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

[Eric Charles]

" 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.


<echarles at american.edu>


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/
>>
>>
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