It's the system, man! The SYSTEM!

I would like to think that I have a “strong sense of social justice” and all that jazz. But I have an underdeveloped sense of moral outrage at the social injustice that pervades the globe. The sort of moral outrage that provokes action and activism. The problem is that I’m a white middle-class male. I don’t mean that in some sort of guilt-ridden I-wish-I-was-a-persecuted-minority way, or a guilt-ridden I-am-a-feminist-too way. It’s just that the “system” works for me. (I guess the system here means things like government support in terms of education, health etc, and social support or at least the absence of social discrimination based on race/gender/sexuality/etc etc.)

I’m probably from the least persecuted demographic on earth (within my country/culture, anyway). I’m even tall – I don’t even suffer from height-based discrimination. The system was designed, by and large, by people like me, for people like me. In terms of government support beyond public health and education (which I’ve had in spades), I’ve never needed much help from the system, but if I did, it was there (with the exception of Austudy, which would have funded many a beer in the mid-to-late 90s, damn you, Amanda Vanstone). So I have to remind myself that, for a hell of a lot of people. The system doesn’t work so smoothly. And that’s in my wealthy country; in many countries you’re lucky to even have access to any sort of supportive system. Or the system is geared towards your oppression.

And, in an academic way, that frustrates and saddens and angers me. And I can be truly moved, brought to tears by stories of injustice or whatever. But, at some level, I’m missing something – I can’t know what it’s really like to be oppressed or persecuted or ignored or hated. Because I’ve never experienced it. So I need to remember that there really is a shitload to be done, and that I can or should do myself – even if it only has a small, local impact – because there are a hell of a lot of people who aren’t part of a system that’s pretty much made for them.

That’s it. Nothing funny here, folks. Go to some smutty frat-house prank site if you want that.