Imagine for a moment that you have to climb to the very top of a large, daunting mountain with the goal of eventually seeing the world from a new perspective. It is not that simple though because you are also unable to use any equipment or information to guide you in the task. Conversely, there is another person who, before beginning the exact same climb, already has an extensive knowledge provided to them for the venture, and additionally, they have high-tech equipment to make the journey easier. They have done this before. Obviously, this would be rather unfair. While one party receives the advantage of knowing how to successfully get from Point A to Point B, the other must run into obstacles from the very start before reaching the peak.
…show more content…
When a thousand people possess the privilege that allows them to freely reach the top, another two-thousand will still find themselves scrambling to take the first step up the mountain, completely out of control. In the first of John Berger’s essays compiled in Ways of Seeing, he utilizes the subject of art to discuss the dangers of allowing this sense of powerlessness to consume every aspect of our being, as those who reign superior ritually subdue us. He writes, “A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history.” (Berger, 1972) With this statement, Berger actively highlights a tremendous injustice in society found so deep-seated within the fact that various subsets of people are restricted in gaining their respective freedoms in even the smallest corners of the world. Even by simply acknowledging a relation between elitists and the ‘average’ person in the artistic world, the recognition of life’s other inequalities seeps through, one of which can be located under the subject of women’s
When a thousand people possess the privilege that allows them to freely reach the top, another two-thousand will still find themselves scrambling to take the first step up the mountain, completely out of control. In the first of John Berger’s essays compiled in Ways of Seeing, he utilizes the subject of art to discuss the dangers of allowing this sense of powerlessness to consume every aspect of our being, as those who reign superior ritually subdue us. He writes, “A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history.” (Berger, 1972) With this statement, Berger actively highlights a tremendous injustice in society found so deep-seated within the fact that various subsets of people are restricted in gaining their respective freedoms in even the smallest corners of the world. Even by simply acknowledging a relation between elitists and the ‘average’ person in the artistic world, the recognition of life’s other inequalities seeps through, one of which can be located under the subject of women’s