Humans play status games. All the time. We take things that are essential components of survival and we attach those things in weird ways to societal status, and then we argue.
What we tend to argue about is how the status symbol is applied. What we should be arguing about is why that particular component of survival is attached to that status symbol in the first place.
In other words – we put things behind gates, and then argue endlessly about who should and should not be allowed through those gates. What we should be doing is tearing those gates down.
We don’t do that because whoever owns the gates spends a lot of time convincing you that the reason the whole situation is bad is because someone else is keeping the gates badly or whatever – not because of the gates themselves.
It makes sense, in its way. If I own a pair of gates and everyone who doesn’t pass through them makes half as much income as everyone who does, I don’t want people questioning those gates. Those gates are worth a lot of money to me, because I can get away with charging a lot of money to go through them! And if people get mad at me for letting the wrong people through, or even for making that decision in a bad way, that’s awesome for me. Because as long as people are arguing about that, nobody’s even entertaining the idea that maybe the gates just shouldn’t be there.
Whenever you’re mad about what you perceive to be injustice, see if you can move your anger upstream a little. Find the root causes of the injustice – and not just the gates that conceal them.
The Opportunity Machine 