More often than not, I come across the word being used in all the worst ways possible, in a derogatory manner intended for the other, to make them realise their impudence. Since my childhood, I too have been a victim of using it as a weapon to justify my shortcomings and make the one in front of me realise how naive they are in their understanding of reality, immune to the naivety of myself, for blaming the other for something they inherently didn’t ask for and didn’t have the ‘privilege’ of controlling. Nobody has the ‘privilege’ of controlling the environment in which they are born.
Therefore, I have observed that the word is heavily used as a means of envy and jealous comparison to free oneself from the burden they carry, rather than as a tool to gain more nuance and understanding in general. Yes, it is essential to use the term where needed, to scrutinise the systemic failures of the society we ourselves have constructed, to point out the issues that need attention, and, accordingly, to make revisions. But it is rather stripped of its value in these current times for nothing but a spear smeared with venom to take someone down.
In conclusion, I hope that the word receives the justice it deserves and isn’t used only to blaspheme any particular sect or community or a person or anyone in that regard. At the crux of it, isn’t it also a ‘privilege’ to be a human being, to feel the emotions that we almost always can’t fathom, let alone articulate and express, to live and experience all that the compassionate yet cruel world has to offer us?