Everyone in a community should feel a sense of belonging. Yet, there are pervasive biases that can make others feel unwelcome. The Winter Dreams by F. Scott Fitzgerald offered us a glimpse of some of those biases, such as how we are never satisfied, causing crises in the process. Unfortunately, those crises have disadvantaged many due to wars, racism, slavery, colonization, and the most recent social upheaval of our time: climate change, to name a few. To put a stop to those crises, we must escape this evolutionary glitch where our communities tend to place the privileged over the rest of nature, race, gender, and even society itself.
Across taxonomy classes, it has been demonstrated that many animals—including humans—tend to want to feel that they are in charge. The sociological term for that is known as agency. We can see this in action when Dexter, the main character, decided to want to quit being a golf caddy. He said, “I don’t want to caddy anymore” (1) before arguing that he was too old. But, Dexter was not even fourteen; he was young. As everyone’s favorite caddy, he easily earned a monthly stipend of which the amount will not be made elsewhere. Indeed, it was quite a folly of Dexter to quit the job. But, to understand his behavior, we can see it from the perspective of agency. Many times over, those who are under the agency of others have no choice but to be put under the mercy of their superiors. The story recounted how Miss Jones comically treated her nurse, Hilda, to the point that Dexter “could not resist the monstrous conviction that the little girl was justified in beating the nurse.” Dexter himself was once exhorted by the caddy master “what you standing there like a dummy for?” Not only that the question is disparaging, but it also highlights the fact that Dexter does not have an agency in his work. This lack of agency morphing into a lack of respect must be among the reasons why Dexter decided to quit. Indeed, such a strongly implied hierarchical structure can push one to want to increase their agency.
There are many ways to increase the scale of one’s agency, the surest path of which is by being wealthy. To that end, the privileged few like Dexter can use their cultural and/or social capital to an advantage. For example, Dexter increased his wealth by owning the largest string of laundries in town at an extremely young age. The capital to fund such an enterprise was not obtained from his prosperous father but was borrowed from “his college degree and his confident mouth” (2). But the fact is that, it is very unlikely for people with no or fewer capital under their belt to be able to borrow money from outside sources at such a young age, let alone be financially sound before their twenty-seventh birthday. Without a doubt, private wealth ownership has always been concentrated in the hands of the few. Many government policies in place have deliberately been made to gatekept specific people. In a way, whether intended or not, that has advanced the legacy of racism and widened the wealth gap. This neglect of the greater to the advantage of the few is not unique in America. While in the past this would mean European settlers exploiting enslaved people and freshly appropriated lands from the native communities; today, a great many developing countries like China, Indonesia, and India are all-out to catch up with their developed peers by committing to horrendous exploitation without much regard for the Earth if at all in their pursuit to advance their agency.
But the desire to command an agency is not unique amongst men and nations and states alike. It would be naive to assume that this obsession with agency has left women fully innocent in perpetuity. The text recounts how the-most-beautiful Judy Jones was concerned to a great deal that her boyfriend “was poor as a church-mouse” (5). She must have thought that her beauty is an honored privilege on which she can capitalize to find the most well-rounded man to mate. Although to fall into that is acceptable on an individual level, our society as a whole must not risk either overvaluing or soft-pedaling others simply by privileges, such as education, race, skin color, nationality; nor outward appearances such as religion, sexual orientation, accent and so forth. However, those biases are so hard to overcome that we were rightly reminded not to judge a book by its cover, cliché regardless. Yet, in a world increasingly global, everyone must be afforded the same rights and the same sense of belonging in a community. Throughout history, a lot of injustice has been pushed on those who are different. But, we can end this cycle.
The truth is, those sharing the same values, grew up in the same neighborhoods, and even having the same skin tone can still feel left out of a community, let alone those having different frequencies. Our modern society is still learning to live with each other in peace. Even Dexter—himself so financially accomplished through his own labor, and his dad owned the second-best grocery store in town—felt like a trespasser when he played golf with the rank of Mr. Hart, Mr. T. A. Hedrick, and Mr. Sandwood. He had to ensure himself that it was not necessary “to remark that he had once carried Mr. Hart’s bag” (3) when he was still a 14-years-old golf cady. It’s lucky that Dexter can get richer through his labor. Indeed, being rich is something that we can always try. But, many of us may have a degree of insecurity from something that is completely out of control, such as skin color, stature, age, sexual orientation, family background and so forth. Yet, society must graciously function beyond such superficial marking so that no one feels disempowered for being different, that no dissenting voice should be ignored, and that social cohesion shall be maintained for the better. The framework governing our communities must be written to suit all of its members, not only those most politically active or the richest 1% benefactors. Such a framework should be designed to see a human as a human, assessing us not by our skin colors but their effects on other people, their communities, nature and the Earth.
A society where everyone feels a sense of belonging is essential if we want to respond hand in hand to our time’s most pressing challenges. A community should be a place where its members can feel a warm interpersonal relationship regardless of capital or privileges. Make no mistake: we cannot deny nor dismantle anyone’s privilege. Yet, we cannot afford to value some humans over the others. We must have an open-ended, adaptive framework written by, from, and for those in the community where people are assessed by their effects on other people, their communities, nature and the Earth. Otherwise, we will continue to lack the moral compass in our relationship with one another if we still judge one another by their outward appearances, capital or privileges.