Like most social codes, I'm sure it can be and has been extensively weaponized by bully types, but at its best this privilege discourse can be steelmanned as just formalizing attitudes of modesty, generosity, gratitude and perspective-taking that in a saner time would be universally agreed to be virtuous.
Sure, but this is not usually what is meant by the progressive privilege. It has a very specific intersectional structure and it has to be part of a system(s) of oppression and has to be less individualistic. Trailer white trash is still privileged by virtue of their whiteness.
Let's try outgroup = woman, advantage=good-looks and charisma. Picture the most pampered mean-girl college sorority girl you can imagine, rich family, beautiful, smart but also well-tutored, people falling over themselves to give her things. She's trying to get the awkward pimpled nerd out of her lab group. "This loser is actually the lucky one, because people feel sorry for him! I'm the real victim
This is unironically the critique people have today for progressives, who talk about privilege exactly in this manner. Celebrities like Michele Obama cannot stop talking about how hard they have it - such as when somebody told Michele that she is not Princeton material, that was obvious example of racism and misogyny.
This. The thinking also created structure of universal leftist conspiracy theory. You have oppressed class Red and oppressor class Blue. Blue people have access to some specific property, they call Privilege and restrict access to this privilege to oppressed group. They also create a system that perpetuates this dynamic indefinitely, lets called it privilegeism.
In traditional Marxism you have proletariat vs bourgeoisie. Bourgeoisie has access to privilege in form of capital and limits access of workers to it by creating system of capitalism that reproduces itself over generations. In feminist theory there are men and women, men have male privilege and create system called patriarchy to restrict access to this privilege. In Critical Race Theory you have Black and white people, white people have access to whiteness and use it to create system of white supremacy. In queer theory the oppressed are Queer/LGBT+ people vs cishetero people. The cishetero people have access to "normalcy" and deny that to queer people by creating and perpetuating the system of cisheteronormativity. The same simple conspiracy template then copies itself to basically all progressive thinking.
The point being that privilege has a specific meaning in leftist thinking, it does not signify an individual thing in common parlance. It has philosophical and metaphysical meanings, exactly like capital has different meaning to somebody about to start his business vs Marxist revolutionary.
I think this is just equivocation of the word ambition. It is not only "I want things", it also means possessing relevant character traits like: goal and result orientation, task ownership, ability to face adversity with grit etc. Ambition does not mean a porn addict lump who wants to have lambo in a year with this new system to win in blackjack or trading.
But maybe I am wrong and you actually have ambitious people in your office who bust their asses, ask for tasks, chase their goals like crazy etc. Only they are bad at it because they are stupid and unqualified.
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