Privilege

Even democratic societies indulge hereditary privilege as a right. In significant ways, this loyalty to hereditary privilege is a major obstacle to universal fairness and equality. The current debate in the U.S. concerning government budgets is actually closely related to the concept of hereditary wealth. Family values include hereditary entitlements. Hereditary entitlements trump social entitlements in the minds of the affluent. 

The vicious hatred of taxation on the political Right is rooted in this sense of hereditary entitlement, I believe. It is the same hereditary entitlement that has always been the foundation of aristocracy.  Julia Child summed it up when she advised her readers to "choose good grandparents", when asked to what she attributed her long and interesting life. I admire her honesty.

Of course, the implication of hereditary entitlement is that those without them are doomed to a life of struggle and uncertainty of the basic securities of life. If you are unfortunate enough to be born to drug addicts in a slum, tough luck! This is the basic attitude of those who see their hereditary entitlements are God-given or deserved. It is unfortunate that even among secularists one might find those who feel this way. Opportunism is a natural force in all living things. However, living beings with frontal lobes can be expected to have the ability, with privilege, to go beyond opportunism to some degree of social conscience.

We're not there yet. However, there will come a time, if current trends of wealth disparity and human overpopulation continue, when human beings with privilege will be forced to choose social justice in order to preserve their lives and the lives of their offspring. This is the way of human history.

As a humanist, I do not accept the concept of hereditary privilege. I do not honor titles or crowns. I do not accept that someone with a trust fund which enabled them to attain an elitist education  is somehow superior to me or anyone else. I do not feel that a rich person deserves his wealth on face value. Many people are wealthy at the unjust expense of individuals and society even in a democracy.  I do judge the actions of the privileged, because I feel it is a rational expectation that the privileged should at the very least contribute to society in proportion to their hereditary privileges. And, in the current U.S., any individual who has a secure income over $100,000 a year is privileged. I also believe that anyone who inherits hundreds of thousands of dollars is privileged.

The amount of individuals who actually increase their economic status from their birth status in one lifetime is small. Even in the U.S., where the wealthy and powerful  foster the illusion that everyone is on the road to success by simply being an American, economic class sticks to most people from generation to generation. There is a stream of people who break class barriers and become the cheerleaders for the power structure as it exists. Why would they want to change something which has afforded them privileges over others? Yes, that is the question I feel every true humanist must ask. Perhaps the answer is, "Questioning hereditary privilege is the first step to universal equality!"