privilege: n. the principle or condition of enjoying special rights or immunities.

blind: n. something intended to conceal the true nature, especially of an activity; a subterfuge.

Most people are perfectly happy with the idea of everyone having equal opportunities to prove themselves and earn the best civilization has to offer. The problems start when we get down to specifics and realize something we thought we’d earned, or something we thought everyone enjoyed along with us, is actually an unearned privilege we might need to give up for equality to happen.

I started this site to talk about how privilege conceals itself with itself. Society doles out certain privileges to certain people, then holds us all accountable for accommodating the privileged – if we don’t, and we upset them, they may retaliate with impunity and no one will come to our aid. Meanwhile, it can be very difficult to process there are people trained to accommodate you, too, no matter how many billions of people you feel forced to accommodate.

Aside from the obvious problems with privilege – oppression, the impedance of genuine relationships, etc. – I think it’s also the reason all civilizations inevitably collapse. Societies should want every member contributing as much as s/he is able to. Privilege ensures some people have no incentive to contribute while others have no opportunity to contribute.

Privilege collapses under its own weight, but unfortunately, it keeps getting replaced by more privilege. That’s what this site is about.