It's a worthwhile riff off the Peggy McIntosh piece. I'm caught by a few of these passages that express a vague hopelessness and the explicit grasping for rationalization in the face of guilt/self-awareness. ...the repetition of the phrase "I congratulate myself..." "I feel like a bastard every time I see it, but I don't take it off the wall. I did something, briefly, and here's my proof. Also, it reminds me to guilt myself. I congratulate myself on being a good person." "Need to put the finishing touches on an essay displaying the self-awareness that totally excuses me from being complacent in the system of extortion and slavery that produces most of my toys. As long as you know your ironic t-shirts are produced by child labor, that's cool, right? It's just a worldlier irony." While the author could be mocking the attitude, my sense is he's processing it as a real problem. I glanced at other parts of his blog and it's a bit more painful to read. Granted it was a small sample, but he relies an bitterness a bit much.
Here is the Peggy McIntosh piece for people who are unfamiliar with it. I don't know whether this is a riff off of Peggy McIntosh's list of privileges or not. I found this author to be showing that this version of a privileged life is pretty awful. I'm caught by a few of these passages that express a vague hopelessness and the explicit grasping for rationalization in the face of guilt/self-awareness.
I think the entire piece is a fiction intending to show hopelessness and emptiness and unhappiness in this so-called life of privilege. It's quite tongue-in-cheeky and full of mock self-awareness, but the picture of privilege that he is deliberately presenting seems to me to be a lonely sad one. ixnar, do you think it is memoir or fiction?