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

Sat Aug 28 12:16:56 EDT 2021

We can act as if all people were created equal and work to remove the
inequalities, or we can act as if inequalities are intrinsic to all worlds
containing people and enjoy exploiting the vulnerable, or we can take a
blended stance, or maybe there's yet another pole to the dialectic.

I''ve been watching Resurrection Ertugrul on netflix the past few days, 76
episodes in season 1, produced in Turkey, massively popular Urdu dub in
Pakistan, Kashmir, and India, banned in Egypt and Saudi Arabia as Ottoman
propaganda, but widely watched anyway.  It's very much a creation myth for
Erdogan´s regime.  Ertugrul was the father of Osman I, the founder of the
Ottoman Empire, but little is known of his life.  So they make it up out of
what is known about Anatolia in the 13th century.  Chases on horseback,
sword fights, wrestling, ambushes, bows and arrows, Templars subverting the
Muslim world, political infighting, unrequited love, thwarted love, hidden
identities, the wise ibn Arabi from Andulasia, justice, tyrants, jealousy,
envy, hurt feelings, and so on.  Glancing at the episode summaries, I can
see that the Mongols and Byzantines will have their turn as villains, too.
In the midst of all this, a nostalgia for the life of the tribe with a
strong and just leader who keeps the tribe working together against all
challenges.  Everyone must do their own jobs and not try to usurp the
leader´s job.  Leaving netflix on 20th September.   I'm probably going to
run out of patience with it soon, but it's been interesting to see a
familiar story with a new set of identities and political biases.

I would expect the GOP to produce a historical epic on similar principles,
although Trump's campaign might qualify as such all by itself.

-- rec --

On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 10:49 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, EricC,
>
>
>
> Thanks for chiming in.  Missed ya.  As you can imagine, I have some
> comments.
>
>
>
> I think you may have missed the email in which I argued (no doubt
> persuasively) that the second clause of the aphorism is conjunctive, not
> elaborative.  Thus to be “born equal” is something broader than to  have
> been endowed with those rights.  We would have to read a lot of Rousseau
> (?) (etc) to find out.   Perhaps somebody on the list has done that work
> already?  Also, understand that when I say that my inquiry is metaphysical,
> I mean a kind of logical exploration into the positions behind one’s own
> beliefs: Finding that I am a radical redistributionist, what MUST have I
> believed a priori to make that position LOGICAL. I know The List thinks I
> have gone dotty, but  I challenge the rest of you to do the same.  What
> kind of a foundation would have to go under the rickety shack you call your
> beliefs that would make it stand up straight?  “The nuns beat me with a
> ruler” is by itself insufficient.  What did the nuns TEACH YOU by beating
> you with a ruler.
>
>
>
> Otherwise, I think you keep confounding similarity with equality.
>  Equality has to do with the degree to which I can claim to own the
> advantages (or disadvantages) accrued by the assignment of my birth.
>
>
>
> Good to hear from you.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Please somebody forward this to John Dobson!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I don’t think I believe in flat-lining inheritance.  I am not sure why,
> because it seems a moral imperative to me.  But the counter-argument would
> go something like this:  One of the reasons that many people get  up in the
> morning is to secure the future of the children and grandchildren, etc.  A
> lucky person just isn’t lucky if s/he cannot pass some of that luck along.
> That’s what leads me to some sort of a redistributive taxation scheme.
> (The scheme that Sarbarjit describes seems more retributive than
> redistributive.)
>
>
>
> 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 10:04 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "All [persons] are created equal"
>
>
>
> " 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/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20210828/a906315c/attachment.html>