Equality before the law is a theory... it seems to have been considered more of a non-core promise or a privilege for a very long time.... most are still waiting on theirs.... same as White Man's Privilege.... still waiting for mine to arrive...

We are forced to deal with realities - theories can wait until we are all safely cloistered in some ivy coated college...

Now then - in the destruction of democracy - which is the most potent... a single person bent on autocratic rule of a group bent on the same?

BQ - is there any real difference?  Is a South American dictator better or worse than a group such as State Labors when both are bent on ruling by decree and without consent of the electorate or application of democratic safeguards?     Is a group demanding the closure of a national icon any better or worse than any single dictator imposing closure of the same?  A group has a number of consciences, a dictator only one.... which is the greater evil?

Open Range...... a beautiful piece of scenery is a hard thing to come by - there's no point closing it off over a primitive religious idea ....

I know such questions confuse some of you.....  way above your pay or pray scale... some of you pray every time a difficult question comes along... you pray for Guidance and she ain't listening....

While morality, justice and fairness are universal ideals, they have not arisen in a vacuum. They were/are abstract responses to primal human instincts.

All high-order primates have some capacity to abstract and imagine future outcomes via possible courses of action in the present that include sexual- and acquisition-driven opportunism and deceit.

The rule of law and equality before the law are human responses to counter natural instincts.

As for individual rights, it's clear that they have been acknowledged as existing for many thousands of years - for at least as long as civilisation has existed.

With the Ten Commandments, for example, Parents had the right to be respected by their children. Individuals had the right to be protected from murder. Individuals had the right to expect their property to be protected from theft. Individuals had the right to have their conjugal interests protected. Individuals had the right to defend themselves against deceit.

What system of codified morality, justice, fairness, law and equality before the law could exclude the acknowledgement by default that individuals have rights?

goosecat wrote on Mar 19^th, 2024 at 10:55pm:


Are you accusing me of agreeing with myself?

Not at all. I think you completely misunderstood.

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Can you give some examples?

The golden rule does not appear in the Koran

Frank wrote on Mar 20^th, 2024 at 11:02am:

It appears multiple times in the Hadith.

Frank wrote on Mar 20^th, 2024 at 7:17am:


In the cortex  brains of evolved homo sapiens, starting c.300k years ago.

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Humans consciously chose (and choose) to organize into  groups (tribes); divine right of kings was one method of administration of power, within the conditions of life on this planet, ie,  subject to nature's food chain  aka nature's slaughterhouse. 

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People eventually wanted to be free of the power of kings; and ideas of morality, justice and fairness were developed over time, by philosophers, as a counter to
nature's (and king's) 'might is right', and a counter to the chaos resulting from the free operation of  individuals' instinctive, competitive, self-interested survival mechanisms.

But other ideas also arose in men's brains, eg 'natural individuals rights' - which were erroneoualy considered to exist in nature's slaughtehouse - a contradiction: nature's slaughterhouse doesn't recogize a "right to life".   

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Now your errors are abounding: some ideas ARE delusional, as noted above, while others are not. 

'Fairness' - though not existing in nature's slaugherhouse, only in men's brains (spot the difference between "natural" cf. the ideas in human brains) - is an outcome desired by many humans; as is a "right to life", but while the former is  achievable, the latter cannot exist while humans choose to remain afflicted by their most persitent plague - warfare, the result of delusions like 'natural individual rights'.

A vicious circle , a catch-22, you have to let go of the delusion, to have a "right" to life.   

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Well ...Mao didn't invent it, but that is the vision; whether it is achieved is another thing altogether. Granting the privelege of money creation to the state would be a powerful force toward engendering shared prosperity.