Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
Interpretation
Privilege can dull our ability to empathize and imagine the experiences of others.
Chinua Achebe's quote reflects on how privilege can act as a barrier to our imagination and sensitivity towards others. It suggests that when individuals are shielded by their own advantages and comforts, they may struggle to truly understand and empathize with the suffering or experiences of those who lack such privileges, thereby limiting their imaginative capabilities and emotional perceptions.
In practice
During a lecture on social justice, this quote can illustrate the impact of privilege on empathy.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
We should be rigorous in judging ourselves and gracious in judging others.
The truth of the matter is, you die, all you do is die, and yet you live, yes you live, and that's no Harvard lie.
In this world of ours, every believer must be a spark of light, a center of love, a vivifying ferment for the mass; and it will be that all the more as, in the depths of his being, he lives in communion with God.
In the end, there is no absence of irony: the integrity of what is sacred to Native Americans will be determined by the government that has been responsible for doing everything in its power to destroy Native American cultures.
And so, lastly, does the very name of "Catholic", which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house.
The Tao is near and people seek it far away.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.