Relentless Victim Mentality

Oppressors and the oppressed.

I have recently started a book that touches upon these two subject matters extensively. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire strikes firmly that by stagnating within a society, one is only contributing to the oppression within said society.

This got me thinking more extensively, though. When would oppression end? In theory it is when everyone is truly equal, but if history has taught us anything it is that it is only a matter of time until equality turns to someone else rising to power to oppress. The ego in humanity is so severe in that the notion of equality can only be exemplified in short bursts until someone with just enough intelligence to see how they are superior in a fashion or two over others decides that they are superior in all fashions, then pursues power over the others.

In that, the only true form of freedom is anarchy. For any time there is a leader, or a group of leaders, then you cannot have equality.

That, then, raises the next question within this same realm of thinking. What if the struggles of the oppressed to gain equality is how society truly progresses? On one hand, this is obvious. The oppression of black people in this country, for example, led to them fighting for the right to sit on a bus with white people. It led to the sharing of bathrooms between blacks and whites. It led to the right to vote. The base line was progressed to the point in which those things are no longer regarded as abnormal at all.

But I am imagining what a society would look like in a distant, almost unimaginable future where equality was just a way of life, the standard. People wouldn't see a person of a different race or gender or whatever as any different to themselves whatsoever.

I want you to truly try to imagine someone of a different background as truly equal to you. Imagine an impoverished community and then imagine them holding the same care and attention that you get. Imagine an uneducated person - and I mean the kind who was "homeschooled" with only the teachings of their religion, as taught by someone who only half understood their religion to begin with. And imagine them being just as valuable as you are.

Firstly, I don't think that equality will ever be able to exist in a world where religion is in existence. Psychologically engraining within one's mind that they will get special treatment when they die alone will set someone on a psychological path of being incapable of imagining equality. How can another person be equal when they aren't going to get special treatment by their imaginary friend?

But imagine what the world would be like if someone who was struggling in the society was granted access to things to bring them to a standard of level that exceeds that of even what you or I exist within today. And imagine what would happen if people were taught how to think critically instead of just memorizing and repeating the way our current educational system works.

More importantly, imagine what the world would be like if we could see one another for the value that they, themselves, have instead of the value they would have to us. Instead of seeing someone for the ways they improve our individual lives, we see them for how they value themselves.

Perhaps that is what equality true lies within - seeing someone as valuable for how they feel they are valuable instead of what we can gain from their existence. Afterall, capitalizing on someone's existence is what creates the inequality we live within today.

This coincides with the knowledge that I have recently gained about the distribution of wealth within this country. Before thee distribution of wealth became so gargantuan in this country, it was relatively easy for the average person to ignore their own oppression within the system that was capitalizing on their existence, but now that the times have shifted to the point where even the middle class, and to some extent the upper class, are struggling to make ends meet - when something like 75% of the population is living paycheck to paycheck - it has become painfully more apparent that all of the average people have been oppressed.

This is something that has always bothered me in general, as I have been painfully aware of the fact that since I began working, I have simply been a cog within the wheel of making a very small minority of human beings far richer off of my work. Now, for the average person, so long as they live a comfortable life they can easily ignore such things, but when wages have stagnated to the point of the following statistics I will give, it isn't so easy to ignore.

And those statistics are as follows: In 1970, the average employee's salary (after accounting for inflation) would have been just below $83,000 a year. We are currently just at $62,000 on average.

That is just below $30 an hour, for those who don't want to do the math, but you can call it $30 an hour for simplicities sake.

Meanwhile, CEO pay has grown between 1,084% and 1,095% since 1978 (the statistic doesn't exist before that, apparently.

Now, consider this - if the average employees pay increased at the same amount then the average person's pay today would be $672,080 per year. And that was doing the math for the lowest point of that 1,084%. That is over $323 an hour, in case you were wondering.

And when you consider that statistic, well, unless you're making that average or above then you are being oppressed. And if you're not doing anything to counterbalance that oppression? Well, you've just become an oppressor.

-Dustin S. Stover