moral agendas

People have never really stopped trying to morally reform me because they believe I don’t really understand issues of racism properly, or because they believe I was born into unfair advantage. But, if you take a look at my father’s experiences, as he tells them to me, there was nothing particularly advantageous about his upbringing. One might say he had been set up for failure. That he didn’t completely fail was to his credit. I have encountered a lot of jealous and resentful attitudes among those who are uneducated and desire to have status, in Australia. They want to believe that colonial life has given me all sorts of unfair advantages, that were denied to them, for having to live “moral”, normal lives. The fact is, unless you love war, wildness and nature, you will not have obtained all that many “unfair advantages” due to being brought up as I was.

Certainly, I wasn’t set up in life to have any particular economic advantages, not is you compare my life to that of the average Westerner of my same age group, who had access to more material valuables, was trained to believe they ought to have a career, and so on. I was quite literally brought up very wild. But, people prefer the image that I lazed around and had all sorts of delicacies bought to me — and consequently, that they need to teach me a moral lesson.