Privilege and Personal Blind Spots

Will Larson on privilege, and the confidence it took before he could see his own:

Noticing your privilege is a lot of work. It would be rewarding to say that I was always thoughtful on this topic, but it took me a long time to grow confident enough in myself that I could allow myself to acknowledge the inequality that I benefit from. For me, self-confidence was a prerequisite to self-awareness, and I imagine it’s similar for many others. ... If you don’t have some grasp on your own privilege, you’ll struggle greatly to support others as an effective manager, inspire others as a leader, or contribute as a partner in your own life.

and from the same essay, why no one's view of it is ever complete:

in the spirit of the Hegelian dialectic, most perspectives are flawed representations of another more complete perspective

C.S. Lewis in The Magician’s Nephew names both halves, where you stand and who you are:

For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.

but

Where you stand can also hand you some of the confidence Larson had to grow into. Here's Ian W. Sainsbury in The World Walker, on the people who were simply given it:

Seb had always slightly envied those who seemed so sure of themselves, of their place in the world. That sense of entitlement. Some people just seemed to have it, while others had to nurse a sense of self-worth so fragile, it sometimes seemed barely present.

bell hooks in The Will to Change describes a sureness that comes from simply being, not from a title or from what you do:

In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an antipatriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved.

Without it, the gap shows in who you look down on. Shani Zhang in 21 Observations From People Watching:

I can see how much someone accepts themselves by looking for intense distortions in the way they are interacting with the world. Find the range in how they treat people; if there is a split difference in their stance towards people they admire, and people they look down on. I never met a person who looked down on others and unconditionally accepted themselves.

and how that hides itself, even from you:

Some people don't like themselves. They hide this from themselves by thinking they don’t like other people.

which is why Frank Herbert in Chapterhouse calls the noticing a constant job:

Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required.

Confidence borrowed from where you stand hides the very ground you're standing on. The kind of confidence hooks describes is what lets you look right at it and see it for what it is, which is a critical step in dropping the delusion that you don't benefit from privilege yourself.

Paths from here

• Goodhart’s Law: more from the same Larson essay