When I wrote about flying two weeks ago, I was on my way back from Denmark. I’ve had a romance with Denmark and Danishness since childhood, beginning with a beautifully illustrated edition of Hans Andersen and cemented by a few days there in the 1980s on the way to our usual family holiday in countries “behind the Iron Curtain”. I’ll explain some other time.
These days, I combine visiting friends with work there, and I enjoy the well-designed, well-maintained and well-shared public spaces; the ease of biking, walking and running in the country and the city; the general sense of commonwealth and common good. I also like the bakeries, and there’s a family tradition that I’ll stop on the way to the airport and bring home rye bread and pastries.
My son asked, as he always does, why we don’t have bread like that in Ireland and Britain, and I answered, as I always do, with directions to the Polish deli and a brief lecture on the foodways and social history of northern Europe (it’s great craic round my house). I stopped myself adding that he should remember that the good bread is a privilege, an expensive treat, that that’s why I make our bread which is a privilege too, because not everyone has the time to knead and bake or space to store the flour or can afford to run the oven. I’ve made bread twice a week for decades and my parents before me, long before lockdown was born or even thought of. He knows we’re lucky, I’ve said it before.
‘Privilege’ has the same root as ‘private’ and ‘privy’, something not shared, hoarded away from the commons
In the way of parents raising kids with more security than we had ourselves, I tend to point out their good fortune, as if we can give them comfortable lives without them thinking that comfortable lives are normal. I have to stop myself harping on. It’s not nice. And also, I thought, this time, not true.
The problem isn’t me and my sourdough and my kale. Access to nourishing food should be a right
Sarah Moss: I find the phrase ‘first world problems’ deeply objectionable
I fly too much and I feel guilty about it, but I keep doing it
I’ve always been suspicious of writers’ block. Nurses don’t get nurses’ block
Of course there’s a cost of living crisis, of course few of us can spend 40 quid or four hours a week keeping a family in good bread, but the problem isn’t actually that some people can afford to eat real food, bread made – at home or in a bakery – with only wheat, water, salt, time and fire, but that most people can’t. I’ve often apologised: it’s all very well for me, going on about organic vegetables when I can afford to buy them and spend the time preparing them, I understand that it’s a privilege and luxury (on my shoulder there’s an ancestral voice adding, I understand that I don’t deserve these good things, that one of these days everyone’s going to realise there’s an imposter going at the aubergines like an infestation of caterpillars). But that’s wrong, isn’t it? Access to nourishing food in sufficient quantity isn’t a privilege, it should be a right. The problem isn’t me and my sourdough and my kale, the problem is that we have collectively accepted or colluded with a system that tells us that the baseline, what we all deserve, is highly processed food engineered to maximise the producers’ profits rather than consumers’ well-being.
[ Sarah Moss: I find the phrase ‘first world problems’ deeply objectionableOpens in new window ]
“Privilege” has the same root as “private” and “privy”, something not shared, hoarded away from the commons. When we say it is a privilege to have or use something, we say that it is not for everyone. A right cannot be a privilege. Therefore, when I tell my son that it is a privilege to eat good food, I tell him that good food is not for everyone, with the implication that fairness requires us to eat badly. I would not want to say that it is a privilege to have access to safe, respectful and timely healthcare; to have education based on equity and expertise in both content and delivery; to have safe and affordable housing; to have clean air and green space.
There are some things we should all be able to take for granted. It is not a privilege to do so, it is a violation to be unable to do so. We should be careful with our words: often the problem is violation, not privilege.