Philosopher: Loving Families Perpetuate Injustice

 

shutterstock_91954007Down in Australia, social justice thinking exists on a far more advanced plane than up here in the benighted, backwoods, bitter-clinging USA. Just to take one example, here are a couple of Aussie philosophers on Australian radio, bemoaning the fact that children raised in loving families receive unfair advantages in life – advantages that perpetuate social and economic inequality. Says one of the philosophers:

“The evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don’t—the difference in their life chances—is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t.”

He continues:

“I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally.”

The deep thinker does not propose a solution to this “problem,” exactly, but he does suggest that Plato may have been onto something when he recommended that children be raised communally by the state, far away from the malign influences of family, and that this idea deserves much further lucubration:

“One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.”

There is no question that the Antipodean Aristotle is correct, but he fails to take his reasoning far enough. Being born into a loving family is certainly a very great injustice that should be done away with as soon as possible. But it is only one of many similar injustices. For example, I know a guy who knows a guy who won several hundred thousand bucks playing the lottery a couple of years ago. Is this fair? Why should some people be allowed to have good luck but not others? And why should their good luck be so lavishly rewarded?

Furthermore, much of life is a lottery, and parents pass on more than just a loving or broken home to their offspring – they pass on winning and losing tickets in the form of DNA. It burns me up inside that in the Powerball of life Michael Jordan, George Clooney, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Richard Feynman all hit the big jackpot and I didn’t. Shouldn’t our government be doing something about this outrageously inequitable distribution of good looks, talent, and IQ?  Shouldn’t they be leveling the playing field somehow?

There is also another, flip-side problem that the government needs to fix, and it is this: different people want different things out of life. Some people I know simply aren’t interested in accumulating wealth and won’t put in the effort even when given the opportunity. Instead, they prefer to spend their time and energy on their Tuvan throat-singing careers or studying ornithology or spending time with the kids. There is even some very small percentage of people who will affirmatively choose to a live in a monastery or a cabin in the woods or to be homeless.  On the other hand, other people are very much interested in making huge piles of money.

So the fact that human beings have vastly divergent temperaments, appetites, and preferences also perpetuates social and economic inequality. This is grossly wrong and the government needs to do something about it. If we want equal social outcomes, then people have to start all wanting basically the same stuff.

Folks, to answer Claire’s question, we are definitely toast, as so many of you have already concluded.  But at least we have the satisfaction of knowing that it isn’t just us. It’s all of Western Civ, including Albion’s far-flung seed down under.  I am beginning to think that Spinoza and Descartes did a very rash thing when they started pulling that loose thread on the tapestry of civilization – the distilled wisdom of 10,000 years of human experience, arrived at through trial and error. Now it can’t be unpulled, no matter how much rationalism and empiricism we throw at it.

Published in General, Religion & Philosophy
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  1. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Oblomov: Folks, to answer Claire’s question, we are definitely toast, as so many of you have already concluded. But at least we have the satisfaction of knowing that it isn’t just us. It’s all of Western Civ, including Albion’s far-flung seed down under. I am beginning to think that Spinoza and Descartes did a very rash thing when they started pulling that loose thread on the tapestry of civilization – the distilled wisdom of 10,000 years of human experience, arrived at through trial and error. Now it can’t be unpulled, no matter how much rationalism and empiricism we throw at it.

    Totes agree. This is not 1965, 1975, 1985, or 1995. The West has changed considerably in the intervening years, what with the sexual revolution and the Left’s takeover of all the organs of information dissemination. Rather than understanding liberty as the freedom to “do the right thing,” we’ve adopted the Left’s corrupted idea of liberty as the freedom to do anything that pleases us in the sexual realm, and submitting to the state in all else for “the common good.”

    Sharansky wrote Defending Identity in 2008, his thesis being a people who don’t know their history, who lose sight of their heritage, therefore lack the attachment enabling them to fight (and sometimes die) for the ideals of their civilization. I think we’re rapidly approaching that point. We’re split on what the ideals even are.

    • #31
  2. user_82762 Inactive
    user_82762
    @JamesGawron

    DrewInWisconsin:Also, remember that whenever someone talks about “privilege,” what they’re really talking about is “envy.”

    Drew,

    Now we are getting somewhere.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #32
  3. Michael Stopa Member
    Michael Stopa
    @MichaelStopa

    Terrific post and well-tuned sarcasm.

    I was going to mention Harrison Bergeron but Misthiocracy beat me to it.

    My friend Todd Feinburg and I have done a Harvard Lunch Club podcast on this subject: http://harvardlunchclub.com/2015/05/05/hlc-011-liberal-bedtime-stories/.

    Forgive me Oblomov for the self-promotion!

    • #33
  4. user_138562 Moderator
    user_138562
    @RandyWeivoda

    Layla:I think my favorite bit is “unfairly disadvantaging other people’s kids.” Not unfairly advantaging my own kids, mind you; no, by reading to my kids, I’m actually taking something away from some other kids out there somewhere. It’s a total zero-sum outlook on parenting.

    Good point.  For every book you read to your kids, that’s one fewer book that your neighbors can read to their kids.  It’s like listening to some social justice warriors talk about how much meat we have to eat and how little meat people have to eat in Africa, as if every calf that is born in Wyoming means one fewer born in Zimbabwe.

    • #34
  5. Ricochet Member
    Ricochet
    @SaintAugustine

    Oblomov: Folks, to answer Claire’s question, we are definitely toast, as so many of you have already concluded. But at least we have the satisfaction of knowing that it isn’t just us. It’s all of Western Civ, including Albion’s far-flung seed down under. I am beginning to think that Spinoza and Descartes did a very rash thing when they started pulling that loose thread on the tapestry of civilization – the distilled wisdom of 10,000 years of human experience, arrived at through trial and error. Now it can’t be unpulled, no matter how much rationalism and empiricism we throw at it.

    Beautiful.

    • #35
  6. Ricochet Member
    Ricochet
    @SaintAugustine

    Jordan Wiegand:I had no idea people read Plato’s Republic and took him seriously about all the insane things like naked co-ed gymnastics, the abolition of the family, and the city of pigs, the guardians, all that nonsense was just that.

    Socrates always seemed to be, trolling, so to speak, in the Platonic dialogues. He certainly didn’t argue in good faith, and usually does not address the core issues. I always wish I could jump into the dialogue myself and pick up the interlocutor’s point. It’s like Plato actually wrote them that way, or something.

    I’ve read Plato as the beginning of a conversation, not a treatise. Rather an invitation into a real dialogue. Why argue with dead letters? All written words are a kind of lie, no? But perhaps this “Philosopher” has missed the point of Plato’s work entirely.

    Excellent.  More on how to read the Republic here.

    • #36
  7. Ricochet Inactive
    Ricochet
    @SEAMUS

    This is the same line of thinking as Melissa Harris-Perry’s “our children are not our private property”.

    If they think that the solution is to “abolish the family”, I have one thing to say to them: you will have to pry my children out of my cold, dead hands before that happens.

    • #37
  8. Ricochet Member
    Ricochet
    @SaintAugustine

    Randy Weivoda:

    Layla:I think my favorite bit is “unfairly disadvantaging other people’s kids.” Not unfairly advantaging my own kids, mind you; no, by reading to my kids, I’m actually taking something away from some other kids out there somewhere. It’s a total zero-sum outlook on parenting.

    Good point. For every book you read to your kids, that’s one fewer book that your neighbors can read to their kids. It’s like listening to some social justice warriors talk about how much meat we have to eat and how little meat people have to eat in Africa, as if every calf that is born in Wyoming means one fewer born in Zimbabwe.

    Thinking on the Left seems to be thoroughly infected with a particular bit of ignorance: the view that the quantity of resources in the world is constant, so that anyone’s having anything means a loss for someone else.

    • #38
  9. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Augustine:

    Thinking on the Left seems to be thoroughly infected with a particular bit of ignorance: the view that the quantity of resources in the world is constant, so that anyone’s having anything means a loss for someone else.

    That’s why, when conservatives suggest “growth” as a remedy for poverty, they look at us strangely, like a monkey watching a game of Pong. Whuh-ut?

    • #39
  10. Son of Spengler Member
    Son of Spengler
    @SonofSpengler

    I’m still stuck on who is going to bear the children when they all belong to the State. I doubt there will be enough women who would voluntarily undergo the discomforts of pregnancy and the risks of childbirth. Will there be a universal uterine conscription?

    • #40
  11. user_144801 Inactive
    user_144801
    @JamesJones

    Son of Spengler:I’m still stuck on who is going to bear the children when they all belong to the State. I doubt there will be enough women who would voluntarily undergo the discomforts of pregnancy and the risks of childbirth. Will there be a universal uterine conscription?

    Let’s just say it’s a Brave New World.

    • #41
  12. GFHandle Member
    GFHandle
    @GFHandle

    It’s all Laura Bush’s fault.

    And jail time for whoever started “Reading is Fundamental”!

    • #42
  13. Son of Spengler Member
    Son of Spengler
    @SonofSpengler

    GFHandle:It’s all Laura Bush’s fault.

    And jail time for whoever started “Reading is Fundamental”!

    I’m waiting for Kickstarter to shut down the “Reading Rainbow” fundraising on the grounds of it being a hate group.

    • #43
  14. Ricochet Contributor
    Ricochet
    @TitusTechera

    Jordan Wiegand:I had no idea people read Plato’s Republic and took him seriously about all the insane things like naked co-ed gymnastics, the abolition of the family, and the city of pigs, the guardians, all that nonsense was just that.

    Socrates always seemed to be, trolling, so to speak, in the Platonic dialogues. He certainly didn’t argue in good faith, and usually does not address the core issues. I always wish I could jump into the dialogue myself and pick up the interlocutor’s point. It’s like Plato actually wrote them that way, or something.

    I’ve read Plato as the beginning of a conversation, not a treatise. Rather an invitation into a real dialogue. Why argue with dead letters? All written words are a kind of lie, no? But perhaps this “Philosopher” has missed the point of Plato’s work entirely.

    I disagree vehemently. Who does not like the insanities propounded by philosophers can very well ignore them. But let’s not pretend Plato was not serious: You want justice–look at what it looks like. Blinking is not sporting…

    & it is not just Plato–happily, closer to our times one reads of people like Hegel & Nietzsche, who seem to have been pretty serious about what’s wrong & what has to be done to make things right with people. That is what used to be called political philosophy.

    Sitting around talking dialogues may be fun–but that’s not why people care.

    • #44
  15. Ricochet Contributor
    Ricochet
    @TitusTechera

    James Jones:

    Son of Spengler:I’m still stuck on who is going to bear the children when they all belong to the State. I doubt there will be enough women who would voluntarily undergo the discomforts of pregnancy and the risks of childbirth. Will there be a universal uterine conscription?

    Let’s just say it’s a Brave New World.

    Yeah, how about artificial wombs? No need to inconvenience half the world with the basic inequality…

    • #45
  16. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Ran across this infuriating Progressive thinking years ago in California, which now that I reflect on it was DECADES ahead in the “check your white privilege” meme.

    We moved into a new development in Sacramento called Gold River.  As party of the home construction costs a tax assessment was made on every home to offset the expense of new schools for the development.  The money was to be held by the local school district ( which was Fair Oaks), and our children were taken to existing Fair Oaks schools.   Eventually there were enough homes built and kids that it was time to build the new school.  That’s when the local school district essentially said, ‘yeah, about that, we spent the money. TS.”

    Being an upscale neighborhood of Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants, PR people etc that didn’t go over so well.  Immediately a committee was formed,  press was contacted and lawsuits were filed.  The school board meeting was jammed with Gold River people demanding a new school.

    Now comes the point.  At the meeting several parents argued AGAINST the new school we had ALREADY PAID FOR, by stating ” our kids are privileged and the school board should not spend any more money on them”.  I could not believe my ears. They were willing to sacrifice our and THEIR kids on the alter of “fairness”.

    Fortunately the handful of loons failed to stop us, and we eventually got a new school. ( Which in classic California planning style was build too small from day one and required a fleet of “temporary” classrooms which are still probably there.)

    When my eldest reached middle school age I had had enough and we decamped for the sanity of a small Wisconsin town where my kids had a wonderful childhood.

    • #46
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