In this insightful episode, Waseem, MJ, and Rashed explore the concept of Western Privilege and its impact on the West’s self-perception as a force for virtue. They delve into the complex intersections of environmental activism, critical race theory, and gender, shedding light on the blind spots and biases that can arise from Western-centric perspectives. Join them as they challenge conventional narratives and discuss the importance of recognizing privilege in fostering a more inclusive and nuanced global dialogue.
Transcript
Waseem: Welcome to another episode of Third Culture Convos, the podcast where we navigate the complexities of identity blogging and global perspectives. I’m your host Wasim, and I’m joined by my co-host, MJ and Rash. Today we’re tackling a fascinating and timely topic, the concept of Western privilege and its influence on the perception of the West as a force for virtue.
In this eye-opening episode, we’re gonna explore the intricate connections between environmental activism. Critical race theory and gender while shedding light on the blind spots and biases that stem from Western centric viewpoints. We’ll discuss how these perspectives can shape the global discourse on various issues and how recognizing our own privilege can help foster more inclusive and nuanced conversations.
I hope so. Without further ado, let’s dive into our first. How does Western privilege manifest itself in the realms of environmental activism, race and gender, and what impact does it have on the West’s perception as a force of virtue?
MJ: Did you guys see that video of the pool that Wasim, I think you shared Joe Rogan shared of the guy there playing pool. It’s a championship, it’s professional pool snooper pool. Yeah. And. Some stop oil or something. He comes in and he ruins the entire game. He throws orange powder on the felt ruining maybe, I don’t know if he touched any of the balls.
Waseem: I don’t know if he like, oh, he
Rashed: did. He knocked a whole bunch of them around the table. Okay.
MJ: He did ruin the game. I didn’t notice that. I just noticed that
Waseem: like he totally ruined the game. And
MJ: the mood. Just the mood man. The vibe I don’t know.
Rashed: Yeah, I was, yeah, I watched that and I was more interested in the comments in the background and all the f-bombs that were being dropped and all the anger in vitriol, but it’s, I don’t under, I don’t understand what, how a snooker championship.
Okay, fine. You’ve gotten yourself onto like an Instagram reel, a TikTok reel, whatever it is that it would, or Reddit and all that kind of stuff okay, fine. I’m going to the snooker championship. I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna ruin this. That’s completely unrelated to whatever you’re, being an activist for, I don’t.
Okay, fine. They’re probably gonna say there’s all these fossil fuels and oils that are being, that are in the components of building this table and the balls and all that kind of stuff. I’m like, but I still don’t understand how that helps your goal. But I don’t.
Waseem: I think taking, okay wait.
Not how it helps your goal. Is it, I think the first problem is that your goal is ship, right? Like your goal is like reeks of Western privilege, right? In the sense that you have like in, in an obvious sense, you’re like, oh no, fossil fuels are bad. And so any support for fossil fuels, whether it be using it or anything along those lines is also bad.
So non-virtuous. And look at how virtuous I am. I’m going to ruin this game in order to promote the message and actually save the planet. Because that’s what I, that’s what my job is to do, is to save the planet. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but that’s what I want to do. And so I think that they, so the, but the goal, so there’s multiple things to talk about here.
First thing that the goal itself reeks in Western privilege. And we’ll talk about, I think what we mean by that right now. I imagine that’s like my thing. So first the goal, and then second the. And the strategy. Okay, fine. Like you, you pick a public event. There, there are more public events than snooper, but you pick a public event and you you create havoc.
Either you rush the field or you you do something to create some sort of attention to regards to your thing. And I respect that. I respect that as a tactic or a strategy to bring attention to un underserved things. But you’re yeah. But you’re also using your phone, like your phone, which is a product like everything around you is a product of fossil fuels and the accelerant that it provides in terms of energy.
And it’s so funny that in the UK that’s the goal, like the goal of this organization as an example is to like, stop oil and stop the oil industry and stop that. But when they do, Like that. Literally, that goal itself has a problem. So you’re like, okay, I could see you wanna protect the environment.
I’m with you. Okay, I’m down. I wanna save it for the children. Think of the children, baby. But what’s your alternative? Because if you just, what do you wanna do? Pull the plug. So we just, you just stop. And then what are you gonna do after that? Where are you gonna import your oil? Where are you gonna get your energy?
You’re gonna stop using stuff. How many things? All of them, are you gonna get rid of your phone? What happens if you’re sick and you need to go to the hospital and like they, that’s an energy intensive area. How about then are
Rashed: you so cool Here? Here’s the thing. So so the privilege that I see involved in this whole thing is what the activism is that we wanna go out there and bring exposure to the fact that there’s too much fossil fuels, that it’s ruining the environment, et cetera, and all that kind of stuff.
Okay, that’s great. And I can understand that. But then in the end, what, what is still done? They say we are bringing exposure to the fact that using these fossil fuels are affecting our planet in a negative way. Okay, so what’s your alternative? Why do I have to come up with the alternative?
They still put it in the hands of the people who are already using the fossil fuels and say you find a. So in a sense that I see the privilege of saying, we’re gonna sit here and yell. But we’re not going do anything about what we want to be improved in the sense of we don’t have the science behind it to be able to back, that we should use, let’s say cornus fuel or something like that.
So yeah, I could the privilege is like I have the opportunity to go out there and do something stupid to gain attention, but I’m gonna stop short of actually doing something more beyond. You know what I mean? So like you can I can level
MJ: the privilege. Go. On the macro level, the privilege is that you’ve benefited from this resource.
You’ve used it all up for the last hundred years, so you got the benefit and you’ve and now you are hindering anyone else from entering the market based on. Like, where was all of this for Cole? Where was all of this for when you need, when you were building it, right? Within that like notion, there’s a little bit of macro western privilege when we speak.
There’s the like personal privilege of acting stupid. Like this is just like the person is using Western privilege as well on a micro scale, but then on a micro scale it’s yo, you use this resource, you’ve built it and now you want us not to use. With no solution as well.
Waseem: And that’s where, when it comes to environment, the environmental argument, it’s probably the.
One of the more glaring ones is because the, the blame from the west says Brazil, China, India, stop using fossil fuels. You’re making the world horrible. But you say that from the position of having had used fossil fuels to accelerate your economies for the, for hundreds of years, and now turning around and going, okay, now no one else can use it.
It’s like pulling the ladder up behind you, right? Like it’s, no, you guys can’t use it. And not only. I can’t believe you’re using it. And so using virtue as the thing. And and I find and here’s what’s interesting is I find that when I, as a third culture could or as a globalized citizen or global citizen, when I leave the east and I come to the west, or when I leave the global south and I come to the west and I, we try to.
A nuanced discussion around the environment. This is one of those let’s say social taboos, like it’s one of those things that you can’t talk about. You’re not like, you can’t actually say, sure, I’m all for the environment, like I’m down, but I don’t like, I don’t. I think we’re, it’s fall.
Like I think what you’re trying to do in terms of eliminating fossil fuels in the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 50 years by forcing everybody to get electric cars is stupid and it doesn’t solve the actual problem. I think the electric car is still a fossil fuel, like even though it doesn’t run on fossil fuel, what the, it is an energy intensive.
Production that is sourced from fossil fuel. Even the grid, it has to plug into the grid. And the components in the cars are all come through various like questionable practices that, like cobalt as an example. Cuz cobalt is in, it’s child slave labor gets cobalt out of the.
And it’s documented and everybody says it’s not part of my supply chain. I’m just buying the raw material, or I’m buying the final battery, so it’s not part of my issue. And so it’s, it seems, that’s part of the privilege. It’s putting blinders up to the thing that is inconvenient to your narrative.
And that also includes, and. And hiding that in virtue and say and maintaining a at least I am separate from this. I drive my electric car. I like, at least I am separate from this and I get I have solar panels on my roof. And does it, yeah. Is that an effect?
Is it doing something? Is it this, can we even have this discussion? No. Cuz it’s a social taboo to have a different opinion on this topic in the west, hence western.
Rashed: I’ll also just add to that they don’t even know how to effectively discard of those batteries and electric vehicles, for example, when it basically reaches its death.
They don’t know how to effectively discard it respond or recycle the quote or recycle it. Or recycle. They have no idea. But I wanna go back briefly to what you touched on just now with him in mj. And I, okay. It’s my attempt at being devil’s advocate here. So MJ brought up, where were you people when we were talking about coal?
Where were all you’ve used fossil fuels for all this time, and now all of a sudden you’re like bad, you can’t use more. But I’ve benefited it from it for these past, 30 years of my existence, let’s just say. And then my degenerations before me as well.
It, the reality is that they really didn’t. Testing any of the effects on fossil fuels in the environment to what, in the past maybe 40 or 50 years. So if we’re gonna go back to a certain point, the reality is nobody really knew what the effect was in the sense of there was no scientific evidence for it.
So there’s a certain point where I can be like, oh, okay, fine, I’ll give you a pass. In terms of the generations that actually used these, because that was the only option that was available, like that’s one thing that they knew. But now going forward, yes. I understand that you being critical of someone who’s used this privilege and used these energy sources for X amount of time, then it get to a point where it’s oh, look at all the scientific evidence.
We gotta do something different. But it’s still go. And so now you have actually hard evidence to say, listen, we’re screwing things up. We need to look for something different type of thing. But it’s still, they still, I still feel they still fall short within their privilege in the. They’re still using it.
It’s like you’re still using the same type of materials that you are advocating against to still push forth your agenda. Now bringing awareness to something is not a bad thing in my mind. They do it type of thing, but it’s not only the privilege that annoys me about the situation, it’s also the judgment.
In the sense of you’re as mj, so you’re still using it. I have to have no choice. What else am I gonna do? Am I gonna go to my, I don’t have a ranch in Idaho where I can go and figure out how to make my own freaking feel for stuff. Like I can’t do that. But the concept of belittling the rest of the world for still using these fossil fuels and these energy source.
To me it’s counterproductive to what you’re to achieve because no one’s getting to you, like who, no one cares what you have to say at that. In reality,
MJ: If we’re gonna be scientific about this, Can we add up all the carbon emission peoples? Because often the celebrities and the people promoting these like carbon free lifestyle, the fact is that in two weeks of their movement and travels, they do more than I will ever do in my lifetime.
Waseem: Yeah it’s the best, what’s the best is when they go to Davos to discuss the, it’s like when these ultimate rich all take their own private jets to go talk about and usually they, what they’re talking about when it comes to either let’s say environmental revolution or environmental, like even they would not even use the word revolution, but in terms of protecting the environment and.
Probably they use so much energy to get to this place, to have this meeting. And then their solutions are all like, top down in the sense that when these poor idiots, they don’t know, look at the population, they don’t know anything. Like who are you gonna talk to? Like this poor guy in Sub-Saharan Africa, what’s he get?
Like it’s very much it’s va you hit the word on the head, it belittles and. And the ones that hold the microphone, right? Like the, I think here’s probably where the, is, the issue is that with, in Western privilege, they hold the mic, right? They hold the mic and hold it, and they stand on the podium, let’s just say.
And so the, and maybe for the global south, the reason why is that, they haven’t they’re building their. They’re building their mic. They’re, they, and they’re using they’re at a different stage in terms of what they’re doing. And it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to follow the the westerns path, like we’re talking about the environment as an example.
But I know a big conversation from the South is that I don’t want the south to be like, I, it’s not a linear progression where then I’m going to become more like, In terms of me being the South it, it’s more like I’m gonna evolve in my own way. Like I’m going to pull from the culture, like the traditions and the things that I hold dear and evolve in a way that I see fit in the time that I, the way that I see it.
And so for, this is probably the thing about Western Prison says, oh, you’ll get. You’ll get to where we’re at. So one of the, even one of the arguments is like improving economic access. So the more people in the global south get more money, then they have more time to care about the environment because they’re not like just trying to live day to day.
And so that even, but even in that argument is, there is an assumption that like that there, there is a linear progression that leads to the. That leads to the west at the top of the podium or at the top of the thing
Rashed: right as the west sets the bar that will, we all have to measure everything by.
Because the west of the top dog, we lead everything.
MJ: There is a great irony, especially for the U S USA of. They got let me get this correct here. They got rid of truly environmental peoples, like people whose culture was all about like nature and environmental love and harmony kind of thing.
Oneness with nature. They got rid of them built up got rid of heaven, built a parking lot. And are now putting a soapbox and preaching about how to be environmental. I just wanna talk about there is a great irony in them removing like truly environmentalists and now preaching about
Waseem: environmentalism.
Can we just and even I think the social taboo is the protection against dealing and seeing that iron. Like it’s the protection that a society will put around itself in order to be like or to be like, now we don’t have to talk about it because this is the opinion that we should be sharing, right?
This is how we should do it and we’re better than now for doing this. And it, and this so like one of the things. As a third culture kid, I’ve found a lot of solace in the sort of the teachings of Krishna Muti, right? So like I read some I read that when I was younger, like probably when I was in my twenties.
And one of the premises of this is that why do you think you are an individual, right? Like, why do you actually think that you are separate from absolutely the environment or everybody. Because you are born in environment similarly, that in a similar way that like a flower, like a plant grows within soil.
And if you take away the soil, there is no plant, there’s no, it can’t happen. And it exists in relation to the soil. It doesn’t exist independently of itself. And every time you try to cut. The connections of something to the rest of its environment, it weathers, it dies. It’s not real any lo any longer.
It’s not actually the thing anymore. And so there’s always a constant connection between not, it, it becomes harder and harder to draw the line of where. An individual ends and the community or the environment or society begins, you can’t draw that line and say okay, these are individuals and then these are things.
That, that’s probably the constant debate and it’s the trick we play with ourselves to make us think that we are individuals separate from the environment. And that’s. Like tying that to this conversation. I feel like that is a mistake that is constantly happens in, in, in the West, where there is a difference, where the environment is something that needs to be, that is outside of you, that needs to be, either cared for or exploited, but it’s something that exists outside of you that ne that you have.
Connection too. And because of that, in both trying to protect it and in trying to exploit it, you are doing the same thing that you are you existing in the same problem from both sides?
And the only solution in this case. And then the only way is to actually realize that there is no difference between you and that. And then that kind of takes away a lot of the, like the vir even, because then even it’s between you and the other. So like when you like maji you keep driving around and you’re.
Your Cadillac and your Escalade and your, and you. I feel like you would be driving around in, in, in an Escalade.
MJ: Nothing less than a Hummer v8. They call V xr
Waseem: v8. Yeah. Like diesel drink
MJ: f150.
Waseem: Pickup truck. Yeah. Always Idle baby. Always idle.
Rashed: I’m happy with
Waseem: my bus pass. There is
MJ: also, speaking of these pickup trucks, there is also like this weird anti-environmental like I’m going to buy. The biggest F off pickup truck because there’s a group of people telling me not to do it. At least in America, there are those people as well in other places, but they’re much, they’re allowed to be Alberta stainless in America.
Rashed: You get like big time in Alberta. Know what I mean?
Waseem: Look. Yeah. Look at this, huh? And like I understand doing things to piss people. Like trolling, like I get that. I understand why people would do, and especially if you believe, and here’s probably the issue where you believe that those people are belittling you.
So if you think that this person is belittling me, because look at me, I’m so stupid, I can’t even understand the fact that climate change is real. This is my, my, my thing. I can’t even understand that climate change. You’re so stupid, man. You don’t even get that. We have I thought as a society, we’ve decided we’re not going to talk about this anymore because we all agree that climate change is real.
And so anyone that I, I’m just choosing this but like that now, that, now that’s the case. And we have decided in virtu, in our virtuous sort of council that climate change is real. Now all, now it’s. Now that’s where the, what’s it, the deplorables live. The deplorables live on the other side.
The al the alternatives, the extrem, the extremists. They don’t believe in this. They’re racist. They’re misogynists. They’re like, that’s what they say about these people, which further. Creates the divide, which is, ties us to the, the downfall of but also the apparentness of Western privilege because that argument could exist.
From that same group of people on the Virtue Council the Western Virtue Council applies to the rest of the world as well. And in more than just envi, the environment. The environment is one topic that we’ve just picked, we started with now. But the, I would love to hear you, your take on.
And we
MJ: haven’t really even delved into that because there’s for all of this awareness and information within these environmentalists or so-called environmentalists, like there’s real environmental activists and then there’s these like joker guys who we started the show with pulling stunts. I just want to be clear here.
I respect for the original, the OGs. True to the cause. I have respect for you guys, but these other people, they take away from your good efforts.
Waseem: Yeah, man, I’m with you. I don’t like I actually personally don’t think you should be cutting down for us. I maybe don’t have a nuanced understanding on why, but I just know that it takes forever to grow these things back.
And those things are valuable and they’re more valuable as they are, than they are as wood and as, furniture and as like what, whatever, you know what I. Yep. Yes. Absolutely.
Rashed: There’s, there, there’s a whole, there’s a whole concept here in BC at least. When it comes to the logging industry and people are like logging, they, it became a, in the past couple of years, this big debate about logging and how they were over logging and overcut type of thing, right?
And so that, that’s one thing. But then there is the concept of responsible logging where you do have to go and cut down a certain amount in a certain. In order for it to be able to basically regrow and be reborn. The problem is when you start doing too much of it because you like, the responsible thing to do is choose an area.
We’re gonna log here, for example, but we’re gonna have to replant and let that recover and just keep on moving, right? But for some time it, it ended up being not so responsible. And what ended up causing was issues in the environment. Parts of BC when it started getting regular rainfall or a bit higher than normal rainfall resulted in flooding because there was nothing to contain it at that point because there wasn’t enough trees to contain the flow of water or to actually suck up the water wild while it’s going into the land type of thing.
So even still, if we’re gonna talk about what, what seemed just brought up, cutting down rainforests and cutting down trees and that kind of stuff, there are responsible ways to do it that has been in practice for some time. Just for some reason some people probably got greedy and stopped doing it responsibly.
Waseem: And there’s nuance and you can, I can understand that too. So I I, I am sympathetic to, to, to. Parts of the I’m sympathetic to the argument, right? I’m sympathetic. I am sympathetic to the argument. And I but I believe that the, not the problem with the argument, but the problem with the unexamined argument.
It’s does, is that it’s steeped in this, like it’s steeped in this concept of Western privilege. And so of my question was to extend this to the que to the ideas of gender and race as well. Since we’ve talked about the environment and there are, there have been, let’s say a proliferation of ideas coming from the West that are being.
Exported into the exported or promoted or I can’t probably like one of those words into the sort of the global south that also serve to further to further enforce the self-identity of the West as. Power, virtue power in the world. So when it comes to I am so accepting, I’m so accepting, and look at you, you can’t accept shit, right?
So like women as an example, right? Like women are oppressed all over the world. Yeah. This idea that women are the, are oppressed absolutely everywhere in the world. And it’s only through fighting in the west that they’ve been able to achieve some rights.
This is a social taboo topic, right? Like in, in the West you can’t you can’t be like, I don’t think, like you can’t, Andrew, tape this. See what happens when you ha, when you, Andrew tape this to this discussion when you try to have a different opinion on this discussion, you become Andrew Tate, right?
Like you, you and people talk about you the way they talk about anate. So like I don’t have to say anything. I don’t have to say what I agree or disagree with someone else has. I just point to the example, right? So a agitate has them. That’s what happens to people that have a different opinion on this topic.
And so hence this, the idea of the social taboo being the sort of the guard against actually having to examine claims. Allow you to to further strengthen your idea of yourself as a force of virtue. And that’s probably easy for the west to to be like, it’s just so much easier to be a force of virtue than to then to actually turn around and be self-critical and say, oh no, you know what?
Maybe maybe we are continuing the mistakes of the. Maybe we actually haven’t learned anything. Because I, that’s the idea is before, yeah, we, we were the architects of the transatlantic slave trade and like we were this and we were that, and now we’re not. And with race we were, and now we’re not.
But then you go I don’t know if you’re actually are not, and you’ve just changed the clothing of the issue. That’s, and I, we can see that because we. TKs because we are third culture kids, because we can have an ear in the global south and experience the global south in a way that if you live on this virtue pedestal, you cannot hear it.
You can’t hear it because you’re too busy inflating
Rashed: your ego. But there are some realities that are blatant, that it’s not necessarily privileged in nature. I. There’s realities where if you’re living in Canada or the United States in a lot of South America, let’s just say for ex, if we’re gonna stick to this side of the world a lot of things that let’s shift women, for example, that can just do every normal day things that not necessarily is considered to be as acceptable or even at their, at someone’s.
Disposal to be able to do if you’re living in certain countries in the East. One of the biggest things, if we’re gonna, women’s a huge topic, obviously we’re gonna talk, we’re gonna talk about things like oh geez contraceptives and that kind of stuff for women.
Waseem: My, my point is, My point with that is that the measuring stick is defined by
Rashed: the west.
No, absolutely. Like I know that. And the thing like,
Waseem: go ask these, do they want this? Like maybe they see this as a breakdown of social of breakdown of soil social ties. Like this is a breakdown of social ties. If we ha if this is the situation, we don’t want that, we don’t wanna import that.
I could see that I’m not making these arguments. And for others, I’m just saying that you. It’s using the same measuring stick. And that’s the whole privilege. The privilege is I get to define what the measuring stick is, right? Like that, like I, me in the west, you can, so the
Rashed: point is if you’re gonna use the we, yes.
The Western privilege the Western measuring stick is also the one that’s being used because in a sense it’s perceived as being the one, the most advanced, like the longest measuring stick that you can use in terms of where you started as rights for certain people and where it’s ended up type of thing.
And there’s always gonna be, In between. So that part I completely understand, but how I, what I don’t get is how do you change those tides? How do you change that, that measuring stick? Because again, like we go back, we said this many a times in the, in, in previous episodes, it’s American pop culture, for example, is what rules the world for the most part in terms of influence as to like music and.
Movies and TV and that kind of stuff. So then whatev whatever is portrayed in those That, that is the measuring stick that just oh, look, they do this in American movies. Why aren’t we doing this type of thing?
Waseem: I, that’s what I’m thinking about, et cetera. My crazy uncle. I’m thinking about I, I like my crazy uncle being like, oh, they’re trying, like one of the, one of the controversies in the In the Middle East was when was, has supposed to do with Disney and Netflix.
So Disney and Netflix have either, I think it’s in one of the cartoons, either men kissing or same sex relationships or things along those lines. And then like I think it was like some countries are like, Hey, Keep that shit to yourself. We don’t want that shit. We don’t want that here.
And there was a very po and it’s very, it was actually quite popular. Like it’s a popular in the sense that a lot of people supported that same idea in the sense that, yeah, we don’t want that shit here. Yeah. Take that. I get that outta here. And that’s just an example of Western sort of media culture Western media and then Disney like doubling.
Oh no. Using that as an opportunity to, for the brand to be like the hero of the narrative, right? And so then, and then you’re cra then it’s crazy because then you’re dealing with the tendency for psychopathic companies to behave like psychopaths. Cuz like now they wanna be leaders and so they see it as a way to strengthen their own position as well.
And these are complicated topics. It just gets cra like, that’s where it really starts to get like crazy. And I think it’s easy for if you’re on one side of the ar of the argument or the topic. And let’s say the western privilege side. So like the virtue side, you go, okay, Disney’s a hero.
Yeah. Woo. Like dead. Yeah. Like that’s it, like fighting. And when I, while. Even that, let’s say because in that case, that’s empathy towards the L G T Q like that’s where that virtue sort of sense comes from. But then you go, okay, does it extend? Okay, fine. Okay.
Like even if I were to accept. That you are just so empathetic that you really just care about everyone. You want us all just to get along right, and you want it all to be okay and you want everything to be wonderful. What, where my cynicism comes into play is why do you draw the line? Like, why do you stop there?
Okay, you wanna save the environment, okay, you wanna save the L G B T. Okay, wonderful. You wanna save all the colored people, the people of color in the world, okay? You wanna save all the women? But then why does it stop at if you go to the, you literally can’t even say Uyghurs.
Like you literally can’t say it because you’ll get canceled. Like and all of these companies, they can’t say that. They can’t say where the cobalt comes from. They can’t, they don’t admit what the situations like, like why does it stop? So that’s where my cynicism comes into play and I go, yeah, because and hence the product of privilege, because yeah, it’s easy.
You pick the easy topics like you pick the ones that society has deemed as the easy ones where you don’t actually have to do anything where there isn’t actually something that you have to sacrifice and give up or change, if you really can and I. We’re, we are like, the cobots is an example.
Like we are and just in case like we are a part of that. Like we are literally recording anything. Like we are recording on things that were made using, like child labor, right? Like I, I can’t even remove myself. I can’t be too hypocrite. I hope I’m not too hypocritical to even think that I am better because I’m thinking the opposite of that.
Cuz I’m, I am questioning that narrative, but I am questioning that narrative and that, but that doesn’t make me better. We’re just all we’re all in this mess together and there’s not anyone that can sit higher in terms of where this mess is. And that’s what I mean about Western privilege. I go, okay, hey guys, come down.
Okay. And let’s deal with some of these issues instead of you sitting up there and telling me that I need to watch a movie in order to fix this problem. A movie that you’re selling, by the way, right? Like, how about you come down here and let’s sit down. Oh, your
Rashed: documentary’s on, on, on veganism and why you should become a vegan.
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s actually,
Waseem: yeah. Yeah. Food. There you go. Yeah. Let’s deal with The’s another one. Nuances another one. Because how many times has like the west. Dismissed ideas that come from the east of global south, because, it comes from them.
Rashed: I need to, I wanna make a point and say that because everything we’re talking about is from our lens.
And our lens is Western based because we all MJ doesn’t live in the West right now, but we’re highly influenced by living in a Western society for the most. So everything that we’re talking about and everything that we’re seeing, and we’re perceiving everything from the western privileged perspective.
But on the flip side MACDs on the flip side I really don’t thi I think we’re not giving as much credit to other societies around the world that have stronger characters where they don’t necessarily give a flying shit about this Western privileged per. I said her before about American politics, for example, when there’s in an American election going on Russia.
Do you mean Putin? No, actually not. Absolutely not. No. I’m actually thinking, I’m thinking countries in Asia. I’m actually thinking about countries in Asia where they don’t give a flying shit about what the United States, how. Western culture perceives them and what the measuring
Waseem: stick should be.
And this is what’s connecting the south. It’s it seems like it’s the, it’s actually like the sort of, this narrative is for, is fueling this connection that is happening in the Globes. Cuz like you connect I, and so I feel like Ra I hold two, I hold both my, the Western and the southern.
Parts in me, cuz I, I i, code switching, right? Like it’s easy for Yeah. Like it’s, I don’t even think about it. And so when you, when I go to the south, the global south, and I’m in the global south, we’re all having the it’s actually easy to connect with multiple members of the global south, or even if you’re from the Middle East or if you’re from Latin America or if you’re from Africa or Asia it’s like a. You share probably 80% of the same opinion on when it comes to the concept of Western privilege. Like we’ll all be sitting there and have a dis a conversation about the west.
Rashed: For me, like when you talk about that in terms of connecting with those, if you’re in the global south, or in my case when I talk about traveling to different parts of the world it ev for me, things start to align.
If I were to go anywhere in South America actually I forget that even starting from Mexico down. And then if I were to start going in Europe from about just a tip of Eastern Europe going further east The similarities in terms of like cultural norms, for example. Between and then going into the Middle East and African countries and stuff like that.
The similarities I see culturally speaking in terms of etiquette, in terms of manners, in terms of just basic food
Waseem: etiquette
Rashed: community, like the concept of you enter my, so I’m gonna talk about when we start going in Europe and you start getting to about Greece and going east. Actually, even the Italians are the same way, actually.
Don’t ever think you can walk into an Italians house and they’re not gonna. Same thing with Arabs, same thing with ties, same thing with Filipinos, same thing. I don’t know about the Chinese, to be honest with you cause I really haven’t been to a Chinese home. But the Japanese, they’ll serve you something and then you go to Latin America.
It’s the exact same type of concept. You can’t enter someone’s home without being fed or being watered, quote unquote, of some sort. But then I find the disconnect happens when, sorry, white people, but a lot of white people, you’re not offered anything. You’re like, this is weird to me. But then they come into my home and I.
What do you, and or I don’t even say, do you want something? I start doing something like, what are you doing? I’m like, I have to offer you something. You can’t just enter my home and me not offer you something. Like it’s, so I see there, there’s a lot more connection in that sense where.
A lot, even though there’s this huge geographic difference in between where a lot of these cultures are that we’re talking about, there seems to be some kind of basis where I would feel is a better measuring stick for determining things like respect and honor and simple basic manners in etiquette as opposed to a lot of what is used in North America, for example.
It’s. It’s it’s I don’t know. I find it to be quite shocking sometimes when I see how little people do for their guests in their home. And this is just like a simple basic, like simple, basic concept of society.
Waseem: How southern of you.
Rashed: I know, right?
But it’s a reality that I’ve experienced many times.
Waseem: I think we’ve touched on a bunch of topics when it comes to like recognizing and acknowledging Western privilege in discussions when to the, in relation to a lot of these social issues, we didn’t necessarily go deep into each particular one. But we, I think, and just to tie it to our perspective as third culture kids.
I think we have an end to be positive. I think we have a special role to play in bridge, maybe bridging this gap because I, cuz like I, I’m not saying well, we should just be done with the West because these guys are just so privileged. Like I’m not saying we should, because. Would make me fall folly to the same problem that I am.
I’m trying to avoid, like I would go into the same pattern. And so what I’m saying is that TKs, due to their ability to be able to see to see this maybe on both sides, on, on like different sides and see the vastness of this discussion have a very important. So even though you feel like you got no home and you feel like you don’t belong anywhere, you also belong everywhere.
And so you can build a a bridge. You can build a bridge to close this gap so that there is more. And I think we’re doing it by having this discussion right now and broadcasting this discussion. But it’s also I think, empowering other third culture individuals to. To
have this discussion with whoever you’re having it with. So like when you’re talking with the West, with Western privilege, you can say, look, we don’t want everything that you guys are exporting to us, but also when you’re talking in the global south, you can go man, not everything that they’re exporting is full of shit, right?
So like you can have both those discussions at the same time. With two different people and they like, and still be true. And you’re still true. Because one of the things that you do have is the nuance. Like I think that’s one of the key moves the super skills that you, you have as a result of you being a third culture kid is it gives you these super skills.
And one of them is that nuance that allows you a superhero move to be like, This is here. This is here. Okay. Maybe we can try to find our commonalities. Maybe we can try to see the point of the thing without actually seeing the thing first. Maybe we can not, like not, or other, and so I think that’s a, a, a.
Something I would like to promote and specifically say,
MJ: I’ll just say playing devil’s advocate. Basically what you’re saying is you’re forced to play devil’s advocate wherever you go all the time to these people. You have to explain those people to those people. You have to explain these people.
Like you’re always gonna be playing the devil’s advocate. It’s a lot of fun, but it also gets tiring.
Waseem: Yeah. But you were not alone. You were not alone. I think even having the identity of third culture, like even the label itself, a lot of this, okay the label.
One of the issues, or one of the exports of Western privilege right now is like what things are called. And so the labeling of things, right? So men are women are men. Gender is a construct. It’s not real. It’s not, doesn’t exactly exist. We make it up. That’s one of those also like highly dripping in virtue positions that is just not flying in the global south.
It’s not. That’s not and it’s not because the global south are too stupid to get it. They totally understand what you’re saying. They just don’t accept it. Like they’re like you, what you’re trying to Not in relation to that, but in a separate note on that, maybe the label of third culture and owning, because before we started talking, before I, we stumbled on the idea of a third culture kid.
It’s not particularly popular in the lexicon. In the in it’s not like every, everyone I tell, I, I do a podcast called Third Culture Convos. They go, what’s the third culture? And so I always have to explain what that is. And so I, and I, it’s rare that I found someone that like knows the answer, which means it’s not very popular in, in society, which means that maybe in owning the label or accepting that label, it’ll then make me feel like I’m not alone and having this discussion and being the bridge to the gap that exists between the west and the and the global.
I
Rashed: would say one of the most effective bridges that would be a way to do that is movies in TV shows. Because movies and TV shows, they, what, generally speaking, they either portrayed societal realities of wherever, whichever country or general culture it’s portraying or they also fight.
Or they have a certain activism, quote unquote, against certain injustices that are viewed in their respective societies. And I say movies or tv because of the fact that for such a long time it’s been American television, American cinema, that’s an influenced what people watch. But then you go to other parts of the world and Throughout the Middle East and parts of Europe, for example, Turkish TV series are huge.
Like they’re the shit type of thing. They double them into Arabic or they do the subtitles or they double it into Greek or whatever it is. But it’s, if it’s one of the most effective ways, if you’re trying to put forward some type of argument for either criticizing a society or wanting to.
Venerate something that’s nice or good in your society type of thing. The issue that I see with this is that anything that’s not from the United States, for example, like if you want to have this bridge happen in North America, anything that comes from outside of the United States, even Canadian movies, is considered to be an independent film for the most part.
So then how do you get it in, how do you get it in onto people’s TV screens or on, into movie theaters type of thing. You have to pay for that. And the other question that I have related to that would be do some of these movie makers for example, do they even care enough to wanna even bridge that gap?
Because for them, their reality is, I’m a Turkish filmmaker. My reality is I’m making shitloads of money, releasing my movies in Turkey and in Greece and throughout the middle. Who cares about the United States? Why would I care about them and what the hell they’re, how they’re perceiving me. I have my own thing to worry about.
Palestinian filmmakers, for example, a lot of them, they have to do it outside of Israel Palestine or they do it in Israel itself. Quite a few famous actors that are in a lot of Israeli films, like they’re considered to be Israeli productions, but they’re basically the token Arab in the movie. And some of them are quite good.
Like some of the movies are quite good but again, Outside of that realm of whatever message they’re trying to portray it’s kind of niche when you compare it to the juggernaut, that’s the American film and television industry, and the only one that robs it is Bollywood.
It’s the reality of it.
Waseem: I think. I think, but that, I think that’s changing. I think with social, like with not, okay. Obviously with the rise of the internet, but also more technological ability to process video. There’s more and more short films. There’s more and more like you could just put it on YouTube.
Like you can, even though YouTube is, you could
Rashed: seek it out. You could, if someone can seek these things out, if they really want. Yeah. Yeah. And you can
Waseem: promote, put. Yeah. Yeah. You have to like, and like the arts are exactly like, this is exactly what the arts are for. I think the arts are like including film and it’s, to reflect meaning in society, right? Like it’s to, yeah. It’s to try to capture in a, in, visual audio. Form this thing. And I think there’s more and more opportunities for that because there’s less and less gatekeepers for for these things, right?
Because of the democratization of technology, let’s say. It’s, it’s not where it needs to be, but it’s getting there. Like it’s better than it was. Like I like that that I could say. And like it’s and I think I always admire more the more and more people that like, Attempt to tackle these things like from an artistic perspective, the peoples that attempt to tackle, that’s I respect that.
I like I probably, I respect that even more so than. What the answer is, like what you get, like what you come up with, right? And especially if it you exist in the question, because it’s a question that’s way more interesting than the answer, right? There’s a thing like questions open your minds answers, close them.
And you want to keep your like, so living in questions keeps you open. And it’s, and it helps with that judgment part, right? In terms of judgment and privilege because, and judging things because you exist in the questions, not in the definitive answers. And that’s probably something that I wanna dismantle from societies and then from yourself and from myself, like personally, right?
I judging someone because of their opinions. Whether they’re on the west or the south, right? Is something that like I, you know I strive to not do, right? I try, like sometimes it’s automatic, right? And then, so you gotta notice it to like kick it like, so that you can actually engage with those style with them.
You know what I mean?
I think what I wanted to. If there’s no other comments, I kinda wanna wrap up. I wanna thank everyone for joining us and exploring the concept of Western privilege and its impact on the perception of the West as a force for virtue. We’ve had a really, I think, meaningful discussion and very interesting discussion on environmental activism, on race and gender a bit.
And we hope it’s inspired you to reflect on your own experience and the ways in which privilege may affect our global conversations. Our aim here, Always just our aim has always been here to bring together diverse perspectives and foster understanding across cultures. And we believe that acknowledging and addressing Western privilege is an essential step towards creating a more exclu inclusive and equitable dialogue.
We want, I really want to thank our listeners for tuning in and sharing with us. Like this conversation with us. I hope it brings you value. Your support means the world to us. Please don’t forget to subscribe, share, leave, review, and to help us reach even more people with these conversations. This is with CM, MJ and Rash signing off from another episode of Third Culture Compost.
And still, next time, stay curious, stay minded, and keep bridging the gaps between cultures. Take care everyone. Peace. Peace.