No One Talks About How Privilege Goes Both Ways

You can be privileged one moment and underprivileged the next

Privilege plays a bigger role than is often thought.

Many of you get great jobs or have amazing lives because of:

• Where you were born
• What university you went to
• Who your parents are
• A tech startup who hired you and then IPO’d and made you rich in stock options

I don’t say this lightly. Growing up in the western world gave me all sorts of advantages. Entrepreneurship lessons were force-fed to me as a kid. I got a laptop in 1992 at 6 years old and an internet connection in 1996. My home country of Australia is a safe place. We don’t have guns anymore. The health system is free. Water is plentiful. The government is stable.

Obviously, these things gave me an enormous advantage.

At the same time, you don’t control where you’re born. You shouldn’t feel guilty about where you grew up.

Even with all of these advantages I had plenty of disadvantages. I grew up with all kinds of mental health issues, although I didn’t know that until years later. The simple act of being rushed to school before I had a chance to finish my cereal led to anxiety as a kid.

That anxiety slowly bled into all areas of my life.

Anxiety around food became a quiet eating disorder. Again, I had no idea that’s what was happening. I just knew food equaled sickness, especially at public dinners.

In primary school, I sang in the school choir. One afternoon we were preparing for a big performance. I wore my school shorts, a singlet, white shirt, tie, woolen jumper, blazer, and red choir gown over the top. The hot summer’s air outside came through the open doors. There was no air con.

Moments after the practice started I collapsed. I don’t remember anything. I woke up in another room. There was blood everywhere. The fall left a huge cut on my chin that required deep stitches. The marks are still visible on my face today as a reminder of the darkness.

Wearing too many clothes likely led to the accident. I blamed myself. That shifted anxiety into new parts of my life. I couldn’t be around blood so science class, vaccinations, and videos about the human body became another big fear.

As I drifted aimlessly into high school we lost our family home due to money problems. So instead of going to high school with my classmates, I had to start at a brand new school. I only knew one other kid. He was Italian.

On the first day of school, I hung around him. We liked being friends. Then he met three other Italian boys. We became a friendship group. When we came back after first semester holidays on day one, something had changed.

I went to find them at lunchtime. They were nowhere to be found. Eventually, they appeared near the lockers.

“Hey, guys, where have you been?”

“Ohhhhhhhh nowhere.”

Something seemed off. There were a lot of smiles and winks. We walked towards the football oval and then all of a sudden they each darted in a different direction. I was heartbroken inside.

I went to find them and pretended it was all a joke. They ran away from me again. This happened one more time until I got the message. I later found out their parents and siblings didn’t want them hanging around “dumb skips.” (A skip is a white Australian person.)

With no friends to hang around, I became a loner. So what does one do? I chased significance.

There are two easy ways to find significance: surround yourself with drugs and violence.

That’s what I did. I made friends with people in my neighborhood. One of them was a cool kid at his school. He smoked. He drank. And his friends were violent. They listened to gangster rap and beat people up for fun.

As I progressed through high school my friends became more and more dangerous. One day my ego got out of control. I invited a gang to come to my school and take care of my former friends who still made my life hell. I lent them school uniforms so they could blend in.

During cooking class, I baked a fresh cake full of whipped cream. I handed it to one of the gang members when they arrived at lunchtime. They asked me to point out the people who double-crossed me.

Then they casually strolled over with a Mary Poppins walk.

“Are you James?”

“Yep.”

In a split second, he took the cake I’d baked and threw it in the guy’s face.

World War 3 broke out.

Punches were flying. Heads were kicked in. Blood was everywhere. Teachers rushed in from all directions and couldn’t stop it. Those kids who mistreated me ended up changing their ways, but I’m not proud of how it went down.

The violence got worse as I got older. I hated violence and couldn’t punch to save my life. But my friends loved it. Police chased us through the streets. We went to parties. We drank a lot. And then some of my friends took drugs.

Thankfully I couldn’t take drugs after I had one puff of a joint that put me off any mind-altering substances for life. In my mid-20s I finally left the significance game behind. Only now do I understand why I craved significance so bad. The abuse I suffered was racist and left me damaged. Yet it was still my fault because I made stupid decisions.

Privilege can cause wrong turns

Even with the advantages of the western world, I still found myself in a dark place. It’s easy to say “you grew up in Australia so you don’t know what hard times are.”

In a way that’s true. But that assumes the postcode of the ground you stand on makes you happy. Location isn’t enough. Bad situations and tough circumstances can still happen in nice places. In fact, you could say they’re more likely to happen in those places.

When your basic living standards are good and there are pockets where you live that have the luxury life, it’s easy to go down that path than chase a life of meaning.

The key isn’t to argue about whether you’re privileged or not.

The danger of privilege

When you forget whatever privileges you have, you start acting like you’ve got it all figured and everybody else is stupid.

I’ve been there before. My bad situation reversed. I had a little success with a business. My ego inflated to the size of a hot air balloon. I told people twice my age to work harder and buy me lunch.

Society became full of my servants because I had been the servant to all sorts of terrible things as a teenager. It was payback time. And payback’s a b*tch, as I learned the hard way.

Privilege is something I’m reminded of daily. I get direct messages from people in 3rd world countries. They tell their stories. They describe how they live. They bring me into their world which makes me see how fortunate I am to live in my Australian bubble.

What stands out is, people from these places are desperate for an opportunity. They don’t sit back and wait for things to happen. They’re happy to ask for help. They’re dying to learn.

They don’t have some of the same benefits I have access to — like a Web 3.0 education. It’s why I’m creating a scholarship program for my online school. It’s why I’m so passionate about seeing the un-banked get access to the financial system through blockchain technology and crypto.

Web 3.0 levels the playing field and allows those who haven’t had all the privileges I’ve talked about to still get ahead.

I’m tired of privilege being the differentiator in life. Things don’t have to be like how they used to be.

Remember whatever privilege you have and use it to lift others up. Noticing your privilege makes you humble in life. Humility can change the world.

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