Pathways forward
I find myself in a fortunate position in life, with a net worth that puts me in the top 5% of the population in my country. My family can trace its wealth to particular market transactions, borrowing money from banks to purchase assets, and legacies of hard work and sacrifices to turn them into greater financial holdings. I was proud of this story, seeing myself as an inheritor of honorable family values and traditions tied to a legacy of success.
My views were shaken as I entered university, where I discovered that the opportunities to own assets and systems for making wealth from them were skewed away from some and towards others, particularly people who resembled my family. Land availability and affordable land prices, enabling my family to make its first land purchases, were the result of land theft. My society provided my family with high quality education, financial connections, mentoring and emotional support, and market guarantees, which enabled us to succeed, though these supports were paid for through resources taken from the lands of its original inhabitants, and denied to them. Global markets enabled surpluses to be sold, while those same global rules systems limited sales from other countries undercutting our own domestic agricultural prices. While hard work and sacrifice were still part of the story, I saw that not everyone's hard work and sacrifice are rewarded equally; my family directly benefited from theft, racism, and protected markets.
Get Journeys in ethnical living’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Today, that system is eroding. Calls for climate justice are pressuring western countries to reduce their over use of the commons; anti-discrimination and affirmative action policies are eroding the benefits of privilege; imperial states are blocking markets, to extract concessions and tribute; economic elites are eroding social protections to supercharge their wealth; growing market competition from Asian economic powers are weakening western market dominance; among others. The western dominated, liberal international order, which protected settler wealth and disguised its unjust underpinnings, is crumbling.
In reaction, many western countries are doubling down on protecting — or even deepening — systems of privilege. Eliminating equity and anti-discrimination legislation; rejecting greenhouse gas emission caps; blocking the economic growth of others when it threatens their own dominance; eliminating the rights of minorities so they don’t have go share.
How do I live ethically in these times of privilege and transformation? I’ve tried a few things: donating to social causes; volunteering my time to humanitarian efforts; lending my voice to advocacy efforts for global justice; working for an INGO that supports humanitarian and development efforts around the world; and supporting political parties that profess to advance equality and justice.
Will history judge these efforts worthy? Are they enough? How do I build a good life for myself in these times while also meaningfully trying to ensuring this is something everyone can do, on equal terms?
