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
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