I've added more to each each of the replies I posted last night so I'm not sure if you've seen the rest of them, but I don't think we're really in disagreement here. You're absolutely correct that "privilege" is too general of a term to fully envelope this discussion in its entirety, but I'm not trying to speak to everything at once. I apologize if I'm not being very clear. It's just a difficult area for me to navigate.

"Perhaps in America it may have worked at some point in time but when you take it over to Europe then it generally falls apart. The really poor people over this way are the Eastern block Europeans and they are ghostly white -- so it all falls apart then."

This is why I pointed out that what we generally see as racism or sexism is often really a class issue. Even when we still had institutional slavery in America there were some women and people of color who managed to accumulate considerable wealth, which, to at least some extent, immunized them from the injustices others suffered in that environment, including poor whites.

I'm not particularly educated on the situation in Europe so I defer to your knowledge in that regard.

"Then slavery. What happens when we've all been enslaved to some country at some point in our history -- mostly white on white. American culture is so backward and often forgets to take into account the wider world."

I won't go into it in detail here, unless you just want to, but I believe I'm of the opinion that we all already have been enslaved by capitalism, so race and gender don't really factor in, other than in those individual cases I mentioned earlier, wherein sometimes some people discriminate, but I feel like when discussing it from this perspective we shouldn't focus on that, because it becomes a different issue.

I don't have much to say about your assessment that American culture is backwards... I don't think I could find ground to stand on to disagree even if I wanted to. I've seen it first hand for a long time.

"[...but] remember, there will always always be someone that wants more for themselves. When we achieve true equality then the balance would be so frail that anyone straying from the thought-norm can change the balance of the general goals."

This is one of the parts where I need to emphasize that in the edits to earlier replies I feel like I've come to the conclusion that equality isn't the term I should use here. Your points about the difference between equality and a level playing field do resonate with me so I want to be sure to clarify that before going farther.

No one is equal to anyone else in general terms. We all have strengths and weaknesses unique to us to varying degrees, so the term true equality is a bit of a misnomer and I acknowledge that. I think we're more or less in agreement on that, but If I'm wrong keep correcting me :D.

However, I also agree that someone always wants more. This is where I get to try to split hairs again. I believe that's because that's the nature of things in this moment, as well as historically, but I question if that's the way it has to continue forever.

Case in point. I eat meat. I don't like the idea of killing for it, but I would if that was the only way to get it and there was nothing else to feed that particular craving, but we're moving into an era where we won't have to kill for it. We can synthesize it now.

There will be people who continue to do it the old way for decades, maybe centuries to come, but it's possible someday all meat will come from a lab. The people born into that era will have no need to hunt or kill for it, thus a new norm emerges. I'm hopeful that greed follows a similar path. If we get to a point where the norm is everyone has what they need, I think the wanting more will begin to dissipate.

Will it ever go away entirely? Probably not, and it probably shouldn't. Like it or not I have to admit greed has been the driving force behind many, if not most of our greatest achievements in one way or another. However, that doesn't mean it needs to run as rampant as it currently does.

I don't know if any of this tracks or not. I'm just a guy trying to figure out how to move forward through the world and one of the few plots of ground I feel like I can stand on is that I can't really take a hard stand on much of anything. Every time I do it seems I end up having to go back and re-evaluate based on new information so I find it best to be as fluid as possible when it comes to most things.

Thanks for the engagement! I'm really enjoying the opportunity to take all this in.