the gaps it leaves. The word cannot capture passion, or investigation of self, or anything that should be compelling about life. I don’t want interests. I want life, I want experience I want a challenge, I want something that represents more than time that keeps passing, I want to realize my world as contingent, as what I make it, I want to avoid that neurosis of keeping up with a bigger clock.

My Privilege

Where does the criticism of privilege leave me?

In the context of Friedan, and the Feminine Mystique: should the housewife privileged by class and education concede to domestication? A life in the home could represent a significant source of freedom for someone constrained by poverty and other forms of systemic inequality. But then, where does that leave the middle class white wife? Her attempts to realize ‘freedom’ furthers the parameters of her privilege – the options to pursue more education, formalized equality represent what cannot be obtained by others with less options. Merely handing over the role of housewife to someone else still doesn’t question the rationale that created the inequality in the first place, so simple abdication won’t solve the problem. So then, who, what, where?

Similarly, the tools of racial privilege. The patronizing overtones of anyone trying to casually acquaint themselves with the culture of Others denies the efficacy of tourism and mere inclusion. Having more excluded people around again doesn’t question the material differences experienced by the different parties: the person of privilege, and the person subordinated by that privilege. Inclusion overestimates the significance of the privileged person’s mindset in determining power relationships, inaction underestimates their power in changing the world. Can I only wait for explicit confrontation and then try my best? What tools can I use?

I find it telling I have more questions now than answers.

Duncan