Equality is natural to human beings: our species, and those ancestral to it, evolved in an egalitarian context, that of the very small human group. Thus, inequality is inhuman, in more deep ways than one. For human minds to blossom maximally, equality of opportunity of expression and creativity are required. But there is much more, and much darker. Fortunately, we can do something about it now.
Civilizations are more or less civilized: civilizations are on a gradient. One can compare them, between, and within, polities. Not everybody is beautiful, not everybody is gentle. Same for civilizations. Erdogan’s Turkey is unquestionably more civilized than the Ottoman empire which used to impale contradictors, on an industrial basis. During the siege of Constantinople, a Venetian captain, Antonio Rizzo, who refused an inspection, was impaled (his crewmen were beheaded, or sawn asunder). Later, the Ottoman empire would make printing punishable by death (so did Francois I of France… but that intellectual fascist outrage didn’t stick in France, whereas it lasted centuries under the Ottomans. So some of the best “Oriental” literary works were published in France first… making France more “Oriental” than the Orient, Mr. Edward Said… Said was a guy, revered to this day who said, basically that only “orientals” like himself could talk of “orientalism”… but how does one learn to think, when one can’t even print the books… all too long the, unequal, condition of the “Middle east”)
Civilizations closest to Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, those eminently most human conditions, and principles, are the most civilized, as they enable human minds to flourish maximally.
Such a religion exists: it’s called the Democratic Republic (but not as defined by Marx’s unquestioning, unquestionably evil followers). Equality not just a question of liking, it’s a question of existing.
Some polities put forward different principles (from Latin Principium, origin, source, from primus, first). And some polities followed philosophers: had Aristotle taught the opposite of what he taught, his friends and, or pupils. Antipater, Alexander, Craterus, and all Macedonian generals awed by the preceding leaders, may well have been more democratic. But the self-serving Aristotle was “monarchist” (the power, the rule, of one).
Aristotle was clever, but, not clever enough, or honorable enough not to follow the genealogy of diffidence to democracy established by his masters, Socrates and Plato, he went to the Dark Side.
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2014/09/28/aristotle-destroyed-democracy/
We are still in Aristotle’s mental world: individuals called leaders are haphazardly selected, or selected for unsavory reasons. For example, far from being a great thinker, Putin was a top officer of the KGB. Our “Western” leaders aren’t much better: no individual human is god, but our leaders have divine powers, and that, per se, guarantees disaster, and would, even if they were gods (follow the horrid adventures of all the gods in sight: even the haughty Christo-Islamist versions of “god” can’t control evil, and their travails, their entire version of the universe, are all about that).
Having ignorant twerps, obnibulated by power, capable of killing hundreds of millions, even billions, around is bad enough. Admiring those crazed critters, worse. So is admiring those who, like John McCain, tried to get the full power, couldn’t, and now hate (not to have been endowed with the power of annihilating, potentially, billions).
“Strong man politics are ascendent” said Obama in an excellent discourse at the Mandela 100th year celebration. Right. But Obama himself helped this ascent of strong man politics. Because his politics served it: …”the free press is under attacks”… says Obama, neglecting that the so-called “free press” is actually owned by the wealthiest men, and they all think and feel the same, as shareholders in global plutocracy.
Obama says we have to believe in facts, in reality. Right, so Obama should stop the blah blah about all the world religions been so great, and so right, dear Barry. There is only one right religion, the religion of man: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity…
https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10156068521341939/
The cult of politics as we have it, is all despicable. Thermonuclear power has made equality not a luxury, or an advantage, but the one and only key to survival. So follow your political leaders not. Time to relegate them to the dustbins of history, as the slave masters they aspire to be, but even more so, as the death masters they are.
The aspiration to be ruled by death masters is a mental derangement of the highest order, surpassing even the worst tribal regimes ever seen. Cannibalism, impalements? All childish stuff, when now, one guy who didn’t exist a few decades ago can put an end to the strings of civilizations which separate us from nothingness.
Equality is not just a cure, not just a moral principle, not just how to instill creativity, at this point, equality has become survival itself. Animals have a right to live as evolution has meant them to. And, in the case of the genus Homo, that means under a more or less egalitarian regime. However, on the face of it, we have the most unequal regime the animal kingdom ever knew.
And that’s lethal. That most massive inequality ever, which we are afflicted by, is mass lethal. A civilization killer, a planet wrecker. Yesterday’s technology brought us the mass death potential. But more recent tech brought us the mass democratic possibility, by harnessing the power of the Internet for mass voting, directly, not through “representatives” and “leaders”….
Patrice Ayme
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 