...I Guess I'm Privileged.

*I owe this line of thinking to conversation with my fellow administrator and good friend Mike.

As I sit here in my gaudy kitchen, surrounded by a seemingly infinite amount of food and drink (so long as my family keeps having me here to stay when I'm at University) I am persistently reminded of the idea of "privilege". As a young American male who grew up in the 90's, the only real threat (and not quite so directly as family has insisted) to my meager existence is the threat of terrorism. Never have I had to worry about "crushing poverty", etc., the likes of which our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters have had. And even then, when I said brothers and sisters, I'm sure anyone Conservative-minded reading this said/thought to his or her self: "This kid is just a Democrat who thinks he's saying the right thing by being tolerant." Or otherwise they said nothing and moved on (it's pompous to presuppose readers when this is my first post, anyway). But let's get it out in the open: I am Democratic in most my views, Libertarian often, Socialist sometimes, even, but these transcriptions, these transitive ideological labels which are thrust down our throats these days are just parameters which attempt to quantify the parenthetically infinite ability of human thought, which although within the American bubble society we live in is viable, it is in actuality such a subjective thing to be quantified so as to be nullified by its very vastness. (In England, for instance, I would be called a Conservative.) But so, and in spite of it all, I am to American society a Democrat. But don't misunderstand me when I naively try to objectively empathize and be "tolerant" by saying things like "counterparts" or "brothers, sisters". If anything this is just my inability, in a Wittgenstein-esque philosophical parse, to express my thought fully, i.e. I am guided by the imperfect and metaphorical English language. But even here I am plagued by the idea "privilege": my well-read (albeit scatterbrained) interpretation of the idea of privilege, my ability to access an internet database to support, reiterate, elaborate this idea and spread it over a social entity (which is what the internet has elaborated its own self into, in a Hegelian Spiritual by-production [i.e. the internet as entity has become the by-product outcome of internet's inception proper]), etc. But what in relation to this "privilege" makes itself so? "Privilege" seems, by this parse, to be just as subjective as anything else. By this we can only make the basic assumption that someone (to utilize the definition of privilege as having more) in the world, somewhere, is lesser to the extent of viable living status that has thus temporally existed for me throughout my life. I can only assume this level of living (nice house, backyard, computers, t.v., food every day, etc.) is not universal but contingently tangential to the capitalist productivity system; my parents work within capitalism and so are able to afford what they have and allow me to use. And so, if we take on assumption and informational precedence to the idea (i.e. that knowledge has so been spread so as to make it "truth") that I am "privileged" beyond that of an Middle Eastern lay-family, it becomes inherent that it is so. Now if we take this inherent, and now proven true, idea and reverse it to be the reference point for a Middle Eastern Muslim family living in a broken home - the very living and tangible idea of "poverty" in relation to my "privilege" - then it's easy to see why famed Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek can claim that the main reason the Middle Eastern Muslim community can lash out so fervently at the US is out of "envy" for the very privilege I seem to embody. But this is such an easy mistake to make. What Zizek falls victim to here is what I like to call the "European Fallacy": the very contrast which I've outlined, the difference between "privilege" and "poverty" is misdirected, misunderstood, fallaciously made to seem as if it is a matter of "living standard" (the status quo inherently visible in the idea of the European Union and globalization) when it is really a matter of "choice standard". Middle Easterners are in a state of "poverty of choice" which they take as a given and attempt to make the best of through prayer and other religious outlets; having thus appropriated their "poverty", the inverse relation becomes apparent: the "privilege of choice" that they see as inherent in the American politico-ideological system of Democracy. They, the Middle Easterners, fall fate to having no "insider" knowledge of America. They assume that we, as a Democratic representational system, have an exact say in what our government does, equated as: 1 vote = 1 part of the decision whole = government action. They do not see, as Americans can plainly see, that the government itself is responsible for the full amount of decisions made and only allows us to think we are making a difference, exemplified by the horribly insulting mask of the "electoral college as representative of the general election's outcome", when truthfully it is the electoral college which is the representation of its OWN outcome, retroactively becoming itself in an attempt to appear as something else. What we Americans really live under is a Republic, selected by officials to benefit officials, and the Arab world is blind to this inner ruse. So it is out of envy, certainly, but an envy directed entirely elsewhere, much like a child who sees his brother picked up and lashes out at, to the adult, seemingly nothing when really all he wants is to be picked up as well, whereas the true intention of the adult (the governing state) is seemingly impenetrable to EITHER child, until one of them is informed, directly or indirectly (the guise of the electoral college, failing economy, lies about "discussions" over petitions, etc.). The intention of the adult, within the adult, is not to favor this child over the other, but rather is always to benefit the adult in some subjective way. But, and this translates easily into reality, the will of the adult in favor of the adult ALWAYS damages both children: the brother see's his brother's suffering, while the other see's favoritism. So I guess I'm "privileged", but privilege itself comes as a double-edged sword, and at that a sword long enough to cut off all our heads.