thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 14^th, 2024 at 10:13am:


What did you mean when you said it defines the law in terms of itself?

People have "remarkably different outcomes" before the laws, such as being found guilty or innocent. This does not contradict equality before the law, as it is not intended to suggest equality of outcome. That is just you projecting a communist interpretation of equality.

Here he is accusing me of running away, but he only wants to discuss these things when he is leading some other thread off topic.

thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 16^th, 2024 at 9:10am:

Come now FD.
Now you know what it's like dealing with the Peccary.
Suck it up! 

Why Some Are More Equal Than Others

In a famous essay, the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen pointed out that we are all in favour of equality. We just disagree about whether we mean equality of money, or power, or respect, or legal standing, or whatever. The question is ‘equality of what?’ But there is an even deeper question than this: ‘equality of whom?’ Where is the line between those considered as equals and those who are not.
...
It is easy to invoke equality without facing its limits.
...

Not only did hunter-gatherers kill or expel in order to maintain order, they also formed hierarchies. Or rather, hierarchies formed them. McMahon insists that hierarchies are everywhere in human history, just as they exist in every primate community. Human beings ‘cannot live without hierarchies’, he writes, since ‘status is part of the air we breathe’.

One of the big advantages of human hierarchies is their diversity: there’s more than one way to be top dog. McMahon writes that ‘unlike animals, we regularly inhabit multiple hierarchies at once, with the result that a low-status individual in one environment, say a janitor at a corporation, may be a high-status individual, the captain of the company softball team, in another’. This insight is not developed, but it is critical. One way to square equality with hierarchies is to scramble them, not only over generations but also over the course of an average day. In other words, you defang hierarchies not by denying them but by multiplying them.

While hierarchy is a human constant, the term itself is of Christian origin. One of the most important Early Church fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, coined the term, describing hierarchy as part of God’s ‘perfect arrangement’, especially in the celestial realm – there are, after all, archangels as well as mere angels – and the ecclesiastical one, with archbishops above bishops, and so on.

But at the same time, religion in general (and Christianity in particular) has been among the most propulsive forces for equality in the last two millennia. Both Jews and Christians learn that each of us is made in the image of God. Early Christians lived essentially as communists, while Early Church leaders, following Christ’s example, were outspoken critics of the wealthy.

https://literaryreview.co.uk/why-some-are-more-equal-than-others