Photo by Thomas Galvez | CC BY 2.0
Privilege is a characteristic feature of the world we live in, defining the vast and unmistakable gaps between the haves and the have-nots, the proverbial 1 and 99 percent. As such, privilege demands a permanent, indeed perpetual posture of victimhood on the part of the privileged as a safeguard against political challenges from heretofore oppressed groups seeking greater freedom and equality. Permanent victimhood is the characteristic feature of all attempts to assert, reproduce and establish privilege.
The value of perpetual victimhood for privileged groups resides in the main from the blame-shifting, scapegoating and crisis leveraging properties of the victim complex, which forms part of the broader set of mechanisms social psychologists associate with the phenomenon of moral disengagement. Moral disengagement is roughly defined as the set of subjective mechanisms we employ to disable the self-restraining qualities of the conscience.
The role of the victim complex in neutralising the conscience and expediting blame-shifting, results in the main from a pretence or affect constructed on the conflation of being made subject to doubt, criticism or challenge and an attack on one’s person or rights. The conflation of being doubted or criticised and being attacked derives in turn from a fundamental, and typically willing, confusion of individual freedom and personal license.
Individual freedom means the ability doing what you want as long…