That myth keeps the neoliberal illusion alive
When you have a deck of 52 cards and someone takes away two, it can feel like you have lost something.
I used to travel overseas at least four times a year. Overseas for Australia is a long-haul flight, at least 14 hours to anywhere except the Pacific Islands. This was also in the time of real frequent flyer miles. I managed to upgrade to business class almost every time. Not quite 52 cards, as that would be first, but pretty close.
Going back to economy class was a shock.
Ah privilege. It captures anyone in her honey-soaked tentacles. We get fat, lazy and entitled in her grip. That seductive entitlement feels like nothing, a little atrocity when we forget to honour, every day, every single card we have, no matter the number, and know that the spread of cards across the table of humanity is horribly uneven. This is injustice.
When you have zero cards and you get two cards, it feels like you have won the lottery.
When you have had zero cards for generations, and someone hands you one, feeling magnanimous as they do, from their deck of more than 40 cards, then we know inequality, patronisation and a system designed to keep the majority of people on the precipice.
Losing two cards from an almost full deck so others can have one or two can feel like oppression.
It is not. Yet people complain wildly when it happens. They know not the experience, or they have forgotten, what it is like to have an empty hand.
Ensuring that the full deck of cards is available to all is a world that approaches care for all humanity.
This is justice.
And those who cry that they earned their deck of cards from their hard labour forget they rarely started with an empty hand. That myth keeps the neoliberal illusion alive.
Photo Taken May 21st 2024
