My opinion
 

By Dr. Deepak Gupta
Corresponding Author Dr. Deepak Gupta
Self, - United States of America
Submitting Author Dr. Deepak Gupta
PUBLIC HEALTH

Zero-Sum Game, Marginalization, Privilege

Gupta D. Zero-Sum Game between Marginalization of Privilege and Privilege of Marginalization. WebmedCentral PUBLIC HEALTH 2022;13(6):WMC005780

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Submitted on: 28 May 2022 02:36:25 PM GMT
Published on: 01 Jun 2022 04:58:30 AM GMT

My opinion


There is a famous legend wherein in response to Emperor Akbar’s question to shorten a line without erasing it, his minister Birbal responded by making a larger line next to it [1]. Privilege like many other things in life follows the same pattern. One can only belittle it but can never discard it. Moreover, the story does not end there. Privilege is payer, player, product, profession, position, place, person, perspective, or phase specific wherein haves too may become have-nots when payer, player, product, profession, position, place, person, perspective, or phase shifts or changes [2-5]. Privilege does NOT seem zero-sum game only when one overlooks the counts of losers and their losses during displacement/transplantation of privilege. Even society ignores the impact on environment and climate by ignoring the losses of environment and climate when quantifying the wins by only focusing on win-win game for global humanity.

Unknowingly haves do not have all the things which have-nots may be having unknowingly. Does this balance privilege of haves with marginalization of have-nots? It may be assumed so because haves are not having everything perfectly while have-nots are not missing everything perfectly. However, humanity has evolved to what it is today by its urge to explore what it does not have and thus what it can have [6-11]. Therefore, the bottom-line will always be that have-nots will always continue their pursuit to become haves while haves will always continue to hold their ground so as to not become have-nots.

Thence, the question often becomes how privileged may be marginalized by marginalized acquiring privilege in tandem unless neutralization or equalization of privilege remains dynamic with privilege systemically and systematically flowing to-and-fro between privileged and marginalized in due course of time with humans exiting from statuses of being have-nots and entering into statuses of being haves and vice-versa. Herein, the marginalized must learn to always understand how privileged had acquired and sustained privilege so that they can at least emulate the expressive means of acquiring and then sustaining privilege in case they are not able to emulate the oppressive means of acquiring and then sustaining privilege [12-15]. Similarly, the privileged must learn to never forget how marginalized may acquire and then sustain privilege by emulating not only their expressive means of acquiring and sustaining privilege but also their oppressive means of acquiring and sustaining privilege.

Some of the potential ways for displacement/transplantation of privilege may be:

• Age: Will privileged middle-aged adults get marginalized once young ones acquire the right to vote-in and vote-out governments while older ones decide to disown/disinherit human heirs by choosing non-humans including fictional/legal entities as their heirs [16-20]?

• Race/Skin Color: Will privileged race/skin color get marginalized while having nowhere left to work but in corporate houses and litigation firms owned by marginalized race/skin color as their sole shareholders [21-22]?

• Sex: Will privileged males get marginalized when labor of reproduction and caregiving is transferred to professional surrogacy and futuristic ectogenesis to be followed up by professional fostering and robotic caretaking [23-26]?

• Gender Identity: Will privileged cisgender get marginalized to question stasis within their identity once gender fluidity’s acceptability flourishes with privilege [27-28]?

• Hierarchical Level: Will privileged leaders get marginalized to become obedient followers and silent observers in case mobocracy takes over to run democratic workplaces [29-32]?

• Sexual Orientation: Will privileged orientation get marginalized once it abandons reproduction while marginalized orientation overcomes obstacle to reproduction with assistance of technology [33-36]?

• Social Class: Will privileged rich get marginalized and become poor once marginalized poor decide to stop becoming consumers or products after stopping to reproduce laborers or consumers [37-38]?

• Educational Level: Will privileged institution-educated get marginalized by their non-repayable student debts when their acquired education loses relevance in the world of rapidly changing technology being lapped up by marginalized self-educated [39-40]?

• Religion/Nation: Will privileged exotic religion/nation get marginalized once the embargo on technology, tools, trade, torpedoes is overcome by marginalized religion/nation developing them indigenously?

• Disability: Will privileged abled get marginalized once the world overcomes marginalization of disabled so that they can compete for larger shares of pie when numbers of defined, competing, competitive disabilities are bound to grow?

• Ethnicity/Culture: Will privileged ethnicity/culture get marginalized by auto-cannibalism when the absence of “them” for competition without creates competition within among “us” preempting self-destruction of “us” thus allowing “them” to eventually prevail?

• Size/Appearance: Will privileged size/appearance get marginalized by virtuality when those marginalized for size/appearance win the virtual world by creating their perfect personas virtually with keyed keyboards and clicked mice?

• Literacy/Language: Will privileged language literacy get marginalized when marginalized language’s literates educated in privileged language as secondary language outnumber privileged language’s literates educated in no secondary language [41]?

• Marital/Parental/Family Status: Will privileged marital/parental/family status get marginalized once marriage/parenthood/family as institutions become too broken to remain relevant for reproducing and nurturing non-adverse childhoods thus allowing technology to perfect the union for reproducing and nurturing perfect childhoods leaving in its wake only secluded individual humans taking care of self and only self in isolation?

• Experience: Will privilege acquired by experience get marginalized and even become irrelevant when evolving technology turns existing technology obsolete even before anyone can become experienced in it [42]?

• Migration/Geography: Will privilege acquired by putting down roots get marginalized when it becomes the rule rather than exception for globalization to uproot populations at regular intervals for transiently transplanting them in unrelated and underexplored geographical regions [43-44]?

• Not-Yet-Identified/Delineated: Will privilege acquired per not-yet-identified/delineated characteristic get marginalized when speeding exhausted privileged hare decides to take a break before it is too late for it to realize that steadily moving marginalized tortoise is going to win the race?

Summarily, life is like a bear that cannot be outrun and privilege only allows whoever has it to outrun those who do not have it before life consumes all of them eventually in due course of time even if those with privilege get to outlive those without privilege till marginalized are able to become privileged by displacement/transplantation of privilege in zero-sum game between marginalization of privilege and privilege of marginalization.

Reference(s)


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