Re: What do you think produces inequality in society
Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 3:13 pmUh, no.
Me:
Stop talking down your nose and pretending you have evolved past everyone else. It is arrogant and unbecoming. You aren't an enlightened snowflake.
Point is, success in every human endeavour requires social skills. Social skills are not distributed equally and cannot be provided to you by others. Even in a society with perfect material and structural equality, so much will be decided upon the basis of good looks, eloquence and body language that political equality is already hugely undermined. We are not a rational animal, and even a perfectly rational social order cannot correct that.
It is a pipe dream. A worthy one, one that should be worked towards, but just a dream nonetheless.
...
Slavery is not built into our biology. Establishing social hierarchies within a group you identify with is. When the vast majority of our decision-making process is non-rational, which it is, it is impossible to have political equality.
Who is your best friend? Why? Did you analyze your friends, compare their attributes, and decide impartially based on facts, not feelings? Of course not. And yet you would do far more to help that friend than you would a stranger, or even another friend. Only a very rare human behaves otherwise, and most often we don't recognize it until they are dead. The same can be said for sexual attraction - people don't say "her nose is perfectly proportional and her skin suggests good breeding grounds." They don't arrive at attraction rationally - it is there, or it's not, and our conscious mind has little to do with it.
Politics is no different. Political decision-making is no different. A very small fraction of what we support is due to rationality. A very large part of it is just a reflection of our temperament and personality, nothing more. Why else do we so often see smart people supporting stupid things? It is because, like all human relations, most decisions are made subconsciously.
Me:
Stop talking down your nose and pretending you have evolved past everyone else. It is arrogant and unbecoming. You aren't an enlightened snowflake.
Point is, success in every human endeavour requires social skills. Social skills are not distributed equally and cannot be provided to you by others. Even in a society with perfect material and structural equality, so much will be decided upon the basis of good looks, eloquence and body language that political equality is already hugely undermined. We are not a rational animal, and even a perfectly rational social order cannot correct that.
It is a pipe dream. A worthy one, one that should be worked towards, but just a dream nonetheless.
...
Slavery is not built into our biology. Establishing social hierarchies within a group you identify with is. When the vast majority of our decision-making process is non-rational, which it is, it is impossible to have political equality.
Who is your best friend? Why? Did you analyze your friends, compare their attributes, and decide impartially based on facts, not feelings? Of course not. And yet you would do far more to help that friend than you would a stranger, or even another friend. Only a very rare human behaves otherwise, and most often we don't recognize it until they are dead. The same can be said for sexual attraction - people don't say "her nose is perfectly proportional and her skin suggests good breeding grounds." They don't arrive at attraction rationally - it is there, or it's not, and our conscious mind has little to do with it.
Politics is no different. Political decision-making is no different. A very small fraction of what we support is due to rationality. A very large part of it is just a reflection of our temperament and personality, nothing more. Why else do we so often see smart people supporting stupid things? It is because, like all human relations, most decisions are made subconsciously.