Why are we all supposed to be equal?

[gentle_dissident]

People don't reform.

I get the feeling you don't get out much. Or, was the winky at the last paragraph connected to the 1st?

[marom1963]

(Recommended for actual atheists... And yes, I've been watching what's up with Randy.)

I propose the idea that we are not all equal, and though this will involve plenty of nuance, exceptions, and just flat out stupid statements that may be recanted due to the nature of this question. Now, on to the actual evidence.

1. People cannot, and have never been EXACTLY the same.
This is what started this little sprout. There is simply too many possibilities for types people to create a person that is exactly like someone else. This is further compounded by the fact that both time, geography, and even a name of a person will make people both act, and respond differently to that person.

2. People are not perfectly equal in strengths.
Strength is what an individual has that is "a good or beneficial quality or attribute of a person or thing." However, some of us can already point out some instances of inequality in strengths. For instance, Some Machiavellian forum dwellers will agree that a strong amount of kindness in a person is a strength, but does not compare to the strength of high levels of charisma or intellect.

Now, I will add my own opinions into the matter, which will likely be subject to a level of scrutiny that is greater than normal due to the nature of this dialogue. "Give it your best shot," but do mind that we can always disagree or simply drop a specific subsection of this discussion. Onto my opinions and what they mean.

1. Personal Values.
Remember my Venn Diagram? That's basically it. TL;DR? I prefer people who work, are good at work, and have that work benefit others in some way.

2. Expansion of Personal Values.
What I can conclude from my value of work is that work ethic is (at the very least), an important trait, (and at most), the most important trait. For this topic I will assume the former and not the latter. Work ethic is an important trait because without it, people could not have survived to this point. For example, Say there was a lazy ape and a diligent ape. Who is going to get more food for their group?

3. Expansion of Work Ethic.
My largest assumption will be that Work Ethic can be quantified, if not at least put into a spectrum. However, Work Ethic is an almost universal good, and the majority of goods in the world can be quantified to a fair extent. For instance, just as we measure happiness through one's self-opinion in addition to other behaviors such as lifestyle, we can measure work ethic by the ratio of hours worked to hours used for recreation.

4. Spectrums.
My second largest assumption is that this system would be ethical. My only evidence, which is much more like rhetoric, is as follows. "Why give a lazy person equal rights to one who is diligent?"

The question is not equality.
The question is fairness.
Our horrendous system allows a tiny handful of individuals to live in unconscionable luxury, while the mass of humanity suffers, sweats, and bleeds to pay for it.
That's the problem. That is what needs to be addressed. A few thousand people owning everything while billions sink into abysmal poverty just won't do.

[Hydra009]

Work: The total product of a person's value through their work-ratio.

Work-Ratio: The amount of time spent on the wellbeing of others or one's self in relation to recreational acts.

(Basically Hours of actions that benefit your survival or the community's survival compared to Hours of actions that solely are for recreational purposes.)

Now with some definitions pinned down, I would also like to address the fact that I myself will not personally sit down and rate everyone of a "Work Ethic" Scale. That would require countless amount of logs and monitors to supervise in addition to too much subjective work.

Yet, you have stated that you wish to deprive rights based on such a measure.  Whether or not you personally rate those affected is irrelevant.  In your system, people are somehow rated and suffer consequences from those ratings, such as the deprivation of basic liberties like due process.  Liberty abrogated at a whim.  I'm sure moderately somewhat confident your intentions are noble, but do you honestly not notice the horrible consequences of such a system?

Let me ask you a quick questions. Would you rather give medicine to a scientist who intends to help you and other people out, or help two people who have no interest in passing out medicine and want to go back to playing games in a basement?

How could anyone possibly know the future?  For all we know, the scientist could be disgraced tomorrow and the two people become a best-selling children's author and renown conservationist.  There are quite a few very good reasons why ERs don't decide who lives and who dies like you suggest.

Also, I'm sensing a "kick the bums out" mentality where "good" people should be helped by society and "bad" people should be punished.  Like I said before, the end result of this sort of thing is fairly obvious.

[marom1963]

I'm flabberghasted - I can't believe the number people who are casually adopting NAZI programs. All over the Internet, on boards, everywhere, one sees people coming up w/plans for these "Utopias" where a fascist state cracks down on "miscreants", usually murdering them in one way or another. It's not even a century since Hitler tried to rid Germany of the group of people whom he blamed for Germany's problems. "Oh, but the Jews didn't ..." Exactly. The so-called "miscreants" haven't, either. The problems have complex causes that no one group of people can be picked out and blamed for. No one group of people caused any one problem that our society has. The one group that could go a long way to solving the problems, though, is the rich. But they won't lift a finger. So, if you're really out to get somebody ...

[FrogMan]

Pardon if I missed this being addressed somewhere, but what about mental illness?  I've quit 6 jobs in the last 3 years (including 3 in the last few months alone) because of my horrible anxiety and depression.  I give it my all - if I didn't, I wouldn't keep applying every time I "freak out" and have to walk away from a position.  I hate the fact that something inside of me just makes it impossible to hold down a steady job.  It puts a burden on my wife, medication side effects make things 10x worse, and I've sporadically done therapy.

In a world where "work ethic" is "the most important quality" in a human, what am I?  Worthless?  Can I contribute in other ways, like being a good person, a good friend, etc.?  Just curious...

Edit:  Also, what kind of rights should I have, if they're dependent on your "contribution?"  Less rights than someone without mental illness?  And what kind of rights would I be losing?  I get slightly pissed when this topic comes up because it always reminds me of that garbage right wing paranoia where everyone assumes the world is trying to "take the easy way out" and get a handout to be lazy if they're not a card-carrying workforce member.  I've worked with adults with mental illness in my last job, for a company that houses them for low rates (usually 30% of SSI/SSD).  So you can imagine the people trying to get in there to just mooch.  I could tell.  But for every freeloader, there were 10 people who seriously needed the program.  Yet when this kind of stuff comes up in the real world, everyone throws their hands up and says "well we can't take care of people, they need to take care of themselves!  Pull yerself up by them thar bootstraps!  This is Murca!"

Sorry for the rant.

[marom1963]

Pardon if I missed this being addressed somewhere, but what about mental illness?  I've quit 6 jobs in the last 3 years (including 3 in the last few months alone) because of my horrible anxiety and depression.  I give it my all - if I didn't, I wouldn't keep applying every time I "freak out" and have to walk away from a position.  I hate the fact that something inside of me just makes it impossible to hold down a steady job.  It puts a burden on my wife, medication side effects make things 10x worse, and I've sporadically done therapy.

In a world where "work ethic" is "the most important quality" in a human, what am I?  Worthless?  Can I contribute in other ways, like being a good person, a good friend, etc.?  Just curious...

Edit:  Also, what kind of rights should I have, if they're dependent on your "contribution?"  Less rights than someone without mental illness?  And what kind of rights would I be losing?  I get slightly pissed when this topic comes up because it always reminds me of that garbage right wing paranoia where everyone assumes the world is trying to "take the easy way out" and get a handout to be lazy if they're not a card-carrying workforce member.  I've worked with adults with mental illness in my last job, for a company that houses them for low rates (usually 30% of SSI/SSD).  So you can imagine the people trying to get in there to just mooch.  I could tell.  But for every freeloader, there were 10 people who seriously needed the program.  Yet when this kind of stuff comes up in the real world, everyone throws their hands up and says "well we can't take care of people, they need to take care of themselves!  Pull yerself up by them thar bootstraps!  This is Murca!"

Sorry for the rant.

I'm mentally ill. I go to a program. While I don't suffer from anxiety (I'm autistic w/Major Depression and Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder), I know several people who do. They are not moochers. They contribute to our Program every day and are - pardon the pun - very anxious to do so. You cannot take this Utopian nonsense seriously. The World is filled w/people of all sorts, and every sort has its detractors - and, for every sort, there is another sort that would gladly send that sort to the gas chambers. Luckily, most people are not insane, are not monsters; this will not happen - not again. These juvenile little Hitlers can rant all they want on these boards, but they will not get their ways.

[Baruch]

I get the feeling you don't get out much. Or, was the winky at the last paragraph connected to the 1st?

I don't think I inter-winky.  Not between posts or even within a post ... too complicated to go full Derrida.

People claim to reform ... which is egomania ... but they do change ... for whatever psyche reason they do so.  For example ... I could stop being an alcoholic for for example, because I coincidentally went to a 12 Step Group.  Or maybe there is some other reason why I stopped being an alcoholic ... maybe a close friend died in the gutter on Skid Row.  All of our cause/effect talk is rationalization.  Since 90% of what people do, is because of their unconscious mind ... this is not a surprise.  The word "reform" also carries a moralistic tone.  I am not sure that being an alcoholic isn't a good idea ... no matter what moralizers poo poo about it.  The world often is terrible, and a good stiff drink might help.

[Baruch]

The question is not equality.
The question is fairness.
Our horrendous system allows a tiny handful of individuals to live in unconscionable luxury, while the mass of humanity suffers, sweats, and bleeds to pay for it.
That's the problem. That is what needs to be addressed. A few thousand people owning everything while billions sink into abysmal poverty just won't do.

This is the way people have lived for the last 5000 years.  History shows that nobody takes this as a serious problem, or we would do something about it.  As Rom said on an episode of Deep Space Nine ... "We don't imagine eliminating oppression, we imagine becoming the oppressor"  Or substitute "financial corruption" for "oppression".

You may not have noticed yet ... but life is unfair.  Part of this is because everyone in unequal, all the time.  I would hazard a guess, that if we were all identical sterile worker clone bees ... we would still be unequal, because we can't all stand in the hive in the same place at the same time to dance the same dance.  The desire for uniformity perhaps comes from out of the realization that reality isn't solipsism, but we wish it were.  Same name, same age, same body, same gender etc ... all copies of wonderful me, not that asshole over there ;-)

[Baruch]

I'm flabberghasted - I can't believe the number people who are casually adopting NAZI programs. All over the Internet, on boards, everywhere, one sees people coming up w/plans for these "Utopias" where a fascist state cracks down on "miscreants", usually murdering them in one way or another. It's not even a century since Hitler tried to rid Germany of the group of people whom he blamed for Germany's problems. "Oh, but the Jews didn't ..." Exactly. The so-called "miscreants" haven't, either. The problems have complex causes that no one group of people can be picked out and blamed for. No one group of people caused any one problem that our society has. The one group that could go a long way to solving the problems, though, is the rich. But they won't lift a finger. So, if you're really out to get somebody ...

The default political position of people is to be conservative and moralistic in a corrupt way.  Also we are materialistic.  Call it original sin if you wish.  As people gravitate back to normal (which isn't liberal revolution) they naturally graduate to Trumpism.  Unfortunately, temporarily eliminating the upper class, only produces a new upper class.  Sort of like a Catch 22.

I really am not misanthropic ... but I do read history ... and find human group behavior ... very interesting, but stupid! (take that Nazi on a trike)

[Baruch]

I'm mentally ill. I go to a program. While I don't suffer from anxiety (I'm autistic w/Major Depression and Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder), I know several people who do. They are not moochers. They contribute to our Program every day and are - pardon the pun - very anxious to do so. You cannot take this Utopian nonsense seriously. The World is filled w/people of all sorts, and every sort has its detractors - and, for every sort, there is another sort that would gladly send that sort to the gas chambers. Luckily, most people are not insane, are not monsters; this will not happen - not again. These juvenile little Hitlers can rant all they want on these boards, but they will not get their ways.

For folks who are psyche challenged .. I hear you and wish I had a magic wand.  Life is a spectrum disorder, like autism ;-)  I don't really know anyone who doesn't suffer mentally to some degree, though not all are under professional care.  If you are, I hope it is working for you.  Most people self-medicate.

Between psyche differences and physical differences and opportunity differences (education and other resources) ... we are all very unequal, but can share a common misery, a common challenge.

[dtq123]

Please read all of my posts to get a sense of how my views have changed over the past couple of days. Thanks.

[Mike Cl]

Please read all of my posts to get a sense of how my views have changed over the past couple of days. Thanks.

That you have an open mind is a good thing.  An open mind does not mean you will accept everything you hear or read.  Just that you are willing to consider points of view different from yours at the moment.  It means you are willing to change your mind in the presence of compelling evidence.  I think you will find that as you gain experience and learn how to better gather and evaluate data and evidence for/against something, your mind will change often.  Mine did, and I hope I can manage to keep my mind open.

[Baruch]

Please read all of my posts to get a sense of how my views have changed over the past couple of days. Thanks.

I am not telling you to change, or even grow up.  But if you keep good company, it might rub off ;-)