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

[Sarbajit Roy]

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/
>
>
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