I mean, we have (at least) two hypotheses. 1: lefties classify people on a scale from “oppressor” to “oppressed” and favour the oppressed. 2: lefties are interested in helping people in bad situations, and there are some categories of people who are systematically much more likely to be in bad situations. It looks as if lefties themselves tend to say #2, whereas various non-lefties say #1.
One explanation, indeed, is that #1 is correct and #2 is what the poor self-deluded lefties think they’re doing. Another is that #2 is correct and that #1 is what the poor deluded non-lefties mistakenly see it as. Why should we favour the second of these over the first?
(I’m mostly a leftie. It looks to me as if there’s some truth in both #1 and #2, but it seems to me that #1 is a consequence of #2, a special case, more than it’s a fundamental motivation that gets rationalized as #2. I expect there are people for whom #1 is primary but don’t see any reason to think that’s the usual case. It seems like the obvious way for someone to feel #1 but need to deceive themselves that #2 is their real motivation would be if they are themselves in an “oppressed” group, so that #1 is a matter of self-interest. I think a majority of the lefties I know—and for that matter of the non-lefties—are fairly “privileged” and for those the “#1 primary, #2 is rationalization” account seems awfully implausible.)
[EDITED to add: 1. I would be interested to hear from either of the people who downvoted me why they thought this comment merited a downvote. It looks OK to me. 2. In the 8 hours since it was posted, I am down 31 karma points. I wonder what account name The Artist Formerly Known As Eugine_Nier is using now.]
I’m not a progressive, but I don’t see 1 and 2 as mutually exclusive. 1 is just a different way of stating 2 - leftists classify people on an oppressor-oppressed axis, where the oppressed are people perceived to be in bad situations.
I think “oppressed” is more specific than “in a bad situation”, and “oppressor” is much more specific than “in a comfortable situation”.
Saying that lefties classify people on an oppressor/oppressed axis suggests that they’re addicted to what’s sometimes called “politics of envy”—it’s not enough to help the poor, the rich must be made to suffer becaucse they are evil oppressors, etc. I’m sure there are people who think (and feel) that way, but I think it’s a straw man if presented as an analysis of how lefties generally see the world.
I think most lefties would agree with me that when people are in bad situations it doesn’t have to be because anyone’s oppressing them. They might just have been unlucky, or they might in some sense have done it to themselves (one place where Left and Right commonly disagree: on the left, this is not usually taken to mean that they shouldn’t be helped). And I think most lefties would agree with me that someone very comfortably off is not necessarily oppressing anyone.
(There are some who would say that our society systematically favours some groups and screws others over, to the benefit of the former at the expense of the latter, and that that means that being a rich straight white educated able-bodied man does make you in some sense an oppressor. I, and I think many others, largely agree with the first bit of that but think the conclusion that the rich (etc.) are oppressors is misguided: to benefit from an oppressive system is not necessarily to be an oppressor. And I, and I think many others, think “oppressed” is too strong and too specific a word to describe the ways in which things are bad for most statistically-disadvantaged groups.)
How do you know?
I mean, we have (at least) two hypotheses. 1: lefties classify people on a scale from “oppressor” to “oppressed” and favour the oppressed. 2: lefties are interested in helping people in bad situations, and there are some categories of people who are systematically much more likely to be in bad situations. It looks as if lefties themselves tend to say #2, whereas various non-lefties say #1.
One explanation, indeed, is that #1 is correct and #2 is what the poor self-deluded lefties think they’re doing. Another is that #2 is correct and that #1 is what the poor deluded non-lefties mistakenly see it as. Why should we favour the second of these over the first?
(I’m mostly a leftie. It looks to me as if there’s some truth in both #1 and #2, but it seems to me that #1 is a consequence of #2, a special case, more than it’s a fundamental motivation that gets rationalized as #2. I expect there are people for whom #1 is primary but don’t see any reason to think that’s the usual case. It seems like the obvious way for someone to feel #1 but need to deceive themselves that #2 is their real motivation would be if they are themselves in an “oppressed” group, so that #1 is a matter of self-interest. I think a majority of the lefties I know—and for that matter of the non-lefties—are fairly “privileged” and for those the “#1 primary, #2 is rationalization” account seems awfully implausible.)
[EDITED to add: 1. I would be interested to hear from either of the people who downvoted me why they thought this comment merited a downvote. It looks OK to me. 2. In the 8 hours since it was posted, I am down 31 karma points. I wonder what account name The Artist Formerly Known As Eugine_Nier is using now.]
I’m not a progressive, but I don’t see 1 and 2 as mutually exclusive. 1 is just a different way of stating 2 - leftists classify people on an oppressor-oppressed axis, where the oppressed are people perceived to be in bad situations.
I think “oppressed” is more specific than “in a bad situation”, and “oppressor” is much more specific than “in a comfortable situation”.
Saying that lefties classify people on an oppressor/oppressed axis suggests that they’re addicted to what’s sometimes called “politics of envy”—it’s not enough to help the poor, the rich must be made to suffer becaucse they are evil oppressors, etc. I’m sure there are people who think (and feel) that way, but I think it’s a straw man if presented as an analysis of how lefties generally see the world.
I think most lefties would agree with me that when people are in bad situations it doesn’t have to be because anyone’s oppressing them. They might just have been unlucky, or they might in some sense have done it to themselves (one place where Left and Right commonly disagree: on the left, this is not usually taken to mean that they shouldn’t be helped). And I think most lefties would agree with me that someone very comfortably off is not necessarily oppressing anyone.
(There are some who would say that our society systematically favours some groups and screws others over, to the benefit of the former at the expense of the latter, and that that means that being a rich straight white educated able-bodied man does make you in some sense an oppressor. I, and I think many others, largely agree with the first bit of that but think the conclusion that the rich (etc.) are oppressors is misguided: to benefit from an oppressive system is not necessarily to be an oppressor. And I, and I think many others, think “oppressed” is too strong and too specific a word to describe the ways in which things are bad for most statistically-disadvantaged groups.)