Thanks for the kind generosity of your comment, I felt inspired to respond (in a way that seems to me) in kind with some sharing from my own life I hope you find inspiring, beautiful or useful. I'm very grateful for how you helped create the opportunity for me to share this. Your comment really helped me get this out. I deeply appreciate that.
I think we both agree there are bonds of slavery on society, and we both agree that there are both mental bonds, and institutional bonds, and that these different types of chains require different methods of attack to free oneself (or one's group) from such. For the mental bonds, I believe an adjustment of perspective is all that's needed to free myself, and for the systemic bonds, I think you believe that collective action and organizing is how groups free themselves. I think we simply differ in thinking the degree of importance and effect of each of these. I think the mental bonds are more prevalent, and I believe you feel the systemic bonds are.
Not that it's really important that we agree, or not, but it's nice to draw the outlines clearly I think. And we can both be right, I believe, as there are different situations where mental or systemic bonds are more prevalent, not that "both right" is the most important thing either. I think it's just important that each of us enjoys the beliefs we choose to have.
I also feel that collective action and "asking the system" to change is a position of powerlessnes, and futility. Perhaps you feel the same way about trying to adjust your perspective, in order to free yourself.
The final things I'll say about all this is: 1) I want no part in the social-political "battles" of this age. The ideas in these battles are not my ideas, and I don't really understand them (not the ones that I speak of here, but the majority of the ideas in currency in the "culture wars") even as I watch myself partaking in that discourse and using the language of it, and I don't want to become an instrument of the will of whoever's ideas these are. And 2) I think privilege, in its common contemporary usage, is a made-up, woolly concept that muddies the waters and is not a useful lens to address either mental nor institutional bonds.
The reasons are, first because privilege lumps together unrelated things: advantages, and special rights and immunities, granted or available to only some. If I have special rights and immunities over others, that's the definition of unfair. It's a real thing, like diplomatic privilege, but it's rare on the whole. Advantage is much more common, like money, genetics, country, family. I am advantaged, but I'm not privileged. But such a distinction and nuance has become verboten in the current fascist doublethink speech controlled discourse. The term privilege as used lumps together these distinct things. Second, "privilege" is a way to pretend someone is your enemy and justify attacking them, by conflating whatever advantages they may have been given or have earned, with the made up concept of them having special rights and immunities over others. And if one is so independent to "resist" this "group judgement" you, the "tolerant and inclusive" group decries you are "privilege blind", and therefor doubly guilty. So in its common usage, it's a made up concept, that has no basis in reality, and is simply abused, in the vein of terrorism, to create enemies and spread fear and shame. Third, privilege elides over the importance of personal responsibility, and captivates people with the compelling, but false, fantasy that "it's never your fault", which traps people in a powerless cycle of fake victimhood, learned helplessness and hostility towards others acted out via blame displacement. It teaches people that the way to deal with their frustrations is to blame someone else, instead of reflecting and creating improvements. This is such an addictive thing to do, it is misused. Of course, "privilege" is not the only tool in the arsenal of social control that contributes to these maladies, but it is one of them. In short, I denounce "the contemporary concept of privilege" as part of the mental enslavement of people that traps them, under the guise of freeing them.
I want to share more of my story. I'm advantaged, but not privileged. Some of those advantages I earned (most, these days), for example the experiences I've given myself that were broader than my upbringing, and my skills and critical thinking abilities, and some were given to me, for example, I came from a rich background, which is an advantage, because even tho I earned scholarships to school and college, my parents could pay, and I never had a lack of money or shelter, until my early 20s, when, deciding that my advantaged background was also a disadvantage (rich family was also abusive, comfortable life was also narrow: completely heterosexual all boys school, life in the suburbs in a Western country, and so on), I gave myself all types of new experiences over many years that were broader that where I came from, because I knew there was more to the world, and I knew I wanted to be more, than where I came from. And I wanted to make sure that what I was choosing, or wasn't, was not due to the conditioning of my narrow upbringing, but was authentically me. So for me, it wasn't only about what I was given, it was what I chose to do with it, with which I created the life I wanted. I followed the mantra, "follow my heart", and "use what I have to get what I want," and figured out ways to travel and live overseas, even tho my parents didn't support that. After years of trying to get them to "understand" me, at some point in my mid-20s I simply realized that my parents were not "in my way", that the only thing stopping me from doing the life I wanted was myself, and that (if I cared, or conceptually if one were to honor the idea of the best wishes of "good parents") then the best way to honor my parents was to do what would make myself happy, and be truly fulfilling, because no matter what they might say, why would they really want anything else for me? And if they did want me to simply only suffer as they felt they had themselves, then why should I care what they think? So, either way, I could free myself of this one, small, but for a time, very significant bond, by adjusting my perspective.
My parents, my school, even my peers were always focused on money, getting a job, a career, getting married, all of the normal things (even, bizarrely, as they tried to get me to stop computer programming because they saw it as a "waste of time"). I just thought, I don't want to be stuck in one path, and it scared me I think to see everyone of my peers enthusiastically (leap off that cliff) go down that road. And the more "alternative" people I came across in my journey I could never felt really aligned (as interesting and valuable as there company was to me) because they seemed too crazy, or too far gone, and I knew I wasn't like that, either.
I wanted to know how could I ever decide what I was going to do with my life, my one valuable life, if I didn't understand myself and didn't understand the world? So I set out to understand my own limits, and the limits of the world, and I did that, and then figured out what I wanted to do (at least to a first approximation, or for this stage in my life). And even through the long years since my mid-20s I've held true to my vision of following the life I want to do, and the biggest lesson I've had is, "always back yourself and trust your instincts and stand up for that." Even tho I learned that lesson early on, it's been the times where I have not done so, that have been most painful to me. Sure, there's been many others things I've had to learn, very important, but that has been one, central theme. Follow the path I want for myself. No matter what. And tell my own story, don't let anyone tell it for me.