21st Century Privilege
an exhortation to think big
You’ve probably seen the word “privilege” get thrown around a lot over the past few years. Googling the term gives you a number of definitions that converge around something like: “certain social advantages, benefits, or degrees of prestige and respect that an individual has by virtue of belonging to certain social identity groups”. In the American context (perhaps the Western context more broadly), it seems almost sacrilegious to say that the term shouldn’t refer to “whites, males, heterosexuals, Christians, and the wealthy”.
I was lucky to have an interesting childhood - I grew up upper-middle class in the hyper-developed metropolis of Singapore, but would routinely spend time with extended family in less developed Indian villages, where I would meet people who were born into a different set of circumstances than I was: families who struggled to put food on the table, children who did not have easy access to education, older folks who could not receive quality healthcare. These trips were uncomfortable and challenging, but they gave me a sense of how lucky I was to live in a wealthy country, grow up fluent in technology, and have access to all the spoils of modernity. They ingrained in me a perspective of needing to do something with all my good fortune. I wonder if we could use an injection of this perspective in Western society today.
The world as we see it
Historically speaking, we live in a time of unprecedented opportunity! Global living conditions have improved tremendously over the last couple of centuries, because we’ve been able to create much more wealth than ever before.
Compared to everyone else alive today, the amount of good fortune someone like me - who earns enough to sustain themself, has a college degree, has access to quality healthcare, and lives in a democratic state that respects their civil liberties - enjoys can be difficult to fathom. But when compared to everyone who’s ever been alive, this becomes even harder to comprehend. By our best estimates, 117 billion people have ever lived, most of whom struggled to have even basic needs of food and shelter met. Roughly speaking, you have a 1 in 15 chance of being alive today. And if you’re among the 1.2 billion people living in a developed country today, that becomes nearly a 1 in 100 chance!
Relative to all of human history, people like myself (and if you’re reading this, probably you too) enjoy so much abundance. We are absurdly privileged. And because we don’t have first-hand exposure to the people who lived in a different time as us (even talking to someone who lives in a different part of the world today is rare), we tend to be blind to this privilege.
Check your privilege
It’s one thing to be aware of our 21st Century Privilege, it’s another to know what to do with it. We should appreciate the importance of economic growth in improving the human condition, and then try to help push that frontier forward - perhaps by playing a part in technological change.
Thankfully, we’ve seen immense technological progress over the past few decades. Downstream of Moore’s Law, computers have been consistently getting more capable - more efficient and cheaper (per unit of memory size) - at an exponential rate. Simultaneously, Internet access has become faster and more widespread, and there is increasingly better tooling for creating technical products (in many cases, you don’t even need to know how to code). Building a piece of software has never been easier! It is also a personally rewarding endeavor - by owning a piece of equity in an enterprise that builds technology that society deems valuable, you can do well for yourself too.
(If building a technical product isn’t your jam, it’s easier than ever now to build and publish your own media, too. Perhaps the defining feature of our 21st Century Privilege is that this is the easiest time in history to create something that can generate wealth for yourself as well as the world around you.)
Embrace ambition and modernity
It feels like there’s a feeling of resignation about corporate life in many of my friends: they find it exhausting, meaningless, and something they’re sticking with purely for the money. And I get it - there are many days where I feel the same way. Certainly sticking to a soul-crushing job doesn’t allow for flourishing.
But taking a few steps back, the fact that we have skills that the economy values is in itself a wonderful thing, and with a bit of courage and creativity, we can channel those towards endeavors that bring us more personal fulfillment. Most of us have it in ourselves to be more ambitious in a compassion-driven way! And when failures happen (as they inevitably do when people take big, bold risks), we recognize that they came from a spirit of wanting to do something meaningful - and we lift each other up through the pain with kindness and support. We need to celebrate risk-taking!
My dream—the solution—is that we would have a National Entrepreneur Day, with the following message: Most of you will fail, disrespected, impoverished, but we are grateful for the risks you are taking and the sacrifices you are making for the sake of the economic growth of the planet and pulling others out of poverty. You are at the source of our antifragility. Our nation thanks you.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile
Of course, modern life isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. There are costs involved: People are lonely (especially exacerbated by the pandemic), industrial activity plays a big part in rising temperatures globally, and many more. At the moment, these costs are really difficult to get rid of without losing all the good that 21st century life brings us. But the way forward is to mitigate these costs through better technology, not by running and hiding from modernity entirely.
(At some point I’ll do a full commentary on this unpolished, underrated @vgr masterpiece on why retreating from technology is bad - for now I just want to emphasize the point that, though it can be tricky to deal with mechanics of the constant online information flow that we’re all a part of (there are easily reachable failure states that we should beware of), trying our best to do so is imperative to contributing well to society.)
When you are plugged into the GSCITC [great social computer in the cloud], you are part of a great computational fluidization of human cognition. You're just one instance in a liquid cloud of human intelligence, your thoughts entangled with those of others in a giant ongoing computation. It's a kind of computational civic duty, like voting. Sometimes it is fun, other times it is not, but it always important.
— Venkatesh Rao, Against Waldenponding
This short piece is first and foremost a personal exercise in laying out my worldview. If it seems judgmental or dismissive, that’s more a reflection of the attitude with which I see myself than anyone else around me. I’m fully aware that this reads less like a comprehensive, nuanced argument in favor of being more ambitious, and more like a reductionist manifesto. There are many more caveats I could elaborate on: even in the 21st century, your economic opportunity can vary immensely based on your circumstances; code and media are by far not the only ways to create wealth for yourself and the world; modern life can be complex in many ways and some people would do well to implement a Hard Waldenponding in their lives. Nor do I think that modern discussions of social privilege are trivial - it’s the mark of a civilized society that we never stop talking about how to do better by each other. But I do believe strongly that the broad attitude most of us should try to approach life with is one of creation and abundance.
More than anything, this is a reminder to myself to know my place in history, embrace it, and pay it forward by being as ambitious as I can possibly be. I owe it to my ancestors.
Enjoyed reading this :) Looking forward to more