There’s a lot that goes into making progress in a society. But there are 3 enemies that keep recurring throughout.
The oppressor, this is one or the thing that is causing the harm, the maintainer of oppression and the oppression denier.
What is oppression?
Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment or exercise of power, often under the guise of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced.
Oppression refers to discrimination when the injustice does not target and may not directly afflict everyone in society but instead targets specific groups of people. Wikipedia
Maintainer of Oppression
This is someone who defends an oppressive governmental way of life. Oppression means harmful, painful andor exploitative.
Do you know what an abolitionist was?
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, was the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. Wikipedia
An abolitionist was a person who wanted to abolish or end the unfair nature of a society partially created by enslavers.
An anti-abolitionist was a person who fought against abolishing the unfair and oppressive way of life.
So there are people, who are alive right now, saying,
“Hey, anyone who will listen. I need help! What we have is not working for me. I’m going without food and without shelter. I’m working more than I can handle. This problem is too big for me to solve on my own. Will someone help me?”
An abolitionist would say, “Yeah, that’s a problem. We or someone should end this. I don’t know if that’s me but I’ll help where I can or I’ll get out of the way of those that are trying to help.”
An anti-abolitionist or a maintainer of oppression would say, “Don’t change anything. Keep everything the same even if it hurts people.”
Oppression Denier
This is someone who denies people are oppressed. This is basically calling someone else a liar. Sometimes it’s intentional denial or a gaslighter.
This is a sort of gatekeeping on oppression.
“My grandparents had a really bad time in the Great Depression so your pain is not as bad as grandma.”
First you don’t know that. Psychologists tell us that pain is pain whether you think something should be painful or not.
And second it’s not up to you to gate keep someone else feelings.
It’s not your job to gate keep other peoples feelings.
And if a grown adult comes to you and tells you somethings wrong and you call them a liar that says something about you. You need to see a psychologist if you can’t handle hearing that there are problems in the world.
If someone tells you a problem does that mean you personally need to do something about it? Not necessarily. You can acknowledge a problem without committing yourself to change it or fix it.
Sometimes the oppression denier is the one doing the oppressing.
Oppressor
This is the person or entity that is doing harmful things. This can be a an authority figure, a government or a way of life often imposed under threat of violence or harm.
Oppression is a form of injustice that occurs when one social group is subordinated while another is privileged, and oppression is maintained by a variety of different mechanisms including social norms, stereotypes and institutional rules. — Wikipedia
The oppressor is usually the ones in power who have the ability to change it but choose not to.
Sometimes it’s old or out of date ways of doing things that are oppressive.
Dirt roads might have been fine in the past but when motor vehicles came around the dirt roads became inadequate. Dirt roads had potholes that would harm the tires of the motor vehicles.
So the old or out of date ways of doing things were not compatible to new things in life.
So instead of allowing vehicles to be harmed, people got together and discussed better ways of doing things. They came up with paved roads. They upgraded what was out of date and improved on it.
Maintainers of oppression usually have the belief that if anything changes it will be bad. There are psychological reasons for this but if you look at technology you see that for the most part upgrades are an improvement. You don’t want to use the first version of the phone. It was the size of a brief case.
If you are a maintainer of oppression there’s one simple trick you can do to change that.
The Forth — The Responsibility Shifter
There is actually another enemy. This is someone who shifts responsibility from themselves and what they are supposed to or expected to do (in their job or title) to someone or something else. This person is irresponsible.
But instead of admitting or discussing why they can’t do something or aren’t doing something they pretend like it’s not their responsibility, pretend like something is being done and yet do nothing.
Conclusion
Many of the problems in society have already been solved and have solutions. It’s not about that. It’s about these group of people and liars that are preventing change.
You can argue about about solutions and if they will or won’t work and at the end of the day it’s the complacent assholes in power or their supporters who the reason nothing changes.
Call them out for the suffering maintainers they are.
