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RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 5:06:46 PM   
cpK69


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quote:

ORIGINAL: MadRabbit

I am not going to give a short person who can't reach something on a shelf the same equal treatment that I am going to give a tall person who can.




Question: What if the tall person was still too short to reach the item, but the short one was light enough, and willing to climb to get it.
 
What if the tall person wasn’t there? Would you pay the short person to go get the ladder or stool, or had another means of getting the item.
 
After all, the tall person could look down on you for being shorter, and tell you to get it yourself.

< Message edited by cpK69 -- 5/31/2008 5:07:49 PM >

(in reply to MadRabbit)
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RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 5:50:24 PM   
celticlord2112


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quote:

Being equal is a state of value, it requires a valuation.

What makes you more valuable than the next person?
What makes you less?

Are you stating that you are less valuable than another? 



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RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 6:29:21 PM   
Padriag


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quote:

ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

quote:

Being equal is a state of value, it requires a valuation.

What makes you more valuable than the next person?
What makes you less?

Are you stating that you are less valuable than another? 

Precisely what I am stating.  And more valuable than others.

But how that value is arrived at is the interesting bit.  Its entirely subjective dependent on the individual making the valuation.  We all make valuations of others based on both situational conditions as well as personal perrogatives.

A situational condition can raise or lower a persons subjective or objective value temporarily.  For example, if you're driving your car and it breaks down on the side of the road... a mechanic suddenly becomes a very important person to you.  If you were being threatened by a man with a gun... a policeman or solider would suddenly be a very valuable person to you.  On the other hand, if you are being given a speeding ticket, that same policeman might lose subjective value to you.  These are all temporary conditions based on the situation however.

Personal perrogatives or standards tend to be more long term in nature.  Many people, unfortunately, subconsciously value those who entertain them more than others.  Ever wonder why people have spent millions upon millions of dollars to hear someone like... say... Britney Spears just for example... but we pay teachers very modest salaries?  But we as a society are constantly re-inventing various forms of aristocracy, people who are valued more than others... ever wonder why exactly it is we treat a Congressman or a Senator or a Police Chief like they're special when if fact per their job description they are supposed to be public servants?  Its simple, we perceive these people as having power that they could possibly use to benefit us... so we value them more than say... that homeless drunk over there.

No, I think there are far too many examples of people valuing one over another to say that we are in practice equal.

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A stern discipline pervades all nature, which is a little cruel so that it may be very kind - Edmund Spencer

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RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 7:11:48 PM   
Lashra


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Status: offline 		That all people are equal regardless of their color, religion or beliefs. At least thats what it means to me. I think its up for each person to decide for themselves what it means.

~Lashra


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RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 7:12:12 PM   
MadRabbit


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quote:

ORIGINAL: cpK69

quote:

ORIGINAL: MadRabbit

I am not going to give a short person who can't reach something on a shelf the same equal treatment that I am going to give a tall person who can.




Question: What if the tall person was still too short to reach the item, but the short one was light enough, and willing to climb to get it.
 
What if the tall person wasn’t there? Would you pay the short person to go get the ladder or stool, or had another means of getting the item.
 
After all, the tall person could look down on you for being shorter, and tell you to get it yourself.


What if you were missing the point?

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Profile   Post #: 65
RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 7:17:06 PM   
MadRabbit


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Padriag

No, I think there are far too many examples of people valuing one over another to say that we are in practice equal.


I think people have a hard time with the idea that "Men are not created equal", because it implies some men are "better" than another which is purely subjective. A man may have acquired a degree of value over another man in one context, but might have much less value in another context.

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RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 7:21:34 PM   
cpK69


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quote:

ORIGINAL: MadRabbit

What if you were missing the point?


If you would point out where; I’ll be glad to listen.
 
It seems to me, you were basing the significant purpose of the tall person, on their ability to retrieve an item for you.
 
I pointed out that being tall does not automatically deem one worthy of the task. Nor exclude someone shorter.
 
One more question; What if it took both the tall and short person to get the item?
 
My point, “equal in the in the sense “all men are created…”, is about balance in purpose, not equal measurement.
 
The short person was a cashier, and will now check your item out for you.

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Profile   Post #: 67
RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 7:25:53 PM   
MadRabbit


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quote:

ORIGINAL: cpK69

quote:

ORIGINAL: MadRabbit

What if you were missing the point?


If you would point out where; I’ll be glad to listen.
 


Sure, I used an overly simplistic example to show how in one overly simplistic context one person can have more value in the other. It was an example to show men are not equal in every endeavor.

However, what makes the issue complicated (as I have stated) is that in a different context the previously less valued man might have more value.

Your changing the context in an attempt to show some flaw in my argument that does not exist and to obfuscate the issue.

My example was to convey a point that stands alone on it's own. The example, however, isn't the point of my argument.

< Message edited by MadRabbit -- 5/31/2008 7:27:19 PM >

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Obama is NOT the Messiah! He's just a VERY NAUGHTY BOY

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RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 7:28:26 PM   
Padriag


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quote:

ORIGINAL: MadRabbit

I think people have a hard time with the idea that "Men are not created equal", because it implies some men are "better" than another ...

I think that is very close to the truth... it offends their egos.  Much more appealing to think we are all safely "equal" and thus we need not feel insecure in the face of someone superior.  In the west, it has become both a sin, and yet also an idolism, to be superior to others.  Westerners love to worship at the alters of their idols, and love just as much to take hammers to their clay feet.  We still want our noble aristocrats, provided they are sufficiently humble and flawed... we want to marvel at their fabulous lives... provided we can still feel we are at least equal to them in some way.  Pick up any tabloid and you can see ample evidence of this.

These are indeed peculiar times we live in.

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A stern discipline pervades all nature, which is a little cruel so that it may be very kind - Edmund Spencer

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RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 7:52:49 PM   
mistoferin


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Status: offline 		I'd like to point out that at the time that Thomas Jefferson spoke those words, he himself owned over 200 slaves. Slaves that he never freed. Not even when he died. I think that says pretty loudly that not even he believed those words.

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RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 8:02:32 PM   
cpK69


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quote:

ORIGINAL: MadRabbit

Your changing the context in an attempt to show some flaw in my argument that does not exist and to obfuscate the issue.


My post was about the the contradiction in your statements.
 
Never mind.

(in reply to MadRabbit)
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RE: All men are created equal - 5/31/2008 9:39:57 PM   
hizgeorgiapeach


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quote:

ORIGINAL: mistoferin

I'd like to point out that at the time that Thomas Jefferson spoke those words, he himself owned over 200 slaves. Slaves that he never freed. Not even when he died. I think that says pretty loudly that not even he believed those words.


Did he not believe them, Erin, or has society's overall view of things changed to the point where - if he were alive today - they would mean something completely different to him?
 
From personal perspective, you should keep in mind the popular thought of the time in which HE lived.  Slaves were not People regardless of gender Or race.  Period.  (And for those who would argue that it was strictly a matter of race to be a slave, I would remind you that Endentured Servitude was, in fact, slavery - regardless of the "polite" name it was given.  The person simply sold Themselves into slavery, rather than being a war captive who was purchased from their conquorer.)  It would have been an exceptionally rare person that would fly in the face of such conventions.  And while Jefferson was an exceptional man, he Was still a man of His Time rather than our's.
 
Both in Jefferson's time and now, the convention in the English language is that a masculine form is used to indicate all, and is gender neutral in such circumstances unless it is specifically noted that others are excluded from the term.  In our recent spate of complicating things by means of Political Correctness, and to prop up egos in a society that takes offence to readily because folks have become incapable of feeling good about themselves by Legitimate means - that useage of the masculine form to indicate the whole has  become frowned upon.  It doesn't make the useage any less correct, it simply means that it's out of style.  Did Jefferson believe what WE percieve as the literal translation of "All men"?  Doubtful.  Did he believe what His Generation percieved as the literal translation of "All men"?  Probably.

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RE: All men are created equal - 6/1/2008 3:09:01 AM   
RealityLicks


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quote:

ORIGINAL: hizgeorgiapeach
From personal perspective, you should keep in mind the popular thought of the time in which HE lived.  Slaves were not People regardless of gender Or race.  Period.


It's surprising that so little is known or understood of the times in which your country was founded.  This is an often-repeated fallacy but that doesn't make it any the less false.  Those "times" were much more sophisticated than you seem to imagine.

You can be very certain that the framers of the declaration were fully conversant with the notion of equality between races - the Philadelphia Society for Abolition was created in the run up to the declaration and one founder member, a certain Thomas Paine, whose ideas were central to the prevailing ethos, said:

quote:

ORIGINAL: Thomas Paine

The Managers the Trade themselves, and others testify, that many of these African nations inhabit fertile countries, are industrious farmers, enjoy plenty, and lived quietly, averse to war, before the Europeans debauched them with liquors, and bribing them against one another; and that these inoffensive people are brought into slavery, by stealing them, tempting Kings to sell subjects, which they can have no right to do, and hiring one tribe to war against another, in order to catch prisoners.


http://www.thomaspaine.org/Archives/afri.html

From its very inception, in every European city and across the world, there was widespread condemnation of the slave trade.  There were always people who were against it on the basis that the African was in no way inferior to the European - but they were simply over-ruled in their objections by vested interests,  businessmen who sought profit.  That is, the "founding fathers".

An economic system grew up around the trade that fostered dependence (much like oil today) but this also enriched slaveholders, enabling them to sponsor this  ideologue rather than that -- and to teach the public to accept and embrace "common-sense" reasons for this glaring injustice.

That Jefferson's original draft of the declaration called for emancipation is a matter of record.  The reasons behind his subsequent failure to release his own slaves can only be speculated upon but its somewhat of a digression from this thread, so lets leave it for another day.

Remember also, that any scholarly person of Jefferson's time would have read and seen Othello by Shakespeare and watched a portrayal of quite a noble black character.  Was the entire society unable to connect the distinguished actor in black-face with the slave in the field?  Perhaps,100 years later it was that same memory which needed to be traduced with the invention of the grotesque - and vindictive - minstrel tradition. 

To become a slave society took a conscious decision; racism is exactly the same today as it was then. Paine knew that and Jefferson knew that, as did many of the others.  The racists won the day, America was born and emancipation was shelved for a century.  The wealth of America leads people to account it a success, to believe that the founders were right to act so unconscenably and even to retro-actively justify their crime, as Holocaust deniers do today.  But it was no less a crime.

quote:



[King George] has waged cruel war on human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.
- removed from the final version of the Declaration of Independence


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2narr3.html

How much more do you need?

(Also if you read the first link above, you'll see that Paine draws a distinction between the indentured labourer and the African captive. Plainly, the first has commited a crime (or is otherwise indebted) the second has not.) 

(in reply to hizgeorgiapeach)
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RE: All men are created equal - 6/1/2008 5:00:27 AM   
seeksfemslave


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quote:

ORIGINAL: slaveboyforyou
The phrase comes out of the Enlightenment.  Simply put, it was a rejection of monarchism.  It was a rejection of the idea that God put certain men on the Earth to rule over others.  It doesn't mean all men are equal in intelligence or equal in capability.  It means that all men have natural rights bestowed upon them at birth.  No one has a god given right to rule.
I'm feeling menopausal these days so I cant be bothered to read the whole thread but I doubt there is a more accurate appraisal than this.

Someone needs to give this young man a seeing to and knock some of this common sense OUT of him he he he he he

(in reply to slaveboyforyou)
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RE: All men are created equal - 6/1/2008 6:52:06 AM   
Irishknight


Posts: 2016
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Status: offline 		I have to agree with slaveboy. 

As for the other discussion.  All men are NOT created equally.  Some are better at one thing than another.  I could probably never have flown a fighter like DA.  I'd be willing to take him on in a sword fight or joust any day.  My father can tell you what is mechanically wrong with your car just by listening.  I would never ride a horse that he has tried to train because he has no talent for it.
Equal treatment is when you give equal opportunity to develop a person's unique talents so he/she can become as useful to society as is possible.  In the above illusrtation with the tall person, the short person and the shelf, you would ask the tall person first.  He is most likely to be able to safely reach the item.  If the tall person wasn't there, then there would be no choice to make.

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RE: All men are created equal - 6/1/2008 8:41:37 AM   
RealityLicks


Posts: 1615
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Status: offline 		The gerontologists' credo:

quote:


A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and it raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom.  But the tumult soon subsides.  Time makes more converts than reason.



Thomas Paine - Common Sense - 1776

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RE: All men are created equal - 6/1/2008 8:45:08 AM   
kittinSol


Posts: 16926
Status: offline 		It's annoying, isn't it, this wilful confusion? "Equal" doesn't mean "identical". I hear the same argument from anti-feminists all the time: men and women are different, therefore they're not equal. What the fuck? 

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Profile   Post #: 77
RE: All men are created equal - 6/1/2008 8:49:58 AM   
Padriag


Posts: 2633
Joined: 3/30/2005
Status: offline 		Equal does mean identical... look it up.  When people say they want equality before the law, that is exactly what they are saying they want... to be treated identically by the law... everyone the same.

Its when equality is broadened into some generalized sense of everyone being equal that it breaks down... because we aren't, we're different.

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A stern discipline pervades all nature, which is a little cruel so that it may be very kind - Edmund Spencer

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Profile   Post #: 78
RE: All men are created equal - 6/1/2008 8:59:15 AM   
MadRabbit


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quote:

ORIGINAL: kittinSol

It's annoying, isn't it, this wilful confusion? "Equal" doesn't mean "identical".


Padraig is right. Equal does mean identical.

quote:

ORIGINAL: kittinSol
I hear the same argument from anti-feminists all the time: men and women are different, therefore they're not equal. What the fuck? 


Men and women are not equal and the inequalities between us result in different treatment ALL THE TIME.  This does not make me an anti-feminisist. It makes me a pragmatist, because some of the biological differences between us results in different treatment that won't ever change.

Example : Rape

A man who claims to being sexually raped by a woman will not receive the same equal treatment as a woman who claims to being sexually raped by a man.

Why? Because there is a lot of argument that a man who doesn't want it can't maintain an erection.

Now whether that is true or not is another topic of discussion, but a man claiming rape by a woman will have a lot harder time making a case in a court of law then a woman.




< Message edited by MadRabbit -- 6/1/2008 9:00:56 AM >

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Obama is NOT the Messiah! He's just a VERY NAUGHTY BOY

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Profile   Post #: 79
RE: All men are created equal - 6/1/2008 8:59:40 AM   
kittinSol


Posts: 16926
Status: offline 		In mathematics, perhaps, the two words have the same meaning. To argue otherwise is splitting hairs.

"Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits." It's a legal term, and not one of quality or quantity.

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