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Thread: How Big is Your Bubble?

  1. #21
    Moderator Float On's Avatar
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    I got 37
    Have to ask...did Branson show up on everyone's quiz? I should get bonus Hillbilly points for living here 29 years!
    Last edited by Float On; 3-13-18 at 2:02pm.
    Float On: My "Happy Place" is on my little kayak in the coves of Table Rock Lake.

  2. #22
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alan View Post
    I don't know about bae but in my case, hillbilly isn't the right word, growing up I heard multiple references to 'poor white trash' directed towards my extended family, and that is probably more accurate as a label. I grew up in the kind of poor, stunted environment that made it necessary for me to leave home at 17 because I knew it was the only way to find and perhaps have the ability to grasp the slightest opportunity.

    The military was my salvation, on the one hand it required me to subvert myself to higher authority and go into harm's way upon someone else's whim, but it also encouraged me to be all I could be and provided training and educational opportunities I would have missed otherwise.

    I get a kick now out of the occasional inference that those of us who finally enjoy a solid middle class or higher background are only able to do so because of our "privilege". I think the tight little enclosed bubble they enjoyed throughout life didn't prepare them to see what it takes from others not hindered by early comforts to get to that point. I've never heard that term used by anyone who doesn't use it in regards to race or gender or as a means to separate themselves from their perceived enemy. I often chuckle to myself because I know something they don't and probably never will, that the privilege they disdain is not always genetic but since they didn't earn their own, the concept is unfathomable.

    Sorry for the rant.
    A couple of random thoughts:

    • As different as we all are on this board, thinking about it, I can say that all of us are very strong on self-determination.
    • This test, now that I am rereading it, isn't as much about privilege as about how well you fit into the wider mainstream culture.
    • I can see how it's aggravating, Alan, to be accused of privilege as a rationale for your success, rather than real reason for it, which was hard work and drive.
    • As liberal as I am, I definitely get really aggravated by family members who call on me with expectations--they feel "entitled." I'm thinking of my brother, who by all accounts should be labeled "privileged" because he is white, male, and grew up in the same house I did, with educated parents and grandparents and lots of opportunity. Like Alan, he joined the service, but unlike Alan, he bailed early and embarked on a life of excess and waste. From there the VA enabled him for 40 years, providing free food, shelter and medical care. As a result, he has reached a point in his life in which he feels utterly entitled. He has told me "you have a problem" if I have don't have the money to give him.
    • Not sure what I'm getting at. But I think it's this: "privileged" is a word that is often used to denigrate white, middle-class and above, educated, mostly male. "Entitled" is word that is used to denigrate those of the other end of the spectrum--poor, less educated, mostly minority. Interesting, when many of us have been on both sides of the divide at one point or another. Makes those words kind of pointless.
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
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  3. #23
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    Dude, mine was LOW, 28. I pretty much knew I lived in a bubble, this is more than I thought. However I wonder about this, as other people have. My 'bubble' is very thin in other ways, my neighborhood is highly immigrant, I know people who speak a variety of languages, I work helping people in a variety of income levels, etc. However my taste in popular culture and not drinking (or owning a truck) really cost me points. I did grow up solidly middle class which also affects me.

    So I guess that knowing immigrants and living in a neighborhood of diversity is not what they are testing, it seems more about economic and social class.

  4. #24
    Williamsmith
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zoe Girl View Post
    Dude, mine was LOW, 28. I pretty much knew I lived in a bubble, this is more than I thought. However I wonder about this, as other people have. My 'bubble' is very thin in other ways, my neighborhood is highly immigrant, I know people who speak a variety of languages, I work helping people in a variety of income levels, etc. However my taste in popular culture and not drinking (or owning a truck) really cost me points. I did grow up solidly middle class which also affects me.

    So I guess that knowing immigrants and living in a neighborhood of diversity is not what they are testing, it seems more about economic and social class.
    Think of it as a “Deplorable Scale Rating”. I however think the test could be more accurate if it asked a question about firearms ownership. I could have scored above 100.

  5. #25
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    I resent having my success being attributed to privilege when it is in fact due to blind luck and fortunate happenstance.

  6. #26
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    I am totally embarrassed. Got a 19. Yet, I feel I can understand the issues of those above and below me.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by sweetana3 View Post
    I am totally embarrassed. Got a 19. Yet, I feel I can understand the issues of those above and below me.
    Okay I don't have the only really low number. It sounds like across the board (high and low numbers) that we really question the validity of the test. I think it is good to realize that I had a real benefit as I became an adult with my background. I saw some first generation college students when I was in school struggle with the culture if they came from lower income families, but also some others who struggled because they had never washed their own clothes or had to live on a budget or not have someone rescue them. I was in a nice middle of the road place going into college, I knew that in an extreme emergency I had family that could help and I also knew limits and budgets (and did my own laundry but that was only because I was so stubborn in high school that I refused to let my mom do my laundry, she shrunk some concert t-shirts, I had to be equally stubborn to cook because she still to this day does not want me in the kitchen!)

  8. #28
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    I scored a 49. YOu can have a professional job and be out earned by a blue collar worker. Many blue collar workers are middle class or better. My parents didn't have a lot of $ initially but my Dad became a tool grinder and by his 40's was making more $ then the city attorney.

  9. #29
    Senior Member bae's Avatar
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    83 on this one.

  10. #30
    Senior Member jp1's Avatar
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    I got a 27 this time around. I guess i'm getting bubblier as the days go by! Perhaps it's because we recently went to Iron Horse winery and tasted the bubbly wines. If going wine tasting 3 or 4 times a year doesn't put me on the fancy-pants end of the socio-economic spectrum I'm not sure what more I need to be doing.

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