That is why I think we need to get away from these identity politics ideals that certain groups should have special rights as an accident of birth. It was wrong when white people gave themselves special rights and it wrong to give special rights to others as some sort of white privilege offset. Most people will push back if you tell them someone else should be given a leg up over them and next thing you know Trump is POTUS. They are the hero of the story and since you are trying thwart the hero you are the baddie which justifies their bad behavior and the next thing you the US has fascist radicals and anti-fascist radicals carrying guns to political rallies about statues for people that died a hundred years ago.
Agreed with what you said, but it is more complicated that a simple agreement is not satisfactory (for life is complicated.)
Identity politics are a way to also resolve material conditions, to say this needs to be more fair, that this needs to be more just. Including accidents of birth.
Your children should have the opportunity to get into good schools, regardless of your material situation when the accidents of your children birth happened. All children should have this for your child can't choose his or her parents, there was no just / informed decision on the child part where they choose their parents and they should get the just deserts of making a good choice. Nope it just happened it was a mixture of fortune, and a mixture of virtù (Italian term coined by Machiavelli 500+ years ago), except young children can't exercise either drive / talent / power / will or Christian virtue in the way adults can. Virtù e Fortuna (Virtù and Fortune) determines your fate, Virtù e Fortuna is the thing we struggle with with "free will" / "free will-not" and that is the nature of humanity.
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So what I am saying I agree generally but we have to take action in order to create a just society that takes care of the general welfare and allows people who had accidents of birth to also prosper, but also we need a society that allows people to recover from both folly and mistakes of fortune.
But people do not like this last paragraph if they are doing well and they see things like "taxes" taking away from their "just-deserts", they see this as an encroachment on their liberty but also an encroachment on their values, their virtue, their virtù, their fortune for they think they earned everything fair and square and they do not want anything to be "taken from them." And part of humanity is we are creatures of motivated reasoning where we will create fictions and motivated responses even if we know we are wrong. Even if you know something is necessary you will still fight it if it lowers your current status quo material condition, that is the animal inside of all humans and the animal can create drives which we then create logic systems to defend.
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So random_thoughts it is about identity and thus identity politics but it is also about "materialism" and thus material politics. And it will always be this way as long as humans are material beings who have needs in order to be taken care of or else we can not thrive. Haslow's Hierarchy of Needs will always exist until we are all either dead or we become beings of light and sound.
Hums some Tom Lehrer (for me and Mookie) - "We Will All Go Together When We Go..."
*NM*
- 13/01/2019 10:35:07 PM
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So let it be written, So let it be done!