Freshman year of college I was in a philosophy class and I was giving some sort of group presentation. The prof asked my group “what do you think is your purpose in life?” And none of them really had an answer while I just said “to make the world a better place for those who come after us” because in my mind that’s just the obvious answer. The prof looked kind of taken aback that I just had an answer on the ready and was like “Why? What’s your motivation?”
In that moment I realized I was in front of a lecture hall of privileged students. I was surrounded by people who didn’t know poverty or desperation like I had. I clawed my way here on scholarships while they were legacy kids or trust fund babies. In that moment it clicked in my head that there’s this level of empathy that you can only gain when you have absolutely nothing to lose. A level of empathy that only the impoverished have. A level of empathy that screams out that you have to fight to make things better even if it doesn’t benefit you. It’s a concept that you can only really grasp when you have nothing to lose and the kids before me hadn’t known that pain. They hadn’t developed that kind of empathy.
My only answer that I could give the prof was “Why wouldn’t I?”
A level of empathy that screams out that you have to fight to make things better even if it doesn’t benefit you.
also to all the people who are arguing that class privilege has nothing to do with empathy, studies show that richer people have less empathy
i know u dont like to listen to us commoners but… lmao
oh this one of them good posts where the basic message is “treat people better” and this causes the most controversy
I dreamt that there was a new meme that went, “If I dids it, I dids it. If I didsn’t, I didsn’t.” There was a third line, but I forgot what it was.
“In 1986 Grandma was worried I wasn’t settling down. So I told her I was having a relationship—with a woman. “I am settling down, in my own way.” And the sunlight settled on the dust on the mantlepiece and the cat settled in Grandma’s lap and Grandma said there were two nurses boarding in her mother’s house in Yorkshire in 1916. And Grandma said she was in love with one of them. 70 years later, she still remembered waiting at the bottom of the boarding-house stairs to blush and smile hello at the funny, dark-eyed nurse she loved. Love between women? Unforgettable.”
— Eleni Prineas, in Finding the Lesbians: Personal Accounts from Around the World (via oikabooks)
i’ve had this saved ever since new leaf came out and now, 7 years later, the prophecy has finally come true
how funny would it be if greece actually gets the elgin marbles back and that leads to every country getting their stolen stuff back. the british museum would be reduced to two vases and an oil painting.
This is the best summary of the corporate deflection of blame for environmental destruction onto the consumer to save face I’ve ever seen