asaris

A couple people in another thread have suggested that people are equal. I was going to put this in that thread, but thought it'd be better as a new thread. So my question is this: What does it mean "all people are equal"? It seems to be that this statement is either false (not all people make the same amount of money, e.g.) or meaningless. But I'm interested to hear what other people think.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

tiberry

I don't know what the author of "All people are equal" meant - but to me it means that all people have the same potential and some choose not to use it.

To understand what I mean you have to take your thinking a level higher than rich, poor, attractive, ugly, etc...

I truly believe that every human being - regardless of the circumstances that they are born into has the same unlimited potential as everyone else.

I'm sure I'll get blasted for this...but to me, the fact remains. Its just too easy to neglect this, to not take responsibility and blame someone other than yourself for your current situation.

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My life's work is to bridge the gap between that which is perceived by the mind and that which is quantifiable by words and numbers.

Charlatan

In general I would agree that all people have the same potential... however there all kinds of other forces that have an effect on how one realizes that potential...

One of the economic realities is that there is a link between freedom and equality... you can't have both. You can create more freedom through legislation much as there is in the US but you end up with a lot of inequities... You can legislate equality much like Sweden but you lose a lot of freedom...

That is economics.

There are other forces like class at work in other cultures... The caste system creates inequities based on birth...

So yes, as individual entities stripped of all ideology and societal constraints, we have equal potential. Unfortunately that isn't the way the world works.

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"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

tiberry

I agree with your observations, but they are just that - observations of an abstract reality. Even in this context, we have to consider the definition of equal. As has been demonstrated in this thread - the natural tendency is to consider "equal" to be a relative measurement of wealth or success.

What I'm saying is exactly what you stated - "stripped of all ideology and societal constraints" or more clearly, common metrics of "success" we are all equal in our potential.

However I'd take it a bit further to say that even in the framework of what society consider's successful, for example: "being a free, rich American" - everyone has the potential to be just that, if they so chose. There is nothing stopping anyone from adapting to this world and its idoligical and social constraints to achieve what they desire.

Would you agree?

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My life's work is to bridge the gap between that which is perceived by the mind and that which is quantifiable by words and numbers.

Charlatan

Fresh out of the womb... yes I agree... But I believe there are elements that work against that potential. While there are many example of individuals that have risen above their station in life, there are many, many more who do not.

I would argue it is ideology and societal norms, contraints, whatever that serve to create that individual. In some cases it makes a go getter in others it creates a layabout (to use two achetypes). Wealth and station have nothing to do with either condition... I know of poor people who have risen to greatness and those born into extreme wealth who fell into idle slumber...

What I am getting at is there are all kinds of external forces and situations that serve to form the make up of individuals... While we start life as a blank slate, full of potential that potential is increased or eroded buy situation, circumstance, luck, etc. External influences...

Created equal... but not nurtured or grown equal.

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"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

ARTelevision

It's one of those psychological disconnects.
Our ability to invent concepts that have no relation to reality is a central aspect of who and what we are. There are many examples of this kind of thing. The result is a cognitive dissonance of epic species-wide proportions. Our heads are basically echo chambers of these unresolvable connundrums.

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Master_Shake

I don't agree that we are born with the same potential. Surely you're not suggesting that someone born mentally or physically retarded has the same potential as someone who is not? There's a reason the special olympic entrants don't compete with the regular olympic entrants; they would get slaughtered.

I don't think it's all genetics of course, many people are born with similar gene structures but because of environmental factors turn out differently. The greatest environmental factor though, is wealth. Wealthy people will, on average, grow up healthier, smarter, and more powerful than the poor. Certainly there are exceptions where a poor person becomes part of the Man, and where the Man kicks out a few members, but these are almost certainly exceptions.

Does anybody have any reliable facts or figures on what percentage of people end up with a similar income level as their parents? I'll bet that most people eventually wind up earning a little bit more than their parents did (adjusted for inflation of course).

I think what should be mean by all people are equal is that they are all equally held to the same law or level of responsibility. It's actually incorrect then to say that all people are equal, it should be the level of responsibility is equal for everyone.

Of course, that's not the case; the rich are often held to a less stringent standard than the poor, but at least it's a goal for which society could aim. Trying to make everyone equal at birth (through genetic engineering) and through childhood (through complete child education centers) would make for a pretty dull and lame place to live, as well as being extraordinarily difficult and expensive.

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

Mantus

That would be true if we disregard all outside sources of influence on every individual. A person born with low IQ does not have equal potential as one born with high IQ. A person who is well schooled will make different choices then a person who wasn’t. A person who got run over by a truck does not have equal opportunity as the person who witnessed the event. You can only play with the cards you are given.

Further more, there is no such thing as unlimited potential. I cannot flap my arms and fly - I am limited.

braindamage351

People are not all created equal. Some are good looking, some are ugly. Some are brilliant, some are retarded. This is not equality. People technically have the same worth, but that doesn't mean that we are actually equal.

CoachAlan

I agree with braindamage351. We have equal worth, not equal potential, status, ability, or anything else. As a human being, my life is worth no more or less than anyone else's life.

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CSflim

I believe the statement "all people are equal" is false. Just look around you. Enough said.

I think the reason this statement has become an oft repeated mantra is due to a misunderstanding of what is at stake: Quite obviously from an ethical point of view, we do not with to use discrimination against people: they should be judged on their own merrits. All people should be given equal rights, and the same benefits and opportunities should be extended to them. This leads to the statement "all people should be treated equally".
Of course, such a statement is only a small logical fallacy away from "all people are actually born identical".

This naturally leads to what Steven Pinker refers to as the dogma of the Blank Slate: All people are born with indistinguishable brains, and are entirely shaped by society. Any denial of such a statement makes you a power-crazy racist (see the horrendous treatement of E. O. Wilson after Sociobiology). Any claim of a genetic influence on personality traits is seen as something which must be stamped out at all cost (apparently due to its immorality).

So no: people are not equal. Nor are they even born equal. But we should treat all human life with the respect it deserves, and give everyone an equal opportunity to prove themselves.

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:::OshnSoul:::

equality=
a) we are all human
b) we all have been given "life" on earth to experience
c) we all have come from/belong to the same source
d) we all have the free will (without any exceptions or limits) to be who we are as individuals

individuality=
what makes us who we are, with the free will we've been given- if we were all "humanly" the same, that would be pretty boring and pointless

wilbjammin

Equality is a somewhat meaningless term on its face. To strive for equality means to move against the natural order of how humans tend to interract with each other. All people aren't equal. We have different talents, skills, ways of thinking, start positions in life, etc. To strive for equality, in my view, means to give everyone the same opportunities to have success in society (whatever success in society means). Equal access to goods, jobs, training and education, and - ideally - an equal starting place in life. We are far from equal.

Individuality means that the individual comes before the community in some shape or form. This is not necessarily bad, because I think that absolute conformity is, at the least, boring... and at its worst, completely empty. True individuality does not exist because our environment shapes us. The trouble with individuality comes with the destruction of the community or institutionalized barriers created to allow a few people to have power over many people in ways that do not benefit the whole. Individualism can be an excuse not to care about others, and possibly in an ultimate sense, the self.

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Xell101

To me it means that every human is equally worthy of inclusion in society. Anything more just seems unrealistic as the genetic differences between people run deeper than aesthetics.

mcovey

If there are ten different opinions on what it means to be equal... let me see.

What about people born without legs? They don't have the same potential as others. And people guilty of unespeakable crimes? They aren't worth including in society.

I think it used to mean equal in God's eyes. I think everyone is born as a child, blissful in it's ignorance of the world, fully prepared to believe faithfully in God no matter what. Then as they grow they see the world and get weary of their daily tasks and doubt God is there to help them, because he isn't making their day easier.

So all people are CREATED equal, but may not end up equal.

ManWithAPlan

both : false and meaningless

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asaris

I have to disagree with those who have said that, outside of environmental influences, we have equal or even unlimited potential. It should be obviously false that we have unlimited potential. As another poster pointed out, I cannot flap my arms and fly. There are people who, no matter what the contributions of their environment, will never be great mathematicians. I doubt that we have equal potentials either. I've known people who are good at just about everything, and I've known people who have very little in the way of native talent. And I'm not just including things like intelligence either. But this claim is difficult, if not impossible, to prove, since it is difficult, if not impossible, to sort out the influence of one's environment from the influence of one's nature.

I dispute as well the claim "equal in the eyes of God." Except for the claim that we are equally loved by God or the claim that God treats everyone equally, this statement has the same difficulties as the bare statement of human equality. And, given a belief in the reliability of the scripture, the claims that we are equally loved by God or treated equally by God are also false. We are treated fairly by God, and we are all loved by God, but neither of these entail that we are all treated or loved equally. Think about it this way -- you love all your friends, right? But do you love them all equally, or are you closer to some than to others? And is there anything at all wrong with being closer to some people than others?

Will's post suggests the dichotomy between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. It seems to me that equality of opportunity is the closest thing to the statement "All people are equal"; that is, that all people, in virtue of their inherent dignity as human beings, ought to be equally able to develop their talents and attempt to acheive success in that arena they consider worthy of achieving success in.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

CSflim

Not so.
Tests using identical twins seperated at birth allow us to investigate this; or at least allows us to investigate the influence of the variation of environment, which is all that really matters in this case (but is an important distinction to make).

In tests such as these, we see a strong correlation between the two subjects, despite completely different environments (taking into account things such as personality tests, income, IQ, criminal record, etc.). We can also make tests comparing fraternal twins reared together with identical twins reared together, or adoptive silings versus biological siblings.

Whatever way it is measured, the results are loud and clear: We are not all born equal. To take a common example, the herratibility of IQ is (approx) 50%. (in other words 50% of the variance of IQ scores is herritable)

Note: To attack IQ tests, and claim that they only measure a small subset of intelligence etc. etc. would be to miss the point entirely.

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roachboy

a different spin to what is an echo of things said earlier in the thread:

equality is a legal construct--in the states, this means that all subjects/citizens within a given legal space are endowed with the same rights.

it is the fiction of the bourgeois legal subject.

what it means is a political question: if you are conservative in the states and prefer to work within an image of the world that reduces society to a collection of discrete individuals as a way to avoid questions of class (for example), then this legal subject fiction can be quite powerful; if you work from a political viewpoint that tries to link claims made by the dominant order to the social realities those claims create/obscure/define, then the legal subject tends to revert back to a fiction.

as for the matter of whether equality in the formal sense can be linked to identity between persons in any substantive sense...well.....since the conversation has veered off into the direction of innate capacities, then there is nothing to say on the matter. because the seperation of "the innate" from the social means i do not know what you are talking about.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

rsl12

the concept of social equality as we know it today originated from political philosophers trying to conceive a society structure different from the prevailing norm at the time (ie, monarchy and feudalism). the general idea was that, instead of having certain people (kings, aristocrats) being inherently more favored by God than others, everyone was equal before the eyes of God, no matter to whom they were born. In that context, I think equality is easy to understand--the idea that birthright should not determine your social status.

Nowdays, the idea of equality is as elusive as the ideas of 'fairness' and 'justice'. It's something that you understand at a gut level, something that you feel ought to exist in society, but defining it exactly is tricky and subjective. Plenty of people have tried. Although the details are elusive, the general idea of social equality is that everyone in society should have equal opportunity to define the society in which we live, without being unduly held back by superficial considerations, such as color, birthright, etc.

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asaris

So equality is a legal fiction; it seems that on either side of the political question you pose, this fiction has a reality determined by the role it plays in the power networks of the given political situation. That is, even if your viewpoint attempts to do a 'history of the present', to borrow a term, this history must include as a real term the myth of equality that has played such a powerful role in creating the present social reality. And it's worth considering whether or not the story of a 'dominant order' is not itself a fiction created by a class that feels itself to be oppressed, and so invents an oppressor to motivate its own struggle.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

youre right, asaris about the first part

my reliance on the term "fiction of the bourgeois legal subject" without qualification was a political gesture.

but i did say, in an outline, that the status of the term would shift as a function of the interpretive framework you brought to bear--and offered two examples, in shorthand, that are there only to demonstrate the dependent variable status of the term.
that what i say is specific is obvious--but i am not sure if we have a disagreement?

if we were to move from a metahistorical proposition--the status of this fiction in general, a quick demonstration of its variablility--to doing a history, then the whole scenario--assumptions, methods, locations, timeframes--would change.

so either:
we can shift into talking about how a potential history that emplotted a notion of social equality across different discursive registers, in different sites, at different points in time, might or might not have functioned to shape aspects of this abstraction you call social reality.
we could have an argument about this notion of "history of the present.... (the present" what is that? you mean like husserl's present in the phenomenology of internal time consciousness?
history of the present where? is the present one thing for all people? how do you figure that? is "history of the present" not a new version of that of a zeitgeist? can zeitgeist history be defended, even if you try to all it something else? or maybe we'll go badiou's route and substitute talk about an event and an event horizon? all this before a single word gets transmitted about this "real history".....

or:
we can consider the possibility of making a rhetorical move on your part more than a rhetorical move (which would be the first option) and decide that instead we will quaff a beer and move on at this simpler level.

either way, i would happy to talk, but i am just waking up this afternoon and feel like such a decision is outside my purview.


quote:
"And it's worth considering whether or not the story of a 'dominant order' is not itself a fiction created by a class that feels itself to be oppressed, and so invents an oppressor to motivate its own struggle."

you say is the next logical move--to turn the loop back onto itself in a sense--but at this point, things get far murkier.
another point that requires a detour---this time through the history of the workers movement if you like--it seems questionable, both at the level of fact and at the level of politics.

to simply state this---that there was for a specific period, during a particular phase of capitalist development, something like a bourgeoisie--which manifested itself in different ways in different social contexts--seems hard to refute---but then you could say well the category is what unites these folks--ownership of the means pf production is empty---and presto watch the bourgeoisie dissolve back into the particularities of a given set of social arrangements.

and then---well what?

or you could say that it should be obvious at this point to anyone who thinks about it that a marxist framework--or any critical social analytic framework---enages in an act of naming as at once teh generating of hueristics and as a political.

and that the persuasiveness of each naming comes from the arguments made about the frame, and the analytic and rhetorical power with which the frame is elaborated.

and that this same relations obtains in the gesture to simply relativize all politics in the way that you have above.

or you could say the same thing in sociological terms:
in the wonderful world of stratification analysis, i would assume that you operate inside a particular social field and that gestures on that order have acquired a particular kind of symbolic capital, such that they position you in relation to other folk. and so the attachment to a kind of relativizing move is legitimated with reference to a particular set of Authorized Sources that circulate within a given field, and that the deployment of these arguments operates at once as a positioning move within that field--and as an analytic move in a particular conversation---but that to understand the persuasiveness of an argument, you cannot seperate the formal elements from the ways in which those elements come to function as symbolic capital in a given environment, and so there we are...there we are... you can put this together i am sure, no need to go on.

but put aside such considerations and we are left with:

the answer to your argument would be formally yes, functionally no, from the viewpoint of belief no, from the viewpoint of a sociology of belief obviously yes, round and round.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

asaris

Well, I think we agree, Roachboy. Just one point, 'history of the present' was meant to evoke the works of Foucault, whose thought seems to have influenced your postings in this thread.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

asaris:
i was aware of that, good sir......

i think about foucault from time to time, and wonder about the zeitgeist history problem--discourse as a substitute for dialectic in a strange way....the insistence on breaks as a way of saying "i am not hegelian" but in a way nonetheless coming to the same, much in the way "i am not a structuralist" works.

but this is a seperate tangent....

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

asaris

But might make an interesting thread...

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche