Huey Prashker
9th June 2013, 08:09
Hi friends!
My name is Ben, but I think I'm going to call myself Huey Prashker while on this forum. This introduction is long but hopefully it's a nice read.
Recently I've been thinking that one who denies full attention and responsibility to oppression simply does not believe true oppression still exists, and I learned that oppression really exists from the opposite end – I was socialized from the perspective of the oppressor.
I am still young and rich by my parents who are both doctors. We are Jewish but we're pretty much all atheists except my Dad who is weird. Both my parents and my older sister are incredibly successful and so, for me, success was supposed to come naturally – I learned about oppression from just how easily it came.
All of my school career I was a light worker – I would do the minimum required to get by and get quite good grades. However, my subconscious justification for my schoolwork grew thinner and thinner as I realized two things; first, how easy it was for me to succeed in the system because of my privilege, and second, how the success that was taught to me as success was not good.
My privilege was obvious: the foursome, a wealthy American white male. While it seems to me that many of my rich friends who also believe privilege really exists were convinced so by either witness, data, or anecdote, I was convinced by an acute awareness of having it, which I feel opens one up to insecurity. In order for a rich person to be convinced that privilege plays a substantial role in shaping outcomes, they must also be willing to chalk up a substantial portion of their successes to their privilege, which requires a hit to your self-esteem. They give you Zoloft for that.
In sociology, they talk about "agents of socialization" – ways you come in contact and learn about the world and how that shapes you – and I think there are also agents of de-socialization: ways you deconstruct everything else you learned. My second agent of de-socialization can be most easily explain with this Boondocks clip.
Watch from 4:00 to 5:47.
Youtube dot com /watch?v=St955bI1o0c
Tobias says in an angry storm-off sort of way, "Me and Velma are going to get married, have kids, and live in Master's house!" I was weary that the success I was being sold as authority figures tried to get me to work harder was just living in Master's house. If you view capitalism as the Master, most modern success stories could be characterized as such.
Among my identifiers though, the vast majority of which assign me privilege, comes my Jewishness which complicates things. Someone who only looked at history since the Holocaust would have little idea that being Jewish is still constantly present, at least for me. Modern Jews are prominent in the most noble pursuits (hospitals and movies) and the least (banks), but neither one really gave me anything I liked. Too often I found Judaism, especially in rich Dallas, to be aligned with the oppression of others and the celebration of privilege. The reform temple had a fake strong social justice agenda and the conservative temple had a conservative membership. Dallas is weird in that many Jews don't vote Democrat.
You need to know 2 facts before getting this portion of the story. First is my family history: My Mom's side of the family immigrated to America in the late 1890's from Slavic countries and my Dad's side immigrated after the Holocaust, which they survived. They were liberated from Bergen-Belsen, only a few weeks before the gas chambers. Many of their cousins were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto and they lost a baby girl in the Holocaust before coming to America and having my Dad. Second is that my family has saved a lot of money, like a lot a lot, which I can't help feel guilty about. I know that there is enough money for my hypothetical children to go to college without me working a day in a bank account, and that money could be making someone go to college now. It could be transforming stuff and stuff.
And so, for the first time in my life, I felt an effect of oppression, which I am sure is a relic of the Holocaust: I felt out of place among my ethnic group. Faced with a ridiculous among of rich guilt, the one identifier I had to make me feel ok about my family's excessive saving - the fact that my Dad was saving money directly because of the Holocaust. Anybody who is Jewish and looks at history should not trust that the modern order of the world will be friendly to Jews for that much longer. Despite achieving tons of success, my Dad was still raising by Holocaust survivors to be prudent in case of changes and emergencies. He compulsively bought ancient books whose value would appreciate so that in a future scenario where the gigantic financial cushion he built collapsed, we would still be okay, and stuff like that. Our savings are a direct reaction to oppression. In that manner, our riches are excessive but they are a forgivable response to oppression.
Back to what I was saying about feeling out of place - I wanted Jewish socialists. I felt like I couldn't be a Jewish socialist, because to be one would require a negative outlook on much of modern Jewish success and my parents'. At least it seemed most of the part of Judaism that survived adapted very well to parts of capitalism that I hated.
But there's a twist! I discovered this.
Wikipedia dot org /wiki/Jewish_left
Then, I discovered this.
Wikipedia dot org /wiki/Jewish_left#The_emergence_of_a_Jewish_working_clas s
And this.
Wikipedia dot org /wiki/Labor_Zionism
And I thought Judaism was awesome, because all of those are really awesome. Israel being a socialist experiment? That's awesome! Folkism and all of these different modes of socialism being considered and devised were so cool, but then the Holocaust happened. You can go through many Wikipedia pages on the internet of political parties on the Jewish left that simply end the introduction with "This group did not survive the Shoah." 2 things happened specifically to Jewish socialism in the Holocaust; one, all of the political leaders among the Jews were killed, and two, a socialist movement lost its labor class. It lost its people! A socialist movement is nothing without its people! And this whole time I think, I am part of that lost labor class! Life, from the perspective of this class of people, makes sense to me. I like to think about the world like that. I like the world much much more with Klezmer music in the background and Yiddish. I want to learn it. I want it back. It just makes so much sense to me that the holes I have felt in my identity are directly caused by holes in the Jewish community from the Holocaust that I have to tell everybody that I finally just figured it out. I used to be burdened with constantly thinking about all of this stuff and what I wanted in life, but now I can go days with ideological consistency.
So, in this case, I know that oppression is real. I can feel it. I've always tried to make decisions logically but that just ended with no decision since you can make a case for anything, and so, for the past 6 years, I have been drifting ideologically. Now I think I may stay for a little bit because I can feel that this is right.
So, I'm posting on this forum. I think I'm going to post a lot, just little rants and things I think about the world.
I had to do weird link stuff because it wouldn't let me post links. I hope it's still easy to find.
My name is Ben, but I think I'm going to call myself Huey Prashker while on this forum. This introduction is long but hopefully it's a nice read.
Recently I've been thinking that one who denies full attention and responsibility to oppression simply does not believe true oppression still exists, and I learned that oppression really exists from the opposite end – I was socialized from the perspective of the oppressor.
I am still young and rich by my parents who are both doctors. We are Jewish but we're pretty much all atheists except my Dad who is weird. Both my parents and my older sister are incredibly successful and so, for me, success was supposed to come naturally – I learned about oppression from just how easily it came.
All of my school career I was a light worker – I would do the minimum required to get by and get quite good grades. However, my subconscious justification for my schoolwork grew thinner and thinner as I realized two things; first, how easy it was for me to succeed in the system because of my privilege, and second, how the success that was taught to me as success was not good.
My privilege was obvious: the foursome, a wealthy American white male. While it seems to me that many of my rich friends who also believe privilege really exists were convinced so by either witness, data, or anecdote, I was convinced by an acute awareness of having it, which I feel opens one up to insecurity. In order for a rich person to be convinced that privilege plays a substantial role in shaping outcomes, they must also be willing to chalk up a substantial portion of their successes to their privilege, which requires a hit to your self-esteem. They give you Zoloft for that.
In sociology, they talk about "agents of socialization" – ways you come in contact and learn about the world and how that shapes you – and I think there are also agents of de-socialization: ways you deconstruct everything else you learned. My second agent of de-socialization can be most easily explain with this Boondocks clip.
Watch from 4:00 to 5:47.
Youtube dot com /watch?v=St955bI1o0c
Tobias says in an angry storm-off sort of way, "Me and Velma are going to get married, have kids, and live in Master's house!" I was weary that the success I was being sold as authority figures tried to get me to work harder was just living in Master's house. If you view capitalism as the Master, most modern success stories could be characterized as such.
Among my identifiers though, the vast majority of which assign me privilege, comes my Jewishness which complicates things. Someone who only looked at history since the Holocaust would have little idea that being Jewish is still constantly present, at least for me. Modern Jews are prominent in the most noble pursuits (hospitals and movies) and the least (banks), but neither one really gave me anything I liked. Too often I found Judaism, especially in rich Dallas, to be aligned with the oppression of others and the celebration of privilege. The reform temple had a fake strong social justice agenda and the conservative temple had a conservative membership. Dallas is weird in that many Jews don't vote Democrat.
You need to know 2 facts before getting this portion of the story. First is my family history: My Mom's side of the family immigrated to America in the late 1890's from Slavic countries and my Dad's side immigrated after the Holocaust, which they survived. They were liberated from Bergen-Belsen, only a few weeks before the gas chambers. Many of their cousins were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto and they lost a baby girl in the Holocaust before coming to America and having my Dad. Second is that my family has saved a lot of money, like a lot a lot, which I can't help feel guilty about. I know that there is enough money for my hypothetical children to go to college without me working a day in a bank account, and that money could be making someone go to college now. It could be transforming stuff and stuff.
And so, for the first time in my life, I felt an effect of oppression, which I am sure is a relic of the Holocaust: I felt out of place among my ethnic group. Faced with a ridiculous among of rich guilt, the one identifier I had to make me feel ok about my family's excessive saving - the fact that my Dad was saving money directly because of the Holocaust. Anybody who is Jewish and looks at history should not trust that the modern order of the world will be friendly to Jews for that much longer. Despite achieving tons of success, my Dad was still raising by Holocaust survivors to be prudent in case of changes and emergencies. He compulsively bought ancient books whose value would appreciate so that in a future scenario where the gigantic financial cushion he built collapsed, we would still be okay, and stuff like that. Our savings are a direct reaction to oppression. In that manner, our riches are excessive but they are a forgivable response to oppression.
Back to what I was saying about feeling out of place - I wanted Jewish socialists. I felt like I couldn't be a Jewish socialist, because to be one would require a negative outlook on much of modern Jewish success and my parents'. At least it seemed most of the part of Judaism that survived adapted very well to parts of capitalism that I hated.
But there's a twist! I discovered this.
Wikipedia dot org /wiki/Jewish_left
Then, I discovered this.
Wikipedia dot org /wiki/Jewish_left#The_emergence_of_a_Jewish_working_clas s
And this.
Wikipedia dot org /wiki/Labor_Zionism
And I thought Judaism was awesome, because all of those are really awesome. Israel being a socialist experiment? That's awesome! Folkism and all of these different modes of socialism being considered and devised were so cool, but then the Holocaust happened. You can go through many Wikipedia pages on the internet of political parties on the Jewish left that simply end the introduction with "This group did not survive the Shoah." 2 things happened specifically to Jewish socialism in the Holocaust; one, all of the political leaders among the Jews were killed, and two, a socialist movement lost its labor class. It lost its people! A socialist movement is nothing without its people! And this whole time I think, I am part of that lost labor class! Life, from the perspective of this class of people, makes sense to me. I like to think about the world like that. I like the world much much more with Klezmer music in the background and Yiddish. I want to learn it. I want it back. It just makes so much sense to me that the holes I have felt in my identity are directly caused by holes in the Jewish community from the Holocaust that I have to tell everybody that I finally just figured it out. I used to be burdened with constantly thinking about all of this stuff and what I wanted in life, but now I can go days with ideological consistency.
So, in this case, I know that oppression is real. I can feel it. I've always tried to make decisions logically but that just ended with no decision since you can make a case for anything, and so, for the past 6 years, I have been drifting ideologically. Now I think I may stay for a little bit because I can feel that this is right.
So, I'm posting on this forum. I think I'm going to post a lot, just little rants and things I think about the world.
I had to do weird link stuff because it wouldn't let me post links. I hope it's still easy to find.