[FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

Sun Aug 29 03:09:11 EDT 2021

And the elephant in the room is (.. sound of drums please ..) :

"All [groups] are created equal"

On Sun, 29 Aug 2021 at 03:21, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, Eric,
>
> Again, you appear to confound similarity with equality.  *Ex hypothesi*
> and NOT because I am a communist, let us invent a world in which we each
> serve different functions but are all paid exactly the same for serving
> them.  That would be a world in which there was maximum dissimilarity but
> financial equality.  Similarity has to with what we do; equality to do with
> how it’s valued.
>
>
>
> Not you say that the world I just invented is too strange to be relevant.
> But is it that much stranger than a world in which I stand talking
> non-sense to a bunch of students for a pretty good salary while others of
> my generation to get shot at in Vietnam for peanuts?   Ditto you and Iraq.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 28, 2021 8:40 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> Merle,
>
> I *am *deeply grateful for my life, which *is *extraordinarily privileged
> in many ways. I'm not sure what deep remorse would have to do with it.
>
>
>
> Even were we to institute some rules that gave everyone in the world
> historically extraordinary privileges, it would be a mistake to give
> everyone the same extraordinary privileges. A world of diverse people
> produces superior outcomes to a world of identical people. Any approach
> that wants to deny that is not going to work out well. Any approach that
> wants to try to give every single person the same life, is not a good idea.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 11:41 AM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Coming from different perspectives (missing: our interrelationship with
> nature) hasn't ultimately offered us a good future, as well as an inability
> to avoid war and addiction to weapons of mass destruction (including global
> warming).  I suggest that a new perspective for someone like Eric might be
> looking around at his extraordinarily privileged life (his life defies the
> human condition) and finding some way to express gratitude and remorse deep
> within.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 8:05 AM Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> " All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world."
>
>
>
> Hard disagree. Perhaps in a perfect we would reduce the extreme inequities
> a bit, but it would be a much less perfect world if we created actual full
> equality. This is part of my long-standing disagreement with Nick's
> attempts to flat-world inheritance.
>
>
>
> We are in a BETTER world because people had a variety of experiences
> growing up. Some had a new bike magically appear for them one day. Some
> sold lemonade all summer and got one themselves. Some never got the new
> bike they wanted at all. Some never even got a used bike. Some were punched
> and had their bikes stolen. I'm not talking about watching a sibling
> literally starve to death... but I am talking about a broad range of
> unequal personal and social starting places. We are a better world because
> people live very different lives, pursuing very different goals, informed
> by different experiences, and thereby coming at problems from very
> different perspectives.
>
>
>
> "All people are created equal" is a claim about how we have socially
> agreed to treat people *as if* they were "endowed by their creator" with
> certain basic rights. Those are what is now called "negative rights",
> rights not to have others interfere with you in certain ways. But in a
> grand sense, people are not equal, and we wouldn't want them to be; it
> would be disastrous if they were.
>
>
>
> As tempting as it is to arrogantly declare that the world would be a
> better place if it everyone was just like me... I also know that's not
> true. There is no individual for which it is true, not even one as amazing
> as I, and not even one as amazing as you.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 9:00 PM Sarbajit Roy <sroy.mb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nick,
>
> I am not a metaphysicist to debate such things with you. Can just state
> cold facts.
>
> All persons would be created equally .. in a perfect world.
>
> However, when the world they are born into is imbalanced, in actuality
> their weightage depends on the circumstances of their birth and the larger
> society(s) they are born into
>
> Attempts, by poiticians. to change that imbalance invariably create a cure
> worse worse than the disease .. killing sparrows in China or introducing
> rabbts to Australia. For instance, the *reverse discrimination* presently
> practised in India against Brahmins has been taken to extraordinary lengths
> by "vote bank" politics
>
>
> Brahmins students are not eligible (barred in law) to apply for 87% of
> seats in engineering or medical colleges in India.
>
> They must openly compete with the entire population of applicants for the
> remaining 13% of seats
>
> To get admission into a top engineering college, a Brahmin student must
> get at least 72 out of 90 multiple choice questions correct in what is
> acknowledged to be one of the world's toughest entrance exams, whereas a
> reserved category student can get in even after getting all 90 questions
> wrong.
>
>
>
> So if I look at it dispassionately, the problem with gaining true equality
> is politics and politicians. The misguided attemptsof the USA to promote /
> inmpose "democracy" and "equality" in third world countries inevitably
> results in the installation of dictatorships or puppets fronting for
> miltary regimes as a reaction. Afghanistan is a good example of it.
>
> Sarbajit
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 1:34 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sarbajit,
>
>
>
> If I understand the shape of the globe correctly, you are waking up pretty
> soon, and I would like to pick up the conversation about caste, if you
> don’t mind.
>
>
>
> I believe the proposition in the subject line.  Given the many ways that
> proposition can be understood as plainly false, I feel that my belief in it
> must be defended.
>
>
>
> In what sense equal?  Not in genes.  Not in uterine environment. .  Not in
> early nutrition and cognitive stimulation. Not in social capitol. Not in
> financial capitol.  Not in access to health care.  Not in exposure to
> future parasites.  Not in almost anything that I can think of.   So, why is
> the aphorism not just nonsense.
>
>
>
> I find, that if I examine my thinking in this matter, a very primitive
> metaphysics about the moment of an individual’s creation.  What follows is
> flagrantly silly, but here it is.   On my account, at the moment of birth a
> soul is taken out of storage and assigned to a body.  By “person” in the
> aphorism, I mean the combination of a particular soul with the particular
> body.  These assignments are at random.  So, for good or ill, no soul
> deserves the body it gets.   I cannot claim credit for my genes, my good
> uterine environment, my social capitol, my financial capitol, my bad hip,
> the draft deferment it provided, my getting a phd at absolute peak of
> demand for phd’s, my good education, even my FRIAM membership.  They are
> all consequences of that initial, random assignment.   Now YOU may credit
> me in some ways, because knowing that all these advantages have been
> assigned to me may make me useful or pleasing (or the opposite) in many
> ways, and that may bring me the advantages of your association.  But è I ç
> do not èdeserveç those advantages.
>
>
>
> This odd metaphysics leads me to enormous gratitude for the life I have
> been allowed to live and great sympathy for rigorous taxation of the
> advantaged, so that so much a soul’s future is not determined by that
> moment of assignment.
>
>
>
> I have no idea what happens to this primitive metaphysics if I try to
> integrate it with my monism.  The religious scholars among you might
> recognize as some backass weird perversion of Calvinism.
>
>
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
>
> twitter: @merle110
>
>
>
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20210829/0fef9ebc/attachment.html>