wow I loved reading this so much. I know you aren't an astrogirlie but this peice is such an ode to Jupiter in Gemini. In a system which uses language to oppress, we should always be evaluating words and their impact. Really sitting with the concept of privilege vs license and even considering "whiteness" and how it's symptoms far reach beyond white bodies (saying this as a white person for important context). I've thought alot about what does it mean to be white and denounce whiteness at the same time knowing I'll always be in this body. Further, I was formally perceived as a girl but now I'm perceived as a man and so the added experieince of walking the world as a "white man" denouncing whiteness and patriarchy and actively working to unweave their curses on my DNA - how do we find the language that honors and points us to this important work while giving us a landing pad on the other side or at least as we move through the mud of it all. Like you, I feel left with more questions than answers but the questioning is important and valuable and I celebrate that process. As always, ty for your profound writing.
definitely should be considering language from multiple angles, not only the point of our own satisfaction with it but in ways that will allow us to communicate as widely or, if broad appeal isn't the desired outcome, as specifically as possible. thanks for sharing your perspective!
apologies for not leaving a detailed comment proving i read this and thus is not just empty praise (i’m not used to the nonfiction world nor want to get to deep in it) but this was so so good dude
You mentioned your favorite word and I smiled to find my own a bit further along, ephemeral. Delicate and fleeting like grasping and sharing thoughts. Beautiful ghosts.
The concept of privilege was a recent topic between my spouse and myself and I found it impossible and ultimately fruitless to try to articulate why I didn’t have as much as him despite sharing his modest/comfortable/but, on the real, paycheck to paycheck income. I appreciate it, I do. Without him I’m making close to minimum wage if I’m playing ‘the game’ because I couldn’t hang and climb the corporate ladder like he could. I’m an artist with cptsd. I became a wife and mother. If he disappears, so does my ‘privilege.’ It seems simple to say it that way, but these conversations have a tendency to get bogged down, convoluted. I don’t normally try, I like my sanity intact. So I agree, License is a better word. As a woman I don’t have the license for damn sure to move through the world without certain expectation. It’s a complex web, and yeah, I’m tired. So I really appreciate you taking the time to articulate things so beautifully.
as you can probably glean by my usage of it, ephemeral is one of my favourites, too.
this is perhaps one of the most obvious pitfalls of privilege discourse–I don't have as much/you have more. it is a tense conversation when you care for someone, love them. imagine how much more charged it becomes when you don't care about someone. that should give us pause and make us reflect on how best to speak about this topic. that is, privilege is a loaded term--even without the socio-political context. a linguistic stones throw away from "spoilt". before it took its current shape, it could ring in one's head like an insult. it is difficult to articulate your experience to someone if it feels like you're attacking them for things out of your control. if that is the goal, that is fine. but perhaps the question, tacked onto the list of questions, is what is our goal when we bring up "privilege?" Do we want to vent our frustrations or do we want to be understood? Because if anyone knows anything about people, we how we say things is just as important as what we say.
Wow no idea about this shout out until just now! Just saw it after work, loving what I have read so far and look forward to a more detailed read when I’m less tired from work! I got my own piece cooking, but like is now my creative habit I will remain over over promising and under delivering! 😂
There is so much in this piece to think about that I wouldn't know where to start in commenting. But I just wanted to say: Thank you, Inigo, for investing your time, compassion, insight and immense talent in sharing this essay. So glad I came across your work today!
I just came across your Substack, and am so happy I did. Reading this felt like scratching an itch that’s been tickling my brain for years.
I am one of those who gleaned something from the concept of privilege. As a white woman, learning about privilege was essential for me to begin dismantling my role in upholding white supremacy (still ongoing). And yet I agree, license gets us closer to the truth. Where privilege can have a positive connotation (ie: it’s been a privilege to work with you), it’s colloquially used negatively, to shame (ie: your privilege is showing). As license is pretty linguistically neutral, I wonder if it will be a better vessel to deliver these ideas to folks who’ve learned to bristle at talk of privilege.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and some of the closest words to your soul. I’ve prized the word gossamer since reading it in school, likely in Charlotte’s Web.
I love the reframing of privilege to license, I feel it touches on something really profound. I often wonder if we wouldn’t do better if we didn’t get so stuck on certain terms and run them into the ground. I deeply feel you on the question of how do we talk about kindness and junk without sounding either insufferably preachy or horribly pretentious. Or dismissively cynical. Those seem to be the three modes. The people I have found so far who seem to avoid these three pitfalls are mostly those who don’t try to speak in… instructive terms, or in inspirational terms. Rather they just describe with great urgency things that happen to be very important to them, and that also happen to reflect some manner of genuine interaction with other humans, or nature, or something down to earth and real. For some reason the rah-rah demagoguery only seems to work for a certain type of take.
I wonder if a leftist Joe Rogan is even possible. I feel like in a sense for that to work we would have to embrace a certain degree of… not really understanding things? The power of Just Saying Random Dumb Shit seems to be somehow important to reaching large populations and also somehow more natural to right-wing theorists. Are we too precious about knowing things and understanding the data and being, like, formally correct?
"The people I have found so far who seem to avoid these three pitfalls are mostly those who don’t try to speak in… instructive terms, or in inspirational terms. Rather they just describe with great urgency things that happen to be very important to them, and that also happen to reflect some manner of genuine interaction with other humans, or nature, or something down to earth and real."
These are the people that cut through. Over here in the UK, Akala is a great orator and a guy called Gary Stevenson (Garys Economics) speaks about economics in a very compelling way. There are people out there, but perhaps something I failed to mention is that the concept of a "leftist Joe Rogan" is a fundamentally flawed way thinking.
That is, there needs to be a broader, more overt appeal of decentralised knowledge centres because concentrating efforts onto a messianic figure will just ensure such a figure becomes targeted. When we speak of the right, the cultural conservative knowledge centre is Fox News--the personalities that populate the channel are rotating entities who don't even matter too much individually. There are also solo commentators (Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson et al) but there's a robust, focused network of conservative thought that allows any rightwing personality to traverse. The leftist enterprise are fragmented and uncooperative.
That is perhaps a digression, but someone who could be a "Leftist Joe Rogan" in the realm of a political leftist commentator with clout would be Bill Burr. But again, if hypothetically Bill Burr ascended to such a hight, with a monopoly on leftist public discourse, there'd still be a whole lot of co-operative infrastructure that needs to be built.
beautiful. thanks for cutting though all the noise and asking the sensible questions. as a visual artist i often draw or paint what i can't find the words to describe and i look to the language of artists for comfort, hope, inspiration. i'm going to use some of your questions as jumping off points for drawing and see what happens. appreciate you showing up to the page and sharing your gift with us. take care.
man, i'm so grateful for you and your talent. always plating seeds in my brain that sprout new ideas and inspire me so much. i love questions without answers, btw. it's how we keep moving.
thank you as always, my brother! i've actually written several short stories--i'm surprised you haven't discovered them yet... i shared them in my "yours truly" post: https://www.yoursinigo.com/p/yours-truly
Awesome wordsmithing, brother. Each sentence a chord, carefully plucked and consciously attuned. Many of your words resonate within my bones, and many of your words will continue to resonate within me. Thanks.
wow I loved reading this so much. I know you aren't an astrogirlie but this peice is such an ode to Jupiter in Gemini. In a system which uses language to oppress, we should always be evaluating words and their impact. Really sitting with the concept of privilege vs license and even considering "whiteness" and how it's symptoms far reach beyond white bodies (saying this as a white person for important context). I've thought alot about what does it mean to be white and denounce whiteness at the same time knowing I'll always be in this body. Further, I was formally perceived as a girl but now I'm perceived as a man and so the added experieince of walking the world as a "white man" denouncing whiteness and patriarchy and actively working to unweave their curses on my DNA - how do we find the language that honors and points us to this important work while giving us a landing pad on the other side or at least as we move through the mud of it all. Like you, I feel left with more questions than answers but the questioning is important and valuable and I celebrate that process. As always, ty for your profound writing.
definitely should be considering language from multiple angles, not only the point of our own satisfaction with it but in ways that will allow us to communicate as widely or, if broad appeal isn't the desired outcome, as specifically as possible. thanks for sharing your perspective!
apologies for not leaving a detailed comment proving i read this and thus is not just empty praise (i’m not used to the nonfiction world nor want to get to deep in it) but this was so so good dude
No apologies necessary, I trust you 😂 and even if you didn't, commenting is still a lovely gesture, either way, I appreciate you
Amazing. The insight is profound.
You mentioned your favorite word and I smiled to find my own a bit further along, ephemeral. Delicate and fleeting like grasping and sharing thoughts. Beautiful ghosts.
The concept of privilege was a recent topic between my spouse and myself and I found it impossible and ultimately fruitless to try to articulate why I didn’t have as much as him despite sharing his modest/comfortable/but, on the real, paycheck to paycheck income. I appreciate it, I do. Without him I’m making close to minimum wage if I’m playing ‘the game’ because I couldn’t hang and climb the corporate ladder like he could. I’m an artist with cptsd. I became a wife and mother. If he disappears, so does my ‘privilege.’ It seems simple to say it that way, but these conversations have a tendency to get bogged down, convoluted. I don’t normally try, I like my sanity intact. So I agree, License is a better word. As a woman I don’t have the license for damn sure to move through the world without certain expectation. It’s a complex web, and yeah, I’m tired. So I really appreciate you taking the time to articulate things so beautifully.
as you can probably glean by my usage of it, ephemeral is one of my favourites, too.
this is perhaps one of the most obvious pitfalls of privilege discourse–I don't have as much/you have more. it is a tense conversation when you care for someone, love them. imagine how much more charged it becomes when you don't care about someone. that should give us pause and make us reflect on how best to speak about this topic. that is, privilege is a loaded term--even without the socio-political context. a linguistic stones throw away from "spoilt". before it took its current shape, it could ring in one's head like an insult. it is difficult to articulate your experience to someone if it feels like you're attacking them for things out of your control. if that is the goal, that is fine. but perhaps the question, tacked onto the list of questions, is what is our goal when we bring up "privilege?" Do we want to vent our frustrations or do we want to be understood? Because if anyone knows anything about people, we how we say things is just as important as what we say.
Wow no idea about this shout out until just now! Just saw it after work, loving what I have read so far and look forward to a more detailed read when I’m less tired from work! I got my own piece cooking, but like is now my creative habit I will remain over over promising and under delivering! 😂
all good!! keep chipping away, I can't wait for your piece!
There is so much in this piece to think about that I wouldn't know where to start in commenting. But I just wanted to say: Thank you, Inigo, for investing your time, compassion, insight and immense talent in sharing this essay. So glad I came across your work today!
What a lovely thing to say, Allison. You're welcome, so glad it's resonated with you, I appreciate your comment more than you'll ever know!!
Ok my heart just burst! ♥️ Take good care, Inigo! 🙏🏻
Wow. What an amazing read. Thank you for this ❤️
Thank you for reading 🫶🏾
I just came across your Substack, and am so happy I did. Reading this felt like scratching an itch that’s been tickling my brain for years.
I am one of those who gleaned something from the concept of privilege. As a white woman, learning about privilege was essential for me to begin dismantling my role in upholding white supremacy (still ongoing). And yet I agree, license gets us closer to the truth. Where privilege can have a positive connotation (ie: it’s been a privilege to work with you), it’s colloquially used negatively, to shame (ie: your privilege is showing). As license is pretty linguistically neutral, I wonder if it will be a better vessel to deliver these ideas to folks who’ve learned to bristle at talk of privilege.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and some of the closest words to your soul. I’ve prized the word gossamer since reading it in school, likely in Charlotte’s Web.
Looking forward to your next piece!
Agreed! Thanks for reading 🫶🏾
I love the reframing of privilege to license, I feel it touches on something really profound. I often wonder if we wouldn’t do better if we didn’t get so stuck on certain terms and run them into the ground. I deeply feel you on the question of how do we talk about kindness and junk without sounding either insufferably preachy or horribly pretentious. Or dismissively cynical. Those seem to be the three modes. The people I have found so far who seem to avoid these three pitfalls are mostly those who don’t try to speak in… instructive terms, or in inspirational terms. Rather they just describe with great urgency things that happen to be very important to them, and that also happen to reflect some manner of genuine interaction with other humans, or nature, or something down to earth and real. For some reason the rah-rah demagoguery only seems to work for a certain type of take.
I wonder if a leftist Joe Rogan is even possible. I feel like in a sense for that to work we would have to embrace a certain degree of… not really understanding things? The power of Just Saying Random Dumb Shit seems to be somehow important to reaching large populations and also somehow more natural to right-wing theorists. Are we too precious about knowing things and understanding the data and being, like, formally correct?
"The people I have found so far who seem to avoid these three pitfalls are mostly those who don’t try to speak in… instructive terms, or in inspirational terms. Rather they just describe with great urgency things that happen to be very important to them, and that also happen to reflect some manner of genuine interaction with other humans, or nature, or something down to earth and real."
These are the people that cut through. Over here in the UK, Akala is a great orator and a guy called Gary Stevenson (Garys Economics) speaks about economics in a very compelling way. There are people out there, but perhaps something I failed to mention is that the concept of a "leftist Joe Rogan" is a fundamentally flawed way thinking.
That is, there needs to be a broader, more overt appeal of decentralised knowledge centres because concentrating efforts onto a messianic figure will just ensure such a figure becomes targeted. When we speak of the right, the cultural conservative knowledge centre is Fox News--the personalities that populate the channel are rotating entities who don't even matter too much individually. There are also solo commentators (Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson et al) but there's a robust, focused network of conservative thought that allows any rightwing personality to traverse. The leftist enterprise are fragmented and uncooperative.
That is perhaps a digression, but someone who could be a "Leftist Joe Rogan" in the realm of a political leftist commentator with clout would be Bill Burr. But again, if hypothetically Bill Burr ascended to such a hight, with a monopoly on leftist public discourse, there'd still be a whole lot of co-operative infrastructure that needs to be built.
Great essay as always, Inigo!
Thank you, Soph 🫶🏾
beautiful. thanks for cutting though all the noise and asking the sensible questions. as a visual artist i often draw or paint what i can't find the words to describe and i look to the language of artists for comfort, hope, inspiration. i'm going to use some of your questions as jumping off points for drawing and see what happens. appreciate you showing up to the page and sharing your gift with us. take care.
thank you for reading!! i hope the questions help deepen your artistic practice 🙏🏾
man, i'm so grateful for you and your talent. always plating seeds in my brain that sprout new ideas and inspire me so much. i love questions without answers, btw. it's how we keep moving.
thank you, my darling. i appreciate you for reading! 🫶🏾
I love your work.
Thank you for sharing it.
The privilege --> license bit was great.
Thank you!
Excellent. The list of questions at the end. Wonderful rhetorical device. I do so wish you some day write a short story, or share one anyway.
thank you as always, my brother! i've actually written several short stories--i'm surprised you haven't discovered them yet... i shared them in my "yours truly" post: https://www.yoursinigo.com/p/yours-truly
I would say that I'm surprised but I'm not, because my bandwidth right now is incredibly constrained feeling like a refugee in my own house.
Awesome wordsmithing, brother. Each sentence a chord, carefully plucked and consciously attuned. Many of your words resonate within my bones, and many of your words will continue to resonate within me. Thanks.
Thank you bro, appreciate you reading 🙏🏾