I've written a few generic thoughts on discrimination
here, which I am cross-posting here.
*****
This is a - sadly - massive topic, one that I have touched on or covered
to some degree in quite a few posts, which can be found
here.
Nevertheless, I have a few thoughts I want to record - particularly
given that I am, above all else, writing these blogs for future
incarnations of myself. This ... well, it is more a description of one
aspect of discrimination than a "definition", but, whatever it is, came
to me partly out of some meditation this morning, and I felt it was
given to me for the purpose of recording, so here goes.
Actually, one last qualification before I get into this: this idea has
surely been recorded in many other places in many other ways ...
Let's start by looking at a couple of characteristics that are
stereotypically attributed to different groups of people. After working
through lots of possible ways of identifying these, I decided to go with
the colours I use elsewhere: purple and orange. You can, as is
appropriate, attribute these to either gender or race or some other
group.
(More on that later.)
The stereotypical view of the occurrence of these in the two groups is as follows:
Each group has its respective characteristic, which doesn't appear in the other
(e.g., all men are ... , all women are ... , or race Z is ... - and
that goes for characteristics considered "good" as well as those
considered "bad"), their world view is constructed accordingly, and
the unevolved people having these views try to enforce them for -
ultimately - their own personal comfort, security, and
mental/intellectual/emotional laziness.
If we are dealing with slightly less unevolved people, they may bend to
accepting that there is a slight distribution of these characteristics,
along the following lines:
Now, the actual
TRUTH is that both characteristics are likely to occur on the same axis, and have more of a bell curve distribution:
Furthermore, if we take
out the active and malicious
social engineering of neochristianity and similar Abrahamic religions
over the last couple of millennia, and the other social engineering and
patriarchy that went with the development of cities, to some extent,
agriculture, and patriarchal social structures of the last five or ten
millennia, the original (biological) distribution is probably along the
following lines:
In other words, there quite possibly is a difference
(this does NOT apply to "race"; the ONLY differences
that exist there are as a result of cultural conditioning and the
effects of massive, widespread and sustained discrimination/privilege), but it is nowhere near enough to justify the discrimination built up around it.
In fact, the ONLY valid way to view the occurrence of these
characteristics is to - as the great Dr Martin Luther King, jr, said
("I
have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the
content of their character") - assume that you don't know, and treat/judge each person on their specific merits/faults.
As a digression, my view is that "the law" tends to take a somewhat
haphazard view of such characteristics, along the lines of the
following:
Science is little better, if at all, as - in my experience - too many
modern academics miss to many obvious, everyday/common sense
issues/aspects/consequences.
(I also have some cranky thoughts about
some of the assumptions scientists and statisticians use, but that is a
thought for another post ... )
