What on earth does the simplistic mantra of “equality” as it is used by the adherents of “social justice,” really mean?
“Social justice”
is a collectivist concept, which is, in many ways the opposite of plain
“justice,” which promotes the ethos of group
guilt – just as so many collectivists of the past are recorded have done:
in the spirit of social justice for “the public good,” of course, as
exemplified by Joseph Goebbels (and his mustachioed pal), Pol Pot in his Khmer
Rouge regime and the slave labor camps and the genocide of the Russian
Socialists.
“Social justice” true believers are known for their
promotion of the vague and undefined idea of “equality.”
Kurt Vonnegut knew the answer. He brilliantly explicated
what the cryptic “equality” notion means in the minds of the collectivists who
repeat the mantra, in alternately starry-eyed and scowling ejaculations. It
was in 1961 that Vonnegut published his short story “Harrison Bergeron,” which provides us an accurate and crystal-clear picture of the paradise envisioned by the
cult-followers of the “equality” utopian
philosophy.
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Here is the first paragraph of the 2,185-word story:
“THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They
weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way.
Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody
else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was
due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the
unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”
And here is a link to the full text, free online.
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Half a century following Vonnegut’s prescient creation, Harrison Bergeron,
we have the brilliant work of Neel Kohlhatkar, showing us the current stage of
the intellectual and cultural decline dubbed so innocuously “equality.”
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By Neel Kolhatkar – Jan. 18, 2015 - 3:42 - YouTube
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By Neel Kolhatkar – Nov. 9, 2015 – 7:21 - YouTube
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By Neel Kolhatkar – Apr. 25, 2016 - 8:30 - YouTube
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621-/10-27-17
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621-/10-27-17
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In fact, Vonnegut's terrific short story is far more an indictment of the deadly, leveling effects of capitalism, and corporate capitalism in particular. It has nothing to do, not even by implication, with misandry, nor with feminism.
ReplyDeleteYour failure to distinguish between social justice movements prior to the mid-1960s and their co-opting by first world feminism is also unfortunate. Workers' rights and minority rights had nothing to do guilt-tripping anyone; they were movements organized by men, using the bodies of men, to foment radical social change towards equality under the law, and equality before the law.
There is no claim made that every of the over 1400 entries on this site is a comment on the topic of misandry. Virtually utopianist collectivist ideology that strives for coerced "equality" is, however, has some pertinence to discussions of the ideological constellation of feminist social constructivist beliefs and its social engineering dreams. The fact is that crony capitalism (which is actually Mussolini Fascism, joining of corporation and state, as defined and moulded by the lifelong socialist El Duce) and as a top-down model of coercsion and enbdineering of people en masse is little different than the other variants of Statism (Khmer Rouge, Trotsky’s permanent international warfare (“permanent revolution”), Maoism, Leninism, Stainism, German National Socialism, and on an on).
ReplyDeleteThe notion of “social justice” dates well before the 1960s: in Marx, in Father Flanagan.
The big question is wher a person out to be recognized as a person with universal rights. A woman is a person, a Jew is a person, a Korean is a person, a “white” is a person.
Guilt-tripping and race warfare have been favored by intellectuals for centuries (look at Moses Hess). Collectivist ideologies preceding the 1960s are quite ripe with fantasies of violence against groups meant to be cure-alls under one pseudo-scientific philosophical banner or another. Certainly the well-known Fabian descriptions of engineered utopias ought to figure into the discussion (Welles, Huxley, Blair (Orwell), Russell, and others).
Inability to face reality and the passive acceptance of top-down coercision is attributable neither to what one’s particular meaning of the word “capitalism” (which can denote many different things) is meant to describe nor to any particular version of coerced utopianism. The fact that psychiatry is used in very similar ways in the USA (increasingly so) as to the Russian Socialist disctatorship ought to lead us to question the validity of simpleminded bipolkar oppositions of “capitalism” vs. “socialism.” The reality and problem of individual struggle for dignity and freedom against top-down coercion stands outside this binary.
The Vonnegut story shows, in reductio ad absurdum fashion, how muddleheaded the “equality”worhipping simpletons can be – those who are not merely fighting against real opponents, but instead are dreamy-eyed fantasists thinking that difference itself is an evil and must be cured by an actual enforcement of sameness.
A whole lot of energy goes into fantasizing Statist replacements for present coercive States, energy that might be better spent on building individual character and enjoying productive activities with others who are truth-loving and sef-aware persons who throw off the binders and aew able to understand human nature as it is.