I hear you. At the same time, I see this story of “if your life isn't exciting, it's your fault” too often, and I call bullshit.
I believe this story is incredibly harmful because it doesn't help 'non-participants’ or 'spectators’, as you call them, understand the limitations of their society, and how this impacts them. One of the things I'd like to do instead is to help show them (and anyone else who is interested in reflection or meaningful social change) how these systemic inequities are often slowly grinding them down, and how they can organize to change the system. If I don't help do this I think I might doom them to a life of self-loathing, not to mention that I myself would live in a world of self-masturbatory self-aggrandizement, not really connecting to others and relying instead on my perceived superiorty for comfort and safety; which I think starts to taste bitter if used as a strategy for a long enough period of time.
Don't see the inequities I am talking about? I promise you they are there when you start looking. Some of the ones I've found most glaring are (1) the systemic racism at home in the US, (2) the ongoing battles of the Global South against Global North-controlled extractive and exploitative debt, and (3) imperialistic Intellectual Property agreements which causes ongoing local and global information asymmetries. The bravery of the men and women who have been fighting in these battles is astounding: Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Cornel West, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Sankara, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Howard Zinn, MLK, Paulo Freire, Cedric Robinson, and many more.
Besides Anand Giridharadas and Rutger Bregman, a recent example of someone doing this important work is Law Professor Mehrsa Baradaran, author of 'The Color of Money’. There is a great summary of her arguments here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/banking-against-black-ca...
I think these are some noteworthy excerpts:
"The problem is, black capitalism has not improved the economic lives of black people, and Baradaran deftly explains the reasons why. Black people were systematically excluded from New Deal policies, including the subsidized FHA mortgages that proved fundamental in increasing white wealth, through redlining and racial covenant agreements. Where black banks did exist, they were consistently less well funded, less profitable, and made fewer loans than white banks, rendering them powerless to substantially improve the prospects of black community members. And herein lies one of the most important lessons of The Color of Money — over the course of American history, white economic success has often been subsidized by black dollars, rather than the other way around."
and:
"Even as Baradaran criticizes the implementation of black capitalism, she claims several times that the reason black banking does not succeed in lifting black people out of poverty is that the mechanisms of free-market capitalism were blocked from proper functioning by the “structural inequalities” of racism, as if these existed outside and apart from capitalism, and infected it. Racism made capitalism sick, and if we could fix the former, the latter would deliver equal benefits to all. And yet, one can take the historical evidence she presents to argue something quite different: racism is embedded in the foundations of American capitalism."
We should realize that there is not always a very sharp distinction between a participant and a spectator. We all are sometimes a participant and sometimes are tired and just want to watch TV and be a spectator. Drawing a disctinction between spectator and participant may on occasion be helpful. E.g., a young person might hear this and start wondering by him/herself 'what am I doing on these social media for hours and hours' and cut back on it. Such things occasionally happen. The question is more whether a person is doing enough participation for the purposes of his/her creativity or not enough.
You are right that systemic inequalities should be pointed out and improved upon. On the other hand we should also not lose sight of the fact that the most equal and fair societies on the planet are the western ones. Even if one is part of a disadvantaged minority it might well be possible to make much of ones life in the West. Try being part of a disadvantaged minority in China and one might find oneself in a concentration camp instead.
I don't live in the US so I am a spectator as far as racism goes there but I agree that this exists and is a problem. Especially police shooting unarmed black people is obviously a horrible thing. I do have to note though, that your example comes from a long time ago and that much improvement has been made on this front over the decades. I also agree about imperialistic intellectual property, especially patents are a big problem. Software patents should just not exist, for instance. As far as the global south vs the global north I was under the impression that this situation has actually been improving in the last decade or so. People starving to death has been a diminishing problem, as far as I know.
On the one hand it is good to point out inequalities and do something about them but on the other hand it can also make people feel hopeless so that they will achieve less then they otherwise would. This is also something that is happening to black people in the US. I once was on an online forum where the posts of a young black person gave me the impression that a case of self-learned helplessness was going on there where most of the racism involved was coming from fellow black persons and that the group-think thing was not beneficial at all.
I believe this story is incredibly harmful because it doesn't help 'non-participants’ or 'spectators’, as you call them, understand the limitations of their society, and how this impacts them. One of the things I'd like to do instead is to help show them (and anyone else who is interested in reflection or meaningful social change) how these systemic inequities are often slowly grinding them down, and how they can organize to change the system. If I don't help do this I think I might doom them to a life of self-loathing, not to mention that I myself would live in a world of self-masturbatory self-aggrandizement, not really connecting to others and relying instead on my perceived superiorty for comfort and safety; which I think starts to taste bitter if used as a strategy for a long enough period of time.
Don't see the inequities I am talking about? I promise you they are there when you start looking. Some of the ones I've found most glaring are (1) the systemic racism at home in the US, (2) the ongoing battles of the Global South against Global North-controlled extractive and exploitative debt, and (3) imperialistic Intellectual Property agreements which causes ongoing local and global information asymmetries. The bravery of the men and women who have been fighting in these battles is astounding: Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Cornel West, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Sankara, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Howard Zinn, MLK, Paulo Freire, Cedric Robinson, and many more.
Besides Anand Giridharadas and Rutger Bregman, a recent example of someone doing this important work is Law Professor Mehrsa Baradaran, author of 'The Color of Money’. There is a great summary of her arguments here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/banking-against-black-ca...
I think these are some noteworthy excerpts:
"The problem is, black capitalism has not improved the economic lives of black people, and Baradaran deftly explains the reasons why. Black people were systematically excluded from New Deal policies, including the subsidized FHA mortgages that proved fundamental in increasing white wealth, through redlining and racial covenant agreements. Where black banks did exist, they were consistently less well funded, less profitable, and made fewer loans than white banks, rendering them powerless to substantially improve the prospects of black community members. And herein lies one of the most important lessons of The Color of Money — over the course of American history, white economic success has often been subsidized by black dollars, rather than the other way around."
and:
"Even as Baradaran criticizes the implementation of black capitalism, she claims several times that the reason black banking does not succeed in lifting black people out of poverty is that the mechanisms of free-market capitalism were blocked from proper functioning by the “structural inequalities” of racism, as if these existed outside and apart from capitalism, and infected it. Racism made capitalism sick, and if we could fix the former, the latter would deliver equal benefits to all. And yet, one can take the historical evidence she presents to argue something quite different: racism is embedded in the foundations of American capitalism."