Discrimination Rules
The modern humanist world often paints discrimination as a bad thing. I don't think it is. Discrimination is the basis of all our senses, of all our decisions insofar as we are confident that some neurological process underpins them all. Institutions shouldn't be bullied into allowing equal access, equal rights, equal mindlessness.
There are limits to fairness, just as there are to equality; all humans are NOT born equal, although in some abstract ways (such as the right to be alive) they might be. The idea that they are is hogwash, or perhaps bullshit, or some other animal-related thing. You will never find two people with exactly the same characteristics; why might you find two people with exactly the same balance of rights and responsibilities?
A person certified at a specific level of low mental function is treated specially in both positive and negative ways; a person with one arm is in theory (and often in practice) less able to do certain things. Women are different from men; men are different from men as much as women are different from women. The whole idea of equal rights is a shifting, unstable chimera simply because a close inspection of any rights you might care to bestow shows that they cannot be equally bestowed in a way that makes the effect just.
That's because justice (the exact balance of rights and responsibilities) is not the same as fairness (the idea that either a sense of subjective equity or a fact of objective equality should prevail). God is not fair, but He is always just. The problem is that our perceptions are fairness-biased because we have no objective way to determine our position on a universal scale. All this just makes our laws (more recriminatory or just criminalizing, hardly undiscriminating) the locally objective socioculturally-subjective codification of some general principles of jurisprudence.
Discrimination is a fact of the human condition. There is no warm fuzzy 'it need not be so' business about it. Indeed, it must be so, or there would be no basis on which to stand when making choices. While some bases might seem fairer than others, there is actually no choice that would be fair except by subjective agreement. The division of a circular pie might be mathematically fair, but the division of a real budget into actual domains of expenditure will never please everyone.
After running a few years of tests on my own perceptions, I have come to realise that I discriminate against people with darker skin, people with fairer skin, people of a different gender (however defined), people of a different age, people who drive a different car, people who drive the same car. I discriminate on every level and in every dimension that I can. I realise, in fact, that I discriminate against every person who is not me; I also have realised that if I had to live with someone exactly like me, I'd have to discriminate against him just to remain sane.
To those people out there who would have me believe that I should espouse some people's agenda, and call it 'acting against discrimination', all I can say is, "What? You want me to support some bunch of people so that they have the same rights as another bunch of people despite not being the same bunch of people? First prove to me that they have not the same rights, then prove to me that they should have the same rights, then prove to me that I should care."
It's the last part that gets most people. You can only care about this sort of thing if you have an empathic stake in it. You have to feel that one group is discriminated against to the point at which you yourself would feel uncomfortable. And you can only feel that way if you have an uncanny level (or an undiscriminating level) of empathy. That is why Jesus said you ought to love your neighbour as yourself, and not more than yourself; it's not possible in a real sense to have more empathy for others than you have for yourself because by definition, empathy for self is 100%.
That's not to say that I don't believe people should in general and in abstract be treated as equals. I think it's a laudable idea. I just don't think it will, or should, ever happen in a literal sense.
There are limits to fairness, just as there are to equality; all humans are NOT born equal, although in some abstract ways (such as the right to be alive) they might be. The idea that they are is hogwash, or perhaps bullshit, or some other animal-related thing. You will never find two people with exactly the same characteristics; why might you find two people with exactly the same balance of rights and responsibilities?
A person certified at a specific level of low mental function is treated specially in both positive and negative ways; a person with one arm is in theory (and often in practice) less able to do certain things. Women are different from men; men are different from men as much as women are different from women. The whole idea of equal rights is a shifting, unstable chimera simply because a close inspection of any rights you might care to bestow shows that they cannot be equally bestowed in a way that makes the effect just.
That's because justice (the exact balance of rights and responsibilities) is not the same as fairness (the idea that either a sense of subjective equity or a fact of objective equality should prevail). God is not fair, but He is always just. The problem is that our perceptions are fairness-biased because we have no objective way to determine our position on a universal scale. All this just makes our laws (more recriminatory or just criminalizing, hardly undiscriminating) the locally objective socioculturally-subjective codification of some general principles of jurisprudence.
Discrimination is a fact of the human condition. There is no warm fuzzy 'it need not be so' business about it. Indeed, it must be so, or there would be no basis on which to stand when making choices. While some bases might seem fairer than others, there is actually no choice that would be fair except by subjective agreement. The division of a circular pie might be mathematically fair, but the division of a real budget into actual domains of expenditure will never please everyone.
After running a few years of tests on my own perceptions, I have come to realise that I discriminate against people with darker skin, people with fairer skin, people of a different gender (however defined), people of a different age, people who drive a different car, people who drive the same car. I discriminate on every level and in every dimension that I can. I realise, in fact, that I discriminate against every person who is not me; I also have realised that if I had to live with someone exactly like me, I'd have to discriminate against him just to remain sane.
To those people out there who would have me believe that I should espouse some people's agenda, and call it 'acting against discrimination', all I can say is, "What? You want me to support some bunch of people so that they have the same rights as another bunch of people despite not being the same bunch of people? First prove to me that they have not the same rights, then prove to me that they should have the same rights, then prove to me that I should care."
It's the last part that gets most people. You can only care about this sort of thing if you have an empathic stake in it. You have to feel that one group is discriminated against to the point at which you yourself would feel uncomfortable. And you can only feel that way if you have an uncanny level (or an undiscriminating level) of empathy. That is why Jesus said you ought to love your neighbour as yourself, and not more than yourself; it's not possible in a real sense to have more empathy for others than you have for yourself because by definition, empathy for self is 100%.
That's not to say that I don't believe people should in general and in abstract be treated as equals. I think it's a laudable idea. I just don't think it will, or should, ever happen in a literal sense.
Labels: Discrimination, Ideas
etched with acid at 2:07:00 pm
8 Comments:
Haha very down-to-earth and mainly true.
However, while I think discrimination is inevitable, it does become wrong when we allow it to influence our actions towards others in a negative way... Like being racist, for example. That's when discrimination becomes "unjust".
Of course, you'd then have to define your moral principles to say what's "negative" in this sense, but there are a lot of campaigns that have been waged against the name of unjust discrimination that have done mankind a lot of good.
The problem is that we are all racists at a physiological level. We have gut-level responses that are automatically racist. Therefore we are all wrong because we are all influenced to act even when we don't think we are, and even when we consciously try not to be. It's 'original sin' if you like. It's built-in.
That argument seems a little odd. Or rather it seems to be missing its more interesting implications.
First you acknowledged that people are not really equal. Then you pointed out that any endeavour to equalise them is rather futile since doing so will create new inequalities.
The question then is, why do you seem to favour the inequality of the status quo rather the inequality post-"acting against discriminatiion" campaigns?
Absent a (usable) universal standard of value, how do you compare inequalities?
Or rather, within the set of possible unequal outcomes that do not trigger empathetic discomfort, why do you discriminate against outcomes that involve deliberate political and social engineering?
Maybe all we can seek to achieve is just "acceptable discrimination". Discrimination that is too minor to even need "caring" and one that is more palatable. We want a taste of societal perfection no matter how flawed the human condition is. We are still, at least, inclined to the pursuit of happiness.
AA: I think it's akin to Occam's Razor. Why multiply inequalities, thus expending effort to no avail? When you answer this in terms of a value or values, it makes for useful debate. I mean, in real life, a multiplicity of campaigns designed to increase inequality abounds. Consider the free market and its real-life manifestations. I don't mind campaigns against discrimination; I just think that there should be campaigns in favour of some of it as well. Perhaps you could post some of your own thoughts.
So my answer to you, in short, is that not doing anything normally costs less than doing something. Hence, we need to think harder about why we should do something. That is why I 'seem to favour' the status quo, logically and generally. In individual cases, I might not.
Augustin: Haha, you know I will make you define all those terms. "Accceptable." "Happiness." And so on. :)
True, but how did the argument, as it were, go from 'making distinctions' to 'discernment'? If the idea goes along the lines of, 'Discernment, or the lack of it, arises from the way we make distinctions,' then I suppose that means there are better and worse ways of discriminating. Or maybe the title should have been 'The Evils of Being Indiscriminate'.
stark: sigh, you young people should go look at my post on definition-forming. How did we get from distinctions to discernment? Use your discernment of course...
As far as I understand the etymology, which I did look up, 'discern' and 'discriminate' come from the same root, and both are defined as being able to make distinctions. In that sense I asked, 'How did we go from the definition to the word?' But even though 'discern', 'discriminate' and 'to make a distinction' are technically the same things, they have different connotations, and while I agree that 'discrimination' is technically a neutral thing, I do think that the connotations are important. If they weren't, then why do we 'discriminate against' rather than just 'discriminate'? It's as though discrimination is something actively practiced towards an end, rather than a kind of passive faculty that we base decisions on. If I said someone was being indiscriminate, though, it would be immediately understood that he is not fully using his faculty of discrimination. Isn't that the kind of situation when the 'discrimination' that follows becomes a bad thing?
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