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

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Dave,

 

This is, of course, exactly the opposite of my creation myth in which the slate is wiped clean after every generation.  But it would explain a belief system in which well-being was the deserved reward of having lived well in a previous life.  

 

While I am here, please let me point out that “equal in law” seems a rather constrained understanding “born equal”, given especially that the passage goes on to add equality in law (well rights, actually) as  an additional endowment.  

 

“… and they are endowed by their Creator by certain rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  

 

Where is John Dobson when we need him.  Could somebody please forward this note to him.  I don’t have his email address here with me.

 

Thanks, 

 

Nick 

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2021 10:17 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"

 

Purely from my academic understanding of the subject; the Nick that is, at this moment / in this incarnation, is a product of karma accrued and shed over multiple instances of existence. Hence, what you are now is precisely what you deserve to be. All persons may have been created equal some untold incarnations ago and before they had any opportunity to accrete karma.

 

davew

 

 

On Thu, Aug 26, 2021, at 2:04 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto: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 ==> I <== do not ==>deserve<== 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 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

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