Freedom or Privilege?

 Freedom and privilege may appear similar on the surface—both grant us the ability to act—but they diverge fundamentally in their nature and consequences.

Freedom is progressive. When we exercise true freedom, we take a step forward into possibility. We move beyond our circumstances without requiring someone else to step back. Freedom expands the circle of human dignity; it creates space where there was none before. The formerly oppressed person who gains freedom and uses it to build, create, and flourish exemplifies this principle. Their advancement doesn't demand another's diminishment.

Privilege, however, operates through a different logic—one rooted in hierarchy and reciprocity of harm. Privilege isn't simply having advantages; it becomes problematic when it functions as permission to replicate the very dynamics that once hurt us. This is where privilege reveals its manipulative character: it positions someone at the receiving end of actions they cannot refuse or escape.

The most insidious form of privilege emerges when we weaponise our pain. Having suffered under someone's power, we may feel entitled—even justified—to wield similar power over others once we gain position. "I endured this, so you must too" becomes the unspoken creed. This is privilege masquerading as fairness, trauma dressed up as tradition. The hazed student who becomes the hazer, the abused who becomes abusive, the marginalised who marginalise others once they gain a foothold—these are examples of privilege operating as cyclical trauma.

This distinction matters because it reveals that liberation is incomplete when it simply rotates who holds power within an oppressive system. True freedom demands we break the cycle entirely, refusing to perpetuate the same patterns that wounded us. Freedom asks: How can I move forward without pushing others down? Privilege asks: Now that it's my turn, why shouldn't others endure what I did?

The path forward requires recognising this difference in ourselves. When we gain new possibilities, we face a choice: Will we use them to expand freedom for all, or to secure privilege that maintains the hierarchy of harm? Only the former represents genuine progress; the latter merely changes which hands hold the weapons.